The last parliament ended in scandal, dishonor and disillusionment. The Liberal Democrats, long time champions of electoral reform, achieved a degree of power after the election and their leader got the Electoral Reform brief.
The proposals, however, will make Parliament weaker and likely to be less representative than the existing system. They’ll increase the power of the executive and make it even easier for vanguard cliques (eg. New Labour, the Notting Hill set, the Orange Bookers) to use patronage to force through agendas unpopular with the wider party, let alone the country.
There’s two parts to the bill, the first is the reduction in the number of MPs, but not a reduction in the number of ministers, parliamentary private secretaries etc. which who are obliged to vote with the leadership or face losing their paid government jobs (the “payroll vote”). That’s a pretty clear strengthening of the power of government. Backbenchers get less power, the government gets more.
The second part is the Alternative Vote. While I’m convinced First Past The Post (the current system for elections to Westminster) is unrepresentative, unfair and unfit for the 20th century – let alone the 21st – the Alternative Vote will increase 3rd party representation beyond it’s current low levels at the expense of the already-under-represented second party.
First Past The Post can lead to the “wrong” result such as the 1951 UK general election where the Conservatives won a majority with fewer votes than the Labour party, I’ve yet to come across a more egregious election result than the 1948 Alberta General Election where one party one 51 of 57 seats on 55% of first preferences, up from the 51 of 57 on 50.46% of first preferences. The 2004 Queensland state elections provide a more recent, if slightly less extreme, example where the Australian Labor Party took 63 of 89 seats on 47% of first preferences.
This is because “AV will tend to exaggerate landslides even more than FPTP because a strong tide towards a party reflected in first preferences will tend (at least according to a reasonable hypothesis) to also affect second preferences – basically, a party that is popular will tend to move up in voters’ esteem across the board”, according to a report produced for the Electoral Reform Society.
That was also the conclusion reached by the Jenkins report in 1998, and by Professor John Curtice when he modelled past Britsh election results with 2nd preference distribution based on actual polling data.
It’s pretty easy to see why that might be the case, given a three party system with A polling 42% nationally, B polling 35% and C 23% for first prefrences on the following distribution which roughly matches what happens in the UK:
| Seat | Party A | Party B | Party C |
| 1 | 50 | 30 | 20 |
| 2 | 50 | 30 | 20 |
| 3 | 40 | 35 | 25 |
| 4 | 40 | 35 | 25 |
| 5 | 40 | 36 | 24 |
| 6 | 36 | 34 | 30 |
| 7 | 36 | 34 | 30 |
| 8 | 36 | 40 | 24 |
| 9 | 25 | 45 | 30 |
| 10 | 25 | 35 | 40 |
| First Prefs | 37.8 | 35.4 | 26.8 |
| Seats | 7 | 2 | 1 |
Under AV, assuming that each party split its second preferences 50/50 then the following would happen:
| Seat | Party A | Party B | Party C |
| 1 | 60 | 40 | Eliminated |
| 2 | 60 | 40 | Eliminated |
| 3 | 55 | 45 | Eliminated |
| 4 | 55 | 45 | Eliminated |
| 5 | 52 | 48 | Eliminated |
| 6 | 51 | 49 | Eliminated |
| 7 | 51 | 49 | Eliminated |
| 8 | 48 | 52 | Eliminated |
| 9 | Eliminated | 57.5 | 42.5 |
| 10 | Eliminated | 47.5 | 52.5 |
| Seats | 7 | 2 | 1 |
AV wouldn’t result in a net change.
If, however, the voters from Party C showed a slight preference in line with the rest of the country and split 60/40 for party A then the result would be as follows:
| Seat | Party A | Party B | Party C |
| 1 | 62 | 38 | Eliminated |
| 2 | 62 | 38 | Eliminated |
| 3 | 58 | 42 | Eliminated |
| 4 | 58 | 42 | Eliminated |
| 5 | 54.4 | 45.6 | Eliminated |
| 6 | 54 | 46 | Eliminated |
| 7 | 54 | 46 | Eliminated |
| 8 | 50.4 | 49.6 | Eliminated |
| 9 | Eliminated | 55 | 45 |
| 10 | Eliminated | 45 | 55 |
| Seats | 8 | 1 | 1 |
With an increased landslide for Party A.
If Party C split contrary to the “national mood” 60/40 in favour of Party B then it would result in a hung parliament:
| Seat | Party A | Party B | Party C |
| 1 | 58 | 42 | Eliminated |
| 2 | 58 | 42 | Eliminated |
| 3 | 52 | 48 | Eliminated |
| 4 | 52 | 48 | Eliminated |
| 5 | 49.6 | 50.4 | Eliminated |
| 6 | 48 | 52 | Eliminated |
| 7 | 48 | 52 | Eliminated |
| 8 | 45.6 | 54.4 | Eliminated |
| 9 | Eliminated | 45 | 55 |
| 10 | Eliminated | 35 | 65 |
| Seats | 4 | 4 | 2 |
Which more accurately reflects the first preference results for A and B but is probably unlikely – what polling has been done on 2nd preferences for centrist 3rd parties seems to indicate they go with the “national mood”.
