Dr Michael Turner is currently Research Director at BMG Research and a Research Fellow of the Elections Centre where he completed his doctoral dissertation in 2013.  This examined the effect of incumbency upon electoral support for local councillors in Britain.  He is a member of both the Political Studies Association (PSA) and the Elections, Public Opinion & Parties (EPOP) specialist group and has presented his research at annual conferences of both organisations. Before joining BMG Michael Turner held positions as Director of Political & Social Research at Survation, and before that as Assistant Methodologist at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) . Michael is also a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) where he is Secretary of the Official Statistics Section and is a Certified Member of the Market Research Society (MRS).  He is currently working with the Centre in its examination of split-ticket voting at the 2015 general election as well as providing specialist talks to undergraduate students at Plymouth University.