Kent hosted a gathering of election and public opinion experts over the weekend of 9-11 September, as the annual conference of the ‘Elections, Public Opinion and Parties’ (EPOP) group came to the university. EPOP is the largest organised group within UK political science, and the conference attracted over 150 delegates from Britain, the USA, Canada, continental Europe, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Delegates came from academia, polling organisations, political parties, government agencies and the media.

The conference opened with a welcome from the Vice Chancellor, Julia Goodfellow. There followed over 100 paper presentations on topics such as why Britain voted to leave the EU, why people support radical right parties, how to explain the 2015 general election, what people think of ethnic minorities and immigrants, what accounts for political participation and how people view the role of women within politics. Many of these papers can be found on the conference website [link: https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/epop/].

Following on from the opinion poll debacle of the 2015 general election, the conference also hosted a plenary session on the future of opinion polling, which explored various ways in which academics and polling companies can in future measure public attitudes more accurately. The gala conference dinner, held in the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral, was addressed by Daniel Hannan MEP, who offered a pugnacious defence of the Leave campaign at the EU referendum.