Supporters of the Alternative Vote will argue that this is ok because “each MP would have the support of half their constituents”. This is true, however it means that a party which could get roughly close to 50% of first preferences evenly spread across all constituencies and then pick up a minimal number of transfers could achieve massive majorities. I don’t think that’s fair, fairer than our current system or even acceptable. I’m more inclined to think that it’s potentially disastrous.
4 Responses to “Improving Our Democracy? (or why I’m #no2av despite hating FPTP)”
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OK, first of all constituency sizes are going up. The referendum is completely separate from that and you know it.
Second, you’re ignoring three key areas here.
1) Constituency democracy is important to voters, it’s one of the reasons why we’re talking solely about AV or FPTP here. There is nothing democratically wrong with each constituency being represented properly, with the majorities or not that it leads to, for every factor you see it as unfair for an MP to legitimately hold their seat, I see it as unfair that someone is represented by an MP that doesn’t actually work for them.
2) Local effects. One of the main reasons I say you can’t predict how AV will change things is because of the reasons people vote from area to area. It’s all well and good looking at national polls and seeing how people would vote in general, it’s quite another when you go down in to individual constituencies with the local politics that goes on. Those of us that thought we could look at national and regional opinion to predict the last election got burned very badly because of extremely variable local effects, and that is with a simpler system to predict!
3) Fragility of your freak occurrence. We’ll see how the parliament looks after we change the boundaries, which is unfortunately going to happen regardless (as I said above), but as it stands I can’t see any danger of “disastrous” majorities. I can’t rule them out, but then I can’t rule it out under FPTP either, the chances are so similar between both as far as I’m concerned…BUT…
Under AV a majority that was devastating or disastrous would be extremely fragile. Hung basically on second preferences that are so aligned with “national mood”, bad policies and politics would quickly create a backlash that would reverse that huge majority in to a hung parliament. There is no incentive, unlike under FPTP, for large majority governments to act recklessly and without care, their vote simply won’t be solid enough.
There’s also a potential point 4, which isn’t possible under FPTP
4) Realities of future under AV. You talk about parties as if they would certainly remain the same. I’m not convinced that’ll be the case in the long term. Co-op Labour members may not want to remain bedded in with the rest of Labour, Orange Bookers not so much with the more social liberals, Cameron’s Tories with those like Thatcherites of old. AV will let them split out from one another, to run multiple candidates from the same party with different ideals in the same constituency at least. I don’t think it’s as simple as to focus on our 3 party situation.
Basically…every poll I’ve seen shows that Tories would generally vote for LDs, Labour for LDs, and LDs would split 50/50 between the two, while at least a quarter wouldn’t put a further preference down. Local effects we don’t know, but nationally the trend would be to give people a voice, but with the effect of minimal actual seat changes. But then we also don’t know how constituencies will look, nor how parties will operate with the greater freedom to segregate internally as well as externally.
You’re making an anti-democratic argument, from the confines of our single member constituency model, and choosing the most freak of occurrences to stand against AV, oblivious (it seems) to the fact just the same can (but doesn’t) happen under FPTP, and the hypocrisy that means.
Firstly, I think the point about reducing the power of back benchers is actually quite relevant to a post about concerns that AV will increase the power of government.
In order: 1) Constituency democracy is important, but so is national democracy. It is not the case that people people only care about their local MP – they also care about their government. The reason we’re talking about FPTP vs AV is not because of any strong preference for those two above all others from the electorate, it’s because that’s all that David Cameron would give the Liberal Democrats in the coalition negotiations. My point isn’t that First Past The Post is more or less legitimate than AV it’s that AV will tend to exaggerate landslides.
2) I’m not making any predictions about particular contests, I’m making a general point about what happens in specific electoral situations – specifically landslides.
3) It doesn’t matter how fragile or not a particular majority is in psephological terms, elections are infrequent and governments aren’t brought down by mid-term polling. Further, my point is about the frequency of landslides, I suspect they’ll happen on roughly the same frequency as under FPTP all other things considered. My point is that when it does happen, those majorities will be larger.
4) The Australian experience with AV would argue against a proliferation of smaller parties, they thrive in the STV elected senate but do exceedingly badly in the AV elected lower house. It’s also irrelevant to my examples since the analysis applies equally to straight 3 party systems as to the final elimination round in AV.
My point is that it’s much easier for those freak occurances to happen under AV than under FPTP – I’ve been unable to find any FPTP elections which resulted in the winner gaining 75+% seats. I’m not sure what the “confines of our single member constituency” means, that isn’t up for discussion in the vote.
One question, would you have a problem with AV in the HoC if we got STV in the HoL too?
And yes, while I do think we should have a fully elected, representative House of Lords that wouldn’t make massive landslides in the Commons (which would presumably still be the seat of the executive) any better.