Tag Archives: People’s Vote

Ten things you need to know about a hung parliament

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professor_hazell_2000x2500_1.jpgimage1.000.jpg.pngWe know there will be an election on 12 December, but the outcome, in terms of parliamentary seats and who will form the next government, remains uncertain. Robert Hazell and Harrison Shaylor answer some of the key questions about what happens if the election creates another hung parliament.

With an increasingly volatile electorate, and uncertain forecasts in the polls, it is possible the 2019 election will result in another hung parliament. Although bookmakers currently have a Conservative majority as comfortably the most likely election result, and the Conservatives are currently polling around 11 points ahead of Labour, a hung parliament is by no means out of the question. It would be the third hung parliament in four general elections. This explains what lessons can be learned from our previous experience of hung parliaments at Westminster and around the world. It addresses questions such as how a new government is formed, how long formation of that government will take, what kinds of government might emerge, and what the most likely outcomes are.

How common are hung parliaments in other countries?

In most democracies across the world, single party majority governments are the exception. Whereas the ‘first-past-the-post’ (FPTP) voting system used in the UK has had the tendency to encourage adversarial two-party politics and majority government, this is far from a default setting. Proportional representation tends almost always to produce coalitions: many countries in Europe currently have a coalition government.

Recent years have shown that, even in countries using FPTP, hung parliaments can occur quite frequently. In Canada, whose parliament uses the same electoral system as Westminster, there were 10 minority governments in the 20th century. There have already been four since 2000, including the incumbent minority government led by Justin Trudeau, formed after the Liberals lost their majority in the October 2019 federal election.

What is the experience of hung parliaments at Westminster?

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Westminster has more experience of hung parliaments than is generally recognised. There were 20 governments in Westminster in the 20th century: four were coalitions, and six were minority governments. But single party majority governments dominated after the Second World War. The 2010 coalition government was the first since 1945 and the product of the first hung parliament in 36 years. Since 2010, however, two out of three general elections have produced hung parliaments (and the fact that David Cameron’s Conservatives succeeded in obtaining an absolute majority in 2015 was a surprise). Continue reading →

A second Brexit referendum looks increasingly likely: what key questions need to be addressed?

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Widespread negative reactions to Theresa May’s Brexit deal have focused increasing attention on a possible further EU referendum. With MPs appearing poised to vote down the Withdrawal Agreement, a referendum could provide a way out of the apparent deadlock. But how would it work in practice? Ahead of the parliamentary debate, Meg Russell and Alan Renwick summarise the conclusions of their recent report on this topic.

When the Constitution Unit published The Mechanics of a Further Referendum on Brexit in October, it was still unclear if the government would successfully reach a deal with the EU, what that deal would contain, or how parliament and the public would react. Now that those facts are known, increasing numbers of MPs are demanding that the Brexit issue be returned to the public in a fresh referendum. But many unanswered questions about the practicalities remain. Here, we offer short responses to the most pressing of those questions, drawn from our report, to inform the parliamentary and growing public debate.

1. Is a referendum possible in the time available?

To hold a referendum, the UK parliament must first pass legislation. Before the bill leaves parliament, the Electoral Commission must assess the ‘intelligibility’ of the wording of the proposed referendum question – which usually takes ten weeks. This limits the ability to pass a bill very rapidly. Once the bill has received royal assent, sufficient time must be set aside to allow the Electoral Commission to designate lead campaigners, and for the campaign to take place.

In total, we estimate that the whole process – from introducing legislation to polling day – could be compressed to around 22 weeks. This is significantly less time than for previous referendums: for example the equivalent gap for the 2016 EU referendum was 13 months. But similar levels of urgency did not apply in these earlier cases.

The timetable could potentially be compressed even further, but doing so would risk delegitimising the result of the referendum – it is important given the sensitivity of the topic that the legislation is seen to be fully scrutinised, the question fair, and the campaigns adequately regulated. Continue reading →

How did people’s expectations of the consequences of Brexit affect their vote?

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profile.steve.fisher.320x320 (1)alan_renwickAs the Brexit negotiations grind towards a conclusion, there is much talk of what it means to honour the 2016 referendum result, and of whether another referendum should be held once the Brexit terms are known. A new paper by Stephen Fisher and the Unit’s Alan Renwick sheds fresh light on these issues, examining what people thought they were voting for in 2016 and how that affected their vote choice. In this post, the authors summarise the findings and draw out lessons for today’s debates.

With increasing discussion of the possibility of the UK holding another referendum on its relationship with the EU, it is important to better understand what happened at the last one. Understanding how voters made up their minds in 2016 could provide insights into how another referendum might play out. Also, one of the key arguments against another referendum is to maintain respect for the outcome of the previous one. What it means to respect that outcome depends on understanding why the UK voted to leave the EU.

In our recently published paper in Acta Politica (available free-to-view here), we focus on the role of voter expectations of the consequences of leaving the EU. Following previous research by Sara Hobolt and John Curtice showing that attitudes to the EU, including expectations regarding Brexit, were the most powerful and proximate predictors of vote choice at the referendum, we wanted to investigate further how Brexit expectations mattered, and whether it made a difference if voters did not have clear expectations. In particular, we wondered whether, perhaps because of risk aversion, uncertainty about the implications of leaving the EU was associated with Remain voting.

In April 2016, before the referendum campaign, the British Election Study (BES) internet panel asked people what they thought would happen with respect to various different economic and political outcomes in the event of the UK leaving the EU. For most of the outcomes the modal response was to say that things would stay ‘about the same.’ These outcomes included the economy, unemployment, international trade, risk of terrorism, rights for British workers, personal finances, British influence abroad, and the risk of big business leaving the UK. There were just two exceptions. There was a slight tendency for people to think that Scottish independence would be more likely and a strong expectation that immigration would be lower after a Brexit. Continue reading →