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Category: Voting systems and the electoral process

With so much potential tactical voting the overall national party vote shares won’t mean as much

With so much potential tactical voting the overall national party vote shares won’t mean as much

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Tomorrow is about seats not national vote totals There’s lots of talk at the moment about the electoral “system being bust” and “no longer fit for purpose”. What is being pointed to are possible disparities between national aggregate vote shares and the total of MPs each party ends up with on Friday morning. Yet as we’ve seen strikingly in Monday’s ICM Hallam poll or last week’s Ashcroft survey in Jim Murphy’s Renfrewshire East a very large slab of electors on…

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A record-breaking 469,047 registered online to vote yesterday before the midnight deadline

A record-breaking 469,047 registered online to vote yesterday before the midnight deadline

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Via @peterjukes Chart showing on rush to beat the voter registration deadline.But how many unregistered? pic.twitter.com/9uHr3kBbIf — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) April 21, 2015 On the face of it this is good news for LAB On top of the online registrations a further 15,965 people registering by post. The total who signed themselves up was the equivalent of well over 750 people for each parliamentary constituency or roughly one percent of the electorate. According to Wired of those who registered yesterday…

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Why LAB wins more seats with fewer votes : The way First Past the Post works in its favour

Why LAB wins more seats with fewer votes : The way First Past the Post works in its favour

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Understanding Labour’s “other crutch” We’ve talked a lot on PB about Labour’s “electoral crutch” – the big shift to it since 2010 of Lib Dem voters which has so far remained. Well Labour has another crutch – the electoral system which could be equally or even more important. UK general elections are not decided by aggregate national vote shares but by FPTP elections in 650 separate seats where voters choose which individuals they want as their MPs. Unlike the Euro…

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If the Tories do win more votes than LAB but get fewer seats then let there be no bleating about the system being unfair

If the Tories do win more votes than LAB but get fewer seats then let there be no bleating about the system being unfair

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That’s the system that they campaigned hard to retain in 2011 If current broad poll trends continue and some of the CON-Ukip shifters return then it is likely that my 8/1 bet that that Tories will win most votes but come second to LAB on seats will be a winner. Broadly the 2010 LD switchers to LAB are staying relatively solid and the returnees could boost the CON aggregate national vote share as we get closer to polling day. The…

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We could be heading for GE2015 outcome that’ll appear to be grossly unfair, undemocratic and peverse

We could be heading for GE2015 outcome that’ll appear to be grossly unfair, undemocratic and peverse

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This result could totally undermine the legitimacy of Labour’s victory The big impact of the rise of Ukip looks set to be a general election outcome that could call into question its whole legitimacy. If current trends continue Ukip could end up with many more votes nationally than the LDs and not end up with a single MPs. Labour could come home with a substantial overall majority even though it chalked up less than a third of the overall number…

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Remember Tony Blair’s all postal vote Euro Elections in 2004

Remember Tony Blair’s all postal vote Euro Elections in 2004

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In the next couple of weeks postal vote packs for the May 22 Euro Election will be going out to those electors who have registered to cast their votes in this way. The chart shows how significant this form of voting has become. Back at the 2004 Euro Elections an experiment took place in four regions of England of all postal voting. These were the North East, North West, Yorkshire and the East Midlands. This certainly encouraged overall turnout. In…

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The factors that drive much of the pro-LAB bias in general elections could work for the Tories in the May Euros

The factors that drive much of the pro-LAB bias in general elections could work for the Tories in the May Euros

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Don’t write off the Tories to win most votes We all know that the electoral system for Westminster seats seems to produce an outcome that is more favourable to LAB than the other parties. A big part of the reason for this is illustrated in the chart above. Labour has far fewer wasted votes. Thus looking at the first two columns – a much smaller proportion of LAB votes were “wasted” in seats where the party finished 3rd. A second…

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How a minor change to the electoral system could stop Farage’s party from topping the polls in next year’s Euro elections?

How a minor change to the electoral system could stop Farage’s party from topping the polls in next year’s Euro elections?

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Simply switch from the closed to an open list voting system There’s an intriguing move developing that could lead to a change in the way the EU elections are carried out resulting in an electoral system that’s less UKIP friendly. A report just out from the LSE for the Electoral Reform Society suggests that UKIP’s chances in next year’s EU elections could be seriously undermined if an “open list” voting system was used rather than, as at the moment, the…

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