Jack Bailey

🇬🇧 UK Poll of Polls: 31 May 2026 27% ➡️ Reform 20% 🌹 Labour 19% 🌳 Conservative 13% 🍃 Green 12% 🐥 Lib Dem 5% 👽 Other 3% ✖️ SNP

🇬🇧 UK Poll of Polls: 24 May 2026 27% ➡️ Reform 19% 🌹 Labour 18% 🌳 Conservative 13% 🍃 Green 12% 🐥 Lib Dem 6% 👽 Other 3% ✖️ SNP

🇬🇧 UK Poll of Polls: 23 May 2026 28% ➡️ Reform 19% 🌹 Labour 18% 🌳 Conservative 13% 🍃 Green 12% 🐥 Lib Dem 6% 👽 Other 3% ✖️ SNP

🇬🇧 UK Poll of Polls: 20 May 2026 28% ➡️ Reform 19% 🌹 Labour 18% 🌳 Conservative 14% 🍃 Green 12% 🐥 Lib Dem 6% 👽 Other 3% ✖️ SNP

If the UK had used MMP -- like Germany, New Zealand, or Scotland -- every party in Great Britain would have won more seats except for the Labour Party. jack-bailey.co.uk/writing/just...

It turns out that elections are really triangles. Who knew? jack-bailey.co.uk/writing/elec...

A cool thing about the effective number of parties is that you can compute it using a simple physics simulation. As particles collide, the ratio of *all collisions* to *collisions of the same colour* converges on the effective number of parties.

I've decided to keep an 'open notebook' where I publish the research notes that I make on my website. I won't post them all here, but I think the first one is interesting. Simply put: party-system fragmentation isn't one thing, it's *two*. jack-bailey.co.uk/notes/fragme...

In 2024, 744 parties competed in the Indian general election, 10 times as many as in the UK. Yet we describe both as 2-party systems. Why? My new post explains how to count like a political scientist: using the *effective* number of parties. jack-bailey.co.uk/blog/what-is...

Finally got my hands on a Galton board and I can't get over just how cool it is. And it's *such* a good teaching tool too. You could use it to teach anything from generative modelling, to distributional assumptions, to entropy. Magical!