Tag Archives: Electoral systems

Reforming the mayoral voting system: do ministers’ arguments stack up?

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This week, the Elections Bill was amended to replace the Supplementary Vote (SV) system used for electing mayors and police and crime commissioners (PCCs) in England and Wales with First Past the Post (FPTP). But, as Alan Renwick and Alejandro Castillo-Powell argue, the arguments put forth by ministers are not as convincing as they might at first appear.

Ministers plan to replace the Supplementary Vote (SV) system used for electing mayors and police and crime commissioners (PCCs) in England and Wales with First Past the Post (FPTP). The most detailed explanation for the change given so far appeared in a press release last month, which gave five arguments for the switch: (1) SV increases the number of spoilt ballots; (2) it allows ‘loser’ candidates to win; (3) FPTP improves accountability by ‘making it easier for voters to express a clear choice’; (4) FPTP ‘is the world’s most widely used electoral system’; and (5) SV is ‘an anomaly’ and ‘out of step with other elections in England’. In the written statement that first trailed the proposals, Home Secretary Priti Patel also said (6) that the change ‘reflects that transferable voting systems were rejected by the British people in the 2011 nationwide referendum’. Some of these arguments were repeated, though in less detail, when the matter was considered at the Committee Stage of the Commons bill’s scrutiny earlier this week.

This post assesses the government’s claims in turn. Some have merit, but important counterarguments are ignored. Voting systems should be treated with care: it is all too easy for those in power to manipulate them to their own advantage. Ministers have not adequately made the case that the change will be good for democracy.

1. Does Supplementary Vote lead to more spoilt ballots

Elections using SV in the UK typically see higher numbers of spoilt ballots than do those using FPTP. Electoral Commission data shows that 0.8% of ballots cast in local council elections in May – under FPTP – were rejected. That compares to over 2% in most elections under SV. In PCC elections, they stood at 2.9% this year, down from 3.4% in 2016. In London mayoral elections, they have ranged between 1.8% in 2012 and 4.3% this year. They have generally been around 2% in other combined authority mayoral elections, peaking at 2.2% in 2018.

That SV elections show higher rates of rejected ballots does not mean that SV itself is necessarily the culprit. The jump in such ballots in this year’s London mayoral election points to another factor: ballot paper design. The Electoral Commission notes the use in that contest of a new, untested design, split over two columns because of the large number of candidates, which voters described as ‘being confusing/complex’. Poor design similarly led to more spoilt ballots in the 2007 Scottish local and parliamentary elections. Another factor may be deliberate spoiling of ballot papers: the Electoral Commission noted anecdotal evidence of this in the 2012 PCC elections.

So SV elections do see more spoilt ballots than FPTP elections, but improved ballot paper design – and clearer guidance for voters – might ameliorate the problem.

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After the general election: what’s next?

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Just two days after the general election, Professor Meg Russell, Dr Jennifer Hudson and Dr Alan Renwick of the Constitution Unit spoke at UCL’s It’s All Academic festival about the constitutional and political fallout. Michela Palese summarises what they said.

Theresa May called for a snap election on 18 April in order to increase the Conservative Party’s majority in the House of Commons and give herself a strong personal mandate for the upcoming Brexit negotiations. The election took place on Thursday 8 June, and its results caught both the Prime Minister and the general public by surprise. No party secured an overall majority of seats and the United Kingdom has its second hung parliament in less than a decade. The Conservatives are left relying on the support of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to form a government.

On the morning of Saturday 10 June the Constitution Unit hosted an event at UCL’s ‘It’s All Academic’ Festival. In this atmosphere of uncertainty, the Unit’s Professor Meg Russell, Dr Jennifer Hudson and Dr Alan Renwick provided some initial analysis of the results and explored some of the likely challenges facing the new government.

The Unit’s Alan Renwick (left), Meg Russell (centre) and Jennifer Hudson (right)

Candidates and campaign

Jennifer Hudson analysed the election from the point of view of campaigning and the composition and diversity of the new parliament.

She argued that, contrary to the Prime Minister’s expectations, it was hard to make the case that the election was about Brexit. In fact, according to a survey that she had conducted in early May, most people did not seem to have strong feelings towards the Brexit negotiations or leaving the European Union without an agreement.

Figure 1: Feelings of the British electorate on Brexit

As shown in the diagram, around 25 per cent of respondents felt either depressed or angry about the negotiations and the prospect of exiting the EU without a deal, but the general feeling on the topic was of relative indifference. This may reflect a shift in the debate on Brexit, with a majority of ‘remainers’ accepting the result and wishing for negotiations to proceed, and only around 20 per cent continuing to claim that the UK should remain in the EU and that there should be a second referendum.

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The performance of the electoral system: strengthening or weakening the case for reform?

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In this post Alan Renwick assesses the performance of the first-past-the-post electoral system at last week’s general election. Focusing on eight criteria, he concludes that the problems generally associated with FPTP were milder in this election than in other recent elections. However, by failing to produce the single-party majority government that its proponents argue is a major advantage over proportional alternatives, the case for FPTP was nonetheless weakened.

Amidst all the profound issues affected by the election results – not least Brexit, the governance of Northern Ireland, and the sovereignty question in Scotland – the performance of the electoral system is not perhaps the most pressing. Nevertheless, a routine health check is in order. Did the electoral system perform better or worse this time than in other recent polls? Did this election strengthen or weaken the case for reform?

Any analysis of performance requires some assessment criteria. Many criteria could be used. In this post, I shall focus on eight of the most important.

