Academic Profile

People Feature

Jane Green, FAcSS

Professorial Fellow
Professor of Political Science and British Politics

Research interests: political accountability, understanding of political and economic and other policy shocks; survey measurement; British elections.

I am the Director of the Nuffield Politics Research Centre and Westminster Bridge, Co-Director of the British Election Study, President of the British Politics Group of the American Political Science Association, Elections Analyst for ITV News' twice BAFTA nominated live overnight election results programmes, and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for British Politics at the University of Hull.

I am interested in the link between what governments do (policy outcomes, the economy, political competition) and how people respond to them.

I am a co-author (with the British Election Study team), of 'Electoral Shocks: Understanding the Volatile Voter in a Turbulent World', OUP. This book explains how the British party system is destabilizing due to the combination of electoral shocks and over time increases in underlying electoral volatility.

I am also author, with Will Jennings, of 'The Politics of Competence: Parties, Public Opinion and Voters', CUP, 2017. We show how shocks cause substantial changes to party policy reputations, how voters generalise competence assessments across the policy agenda, and how governments suffer costs of ruling due to predictable over-time dynamics in the attribution of blame.

I am working on a number of projects to understand levelling up, how voters think about place, the electoral importance of wealth on Brexit support, and the electoral consequences of the government's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. I also work on understanding sources of error in survey measurement, the basis of people’s perceptions at both a local and national level, and other aspects of the dynamics and outcomes of British politics and policy-making.

I take an active role in the analysis of British politics and elections and have served as ITV News Election Analyst in the 2015 general election, the 2016 EU referendum, the 2016 US presidential election, the 2017 British general election, the 2019 British general election and the 2020 US presidential election. I have also provided analysis for the BBC (BBC Radio 4 2019 European Elections results programme, BBC television 2014 local elections results programme, numerous BBC Breakfast appearances, interviews for the World at One, the Today Programme, Westminster Hour, Woman's Hour, and the 2010 and 2005 BBC World Service radio election night programmes). In 2015 I received the Political Studies Association ‘Research Communicator of the Year’ award. I served on the Market Research Society and British Polling Council independent inquiry into the 2015 opinion polls and have given evidence to committees in the House of Lords and the House of Commons. I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, an Affiliate at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and an editorial member of Comparative Political Studies. I was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, 2016, and at the University of California at Berkeley in 2007. I received my DPhil from Nuffield College in 2007.

I am interesting in supervising DPhil projects on elections, voting, accountability, survey measurement, economic voting, and representation.

Jane Green

Publications

In progress

Edward Fieldhouse, Jane Green, Geoffrey Evans, Jon Mellon, Christopher Prosser. Electoral Realignment: How Brexit Re-Shaped British Elections. Oxford University Press (under contract).

Jane Green and Raluca Pahontu. Mind the Gap: Why Wealthy Voters Support Brexit. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3764889

Jane Green, Will Jennings, Lawrence McKay and Gerry Stoker. The Politics of Place: The Causes and Consequences of Long-term Economic Decline Perceptions.

Jane Green, Geoffrey Evans and Daniel Snow. Covid-19 as a valence issue: how the first wave of the pandemic impacted government support.

Jane Green and Rose De Geus. Economic Insecurity and Cultural Conservatism in Britain: The role of education level across generations, and its electoral implications.

Books 

Edward Fieldhouse, Jane Green, Geoffrey Evans, Jonathan Mellon, Christopher Prosser, Hermann Schmitt and Cees van der Eijk. (2019). Electoral Shocks: Understanding the Volatile Voter in a Turbulent World. Oxford University Press. 

Jane Green and Will Jennings (2017). ‘The Politics of Competence: Parties, Public Opinion and Voters’. Cambridge University Press.

Wring, Dominic, Jane Green, Roger Mortimore and Simon Atkinson, Eds., (2007) ‘Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 2005’. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Articles and chapters 

Geoffrey Evans, Roosmarijn De Geus and Jane Green. (Forthcoming). Boris Johnson to the Rescue?: How the Conservatives won the radical right vote in the 2019 general election. Political Studies.  

Roosmarijn De Geus and Jane Green. (Forthcoming) Attention! The Meanings of Attention to Politics in Surveys. Electoral Studies.

Jane Green and Rosalind Shorrocks. (Early online view) The Gender Backlash in the Vote for Brexit. Political Behavior. 

Jane Green. (2021) 2019: A Critical Election? In Nicholas Allen and John Bartle., Eds. Britain at the Polls, 2019. Manchester University Press.

Jane Green, Timothy Hellwig and Edward Fieldhouse. 2021. 'Who Gets What: The Economy, Relative Gains, and Brexit'. British Journal of Political Science.

Christopher Prosser, Edward Fieldhouse, Jane Green, Jonathan Mellon and Geoffrey Evans. (2020) ‘Tremors but no Youthquake. Measuring changes in the age and turnout gradients in the 2015 and 2017 British General Elections’. Electoral Studies. Vol. 64: 102-129.

Jonathan Mellon, Geoffrey Evans, Edward Fieldhouse, Jane Green, and Christopher Prosser (2018) ‘Brexit or Corbyn? Campaign and Inter-election Vote Switching in the 2017 UK General Election’. Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 71 (4): 719-737.