1/ Single-party majority

The House of Commons is elected by first past the post (FPTP). While acknowledging its imperfections, supporters of FPTP argue that it has at least one crucial advantage over its proportional rivals: it generally produces single-party majorities, which, they say, help deliver (to coin a phrase) strong and stable leadership.

Clearly, that did not happen this time. Indeed, this was the second election in three that failed to perform as FPTP backers expect. Political scientists pointed out long before the first of those elections, in 2010, that the decline of the UK’s traditional two-party system since the 1970s had made such outcomes more likely. It is noteworthy, therefore, that this time we have a hung parliament even though two-party politics appears resurgent: the vote share of the two largest parties, at 82.4 per cent, is higher than at any election since 1970, and 17.4 percentage points up on the low of 2010. But though multipartism has declined, it has not disappeared: the minor parties still hold over 10 per cent of the seats – a higher proportion than at any post-war election before 1997. Unless things change dramatically, results such as this are likely to become fairly normal.

2/ A government with popular support

The flipside of the coin of so-called ‘manufactured’ majorities is the possibility that FPTP can give power to a government that commands only minority support among voters. Concern about this possibility reached its height in 2005, when Labour secured majority power on only 35.2 per cent of the votes cast and, given low turnout, just 21.5 percent of the eligible electorate.

This time, the Conservatives won 42.4 of the vote. Despite the failure to secure a majority of seats, that is one of the highest vote shares since 1970: only Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and (very marginally) 1983, and Tony Blair in 1997 did better. Theresa May’s party captured the votes of 29.1 of the eligible electorate. While this is the highest share secured by any party this century, it is lower than the share of any winning party between 1945 and 1997 except Labour in October 1974, owing to diminished turnout.

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The future of electoral reform: the importance of the personal dimension

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On 26 July the Constitution Unit held a launch event for a new book by Alan Renwick and Jean-Benoit Pilet on the ‘personalisation’ of electoral systems. At the event Alan Renwick outlined the book’s key findings, which were then discussed by electoral experts Justin Fisher, Darren Hughes and Roger Scully. Zander Goss reports on the event.

There is a well-known trend in contemporary democracies towards so-called ‘personalisation’, through which increasing attention is given to individual politicians and candidates rather than political parties. In a new book published earlier this year by Oxford University Press – Faces on the Ballot: The Personalization of Electoral Systems in Europe – the Deputy Director of the Constitution Unit, Dr Alan Renwick, writing with Jean-Benoit Pilet of the Université libre de Bruxelles, offers detailed analysis of one aspect of this phenomenon: the personalisation of electoral systems. At a launch event on 26 July chaired by the Unit’s Dr Jennifer vanHeerde-Hudson, Dr Renwick was joined by a panel of electoral experts consisting of Professor Justin Fisher (Brunel University), Professor Roger Scully (Cardiff University), and Darren Hughes (Deputy Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society), to discuss the book’s findings and its implications for electoral reform in the United Kingdom.

The ‘personalisation’ of electoral systems

Alan Renwick began the seminar by outlining some of the book’s core arguments. He defined the personalisation of an electoral system as ‘the degree to which voters under that system can express preferences among individual candidates and the degree to which those preferences determine which candidates win election’.

In order to examine trends in such personalisation, the book analyses changes in electoral systems in European democracies since 1945. It finds that electoral reforms changed fundamentally in the late 1980s. Whereas, before that time, there was no trend towards more or less personalised electoral systems, since then, many European countries have shifted their electoral systems towards greater personalisation. Furthermore, the processes underlying these reforms have also changed. Before 1989, electoral reforms were primarily driven by parties and political elites, while public opinion received scant attention. Since 1989, by contrast, reforms have often been motivated – at least in large part – by a desire to respond to public disengagement from or disillusionment with political parties in particular, and politics more generally. Thus, while political elites continue to hold the reins when electoral reforms are enacted, they have grown more responsive – or, at least, have sought to create the impression of being more responsive – to public opinion and voters’ desire for change. Yet the book also finds that these reforms have had only limited effects. There is some evidence that voters are now using opportunities to express candidate preferences in greater numbers, and these preferences are affecting who gets elected to a greater extent than before. But if reforms were intended to tackle rising dissatisfaction with democracy or reverse growing disengagement from electoral politics, there is no evidence that they have done so.

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When assessing electoral systems we should consider the degree of personalisation as well as proportionality

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A new book by Alan Renwick and Jean-Benoit Pilet examines the ‘personalisation’ of electoral systems. In this post, Alan Renwick outlines what such personalisation is, what patterns of personalisation the book identifies across European democracies, and what all of this means for the future of electoral reform in the UK. He argues that the importance of personalisation strengthens the case for first past the post for elections to Westminster but that the system used in European Parliament elections in Great Britain is ripe for reform.

Electoral systems are among the most discussed and studied of all political institutions. Few UK elections pass without debate about whether the electoral rules should be modified. Scholars have examined in enormous detail the effects of different electoral systems upon such diverse aspects of politics and life as the representation of women and minorities, corruption, budgetary discipline, electoral turnout, growth rates, and the stability of democracy.

Yet these debates have long been very partial. Though electoral systems are complex things, the great bulk of attention has focused on just one of their aspects: their proportionality, defined as the degree to which they share out seats across political parties in proportion to votes won. As is well known, the first past the post system used for elections to the House of Commons is not very proportional, whereas the various systems used for European Parliament and devolved assembly elections are more so.

Proportionality certainly matters. But it is not the only feature of electoral systems that deserves our attention. Indeed, as voters have become increasingly disengaged from and disillusioned with political parties, we might expect that their interest in proportionality – defined, remember, across parties – has declined in favour of other concerns.

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