Patrick Sturgis, Jouni Kuha, Nick Baker, Stephen Fisher, Jane Green, Will Jennings, Benjamin Lauderdale, and Patten Smith (2017) ‘An Assessment of the Causes of the Errors in the 2015 UK General Election Opinion Polls’. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society – Series A.

Jane Green and Will Jennings (2017) ‘Party Reputations and Policy Priorities: How issue ownership shapes executive and legislative agendas’. British Journal of Political Science. 1–24. 

Jane Green and Will Jennings (2017) ‘Valence’, in Kai Arzheimer, Jocelyn Evans and Michael Lewis-Beck., Eds. The SAGE Handbook of Electoral Behavior v2, pp.538–560. London: Sage.

Jane Green and Chris Prosser (2016) ‘Party System Fragmentation and Single-Party Government: The British General Election of 2015’. West European Politics, Vol. 39(6): 1299–1310.

Jane Green (2015) ‘Party and Voter Incentives at the Crowded Centre of British Politics’, Party Politics, Vol. 21(1): 80–99.

James Adams, Jane Green and Caitlin Milazzo (2012) ‘Who Moves? Elite and Mass Depolarization in Britain, 1987 – 2001’, Electoral Studies, Vol. 31(4): 643–655.

Caitlin Milazzo, James Adams and Jane Green (2012) ‘Are Voter Decision Rules Endogenous to Parties’ Policy Strategies? A Model with Applications to Mass Depolarization in Post-Thatcher Britain’, Journal of Politics, Vol. 74(1): 262–276.

James Adams, Jane Green and Caitlin Milazzo (2012) ‘Has the British Public Depolarized Along with Political Elites? An American Perspective on British Public Opinion’. Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 45(4): 507–530.

Jane Green and Will Jennings (2012) ‘Valence as Macro-Competence: An Analysis of Mood in Party Competence Evaluations in the U.K.’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 42(2): 311–343. 

Jane Green and Will Jennings (2012) ‘The Dynamics of Issue Competence and Vote Choice for Parties in and Out of Power’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 51(4): 469–503. 

Jane Green (2011) ‘A Test of Core Vote Theories: The British Conservatives, 1997 – 2005’. British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 41(4): 667–688.

Jane Green (2010) ‘Strategic Recovery? The Conservatives under David Cameron’. Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 63(4): 667–688.

- - Jane Green (2010) ‘Strategic Recovery? The Conservatives under David Cameron’. In Andrew Geddes and Jonathon Tonge., Eds. Britain Votes 2010. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.85–106.

Jane Green (2010) ‘Points of Intersection between Experiments and Quasi-Experiments’. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 628(1): 97–111.

Jane Green and Sara B. Hobolt (2008) ‘Owning the Issue Agenda: Explaining Party Strategies in British General Election Campaigns’. Electoral Studies, Vol. 27(3): 460–476. 

Jane Green (2007) ‘When Parties and Voters Agree: Valence Issues and Party Competition’. Political Studies, Vol. 55(3): 629–655.

Jane Green (2007) ‘The Lessons of the 2005 General Election Campaign’ in Dominic Wring, Jane Green, Roger Mortimore and Simon Atkinson., Eds., Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 2005. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Philip Cowley and Jane Green (2005) ‘New Leaders, Same Problems: The Conservatives’, in Andrew Geddes and Jonathon Tonge., Eds. (2005) Britain Decides: The British General Election of 2005. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Jane Green (2005) ‘Conservative Party Rationality: Learning the Lessons from the Last Election for the Next’. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, Vol. 15(1): 111–127.

Other: in print

Jane Green (2019) ‘It’s all relative: why it matters who is doing better than whom’, in ‘Sex, Lies and Politics: The Secret Influences That Drive our Political Choices’, eds. P. Cowley & R. Ford. Biteback Publishing.

Jane Green (2017) ‘A Year On, Brexit Brings Lessons in Uncertainty’. In Nature (International Weekly Journal of Science), Vol. 546, pp.453, 22 June 2017.

Jane Green (2016) 'More Similar Than You Think: Parallel Publics'. In Phillip Cowley and Robert Ford., Eds. Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box II. Biteback publishing.

Jane Green (2016) ‘What Explains the Failure of ‘Project Fear’?’. In Dan Jackson, Einar Thorsen and Dominic Wring., Eds. EU Referendum Analysis 2016: Media, Voters and the Campaign.

Jane Green and Chris Prosser (2015) 'Learning the Right Lessons from Labour's 2015 Defeat.' Juncture (Journal of the Institute for Public Policy Research) Vol. 2(2), August.

Patrick Sturgis, Nick Baker, Mario Callegaro, Stephen Fisher, Jane Green, Will Jennings, Jouni Kuha, Ben Lauderdale, Patten Smith (2016) ‘Report of the Inquiry into the 2015 British general election opinion polls’. Market Research Society.

Jane Green (2012) ‘Voting Behaviour: How Important is Issue Voting?’ Politics Review. November.

Jane Green (2011) Review of Clarke, Harold., David Sanders, Marianne Stewart and Paul Whiteley (2009) ‘Performance Politics and the British Voter’. In Perspectives on Politics 10(2): 511–513.

Jane Green (2010) ‘Can Parties Respond Well to Defeat?’ Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy, Vol. 18 (3/4): 47–54.

Jane Green (2006) Review of Aspinwall, Mark (2004) ‘Rethinking Britain and Europe: Plurality election, party management and British policy on European integration’. Party Politics 12(4).