Last night I had the good fortune to attend a briefing at Holyrood by Professor John Curtice** of work commissioned by the Electoral Reform System and hosted by Neil Bibby, former Scottish Regional Co-ordinator for Yes to Fairer Votes and now an MSP. I also got to meet Katie Ghose and Willie Sulivan from the ERS who I worked with a little on the AV Referendum.
Prof Curtice was talking to this report on the way the Scottish electoral system has operated and been used by electors. It’s not a report on why the SNP won the election.
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/images/dynamicImages/ScottishReport2011_FINAL.pdf
The interesting points from the report from me are
The D’Hondt system used in Scotland is much, much proportional than the Single Member Plurality system. *** No great surprise there, using proportional representation gives you a more proportional result. What was interesting was that the this result was no more or less proportional than other results in Scotland using the same system in previous elections.
The D’Hondt system using regional lists tends to favour larger parties. What makes the result look less proportional is that the previous government Party was in fact two parties, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. With the disproportionality concentrated more in one party’s favour than in two it looks starker. Also, the disproportionality has favoured the SNP when it wasn’t supposed to.
Curtice appeared to take some glee in pointing out to the Labour Party that they have reaped what they have sown when they set up the system thinking that they would always be the largest party. I think there is a word of caution there for the Tories with their support for Single Member Plurality. When you pick an electoral system because it favours you in the current structure then you shouldn’t be surprised when you suffer badly if the structure changes. I for one look forward with great joy to UKIP winning some seats at the next UK General Election. If I were a Labour supporter in a safe Tory seat I’d vote UKIP.
Due to the combination of the D’Hondt method and the use of regions there appears to be a de facto threshold of 5% of the vote in order to win any seats. Not quite but nearly. Running the result on the same votes using a national rather than a regional top up would give the Liberal Democrats 7 members rather than 5 with the Greens on nil rather than 2. Using a 4% threshold the Greens would be allocated 6 seats.
Curtice has usefully run the same votes through a different but similar method of seat allocation the Sainte Lague method. This gives a more proportional result and corrects some of the bias towards larger parties. Using Sainte Lague the Greens would have been allocated 7 seats. The same votes, in the same places counted slightly differently triple the representation of the Green Party George Galloway would have won a seat. Make of this what you will.
What you can’t see from running the votes cast through different system is how people would have voted using that different system. Would more people have voted Green if it looked likely that they would win 7 seats rather 2? Who knows?
Electors seem to be quite savvy about the system. Green voters are slightly more likely to cast a blank ballot in the constituency vote where Green candidates don’t stand. Voters generally seem happy to split their vote between the constituency and list ballots; often favouring incumbent constituency candidates.
The Labour Party’s refusal to allow candidates to stand in both the constituency and list ballots has resulted in a large turnover of Labour MSP’s. Proportionately they are very inexperienced. I fear that they could be overwhelmed as the largest non-government party and carry a record of ineffectiveness into the next election. Coupled with the advantage that incumbents have in the constituency vote I think Labour may struggle for a few terms with the effect of their “winning loser” policy.
The big take aways for me were; Labour have shot themselves in both feet and if you support a smaller party, or just favour greater proportionality, a small change in the voting system could make a big difference.
** http://www.crest.ox.ac.uk/curtice.htm
*** AKA First Past the Post
Prof Curtice was talking to this report on the way the Scottish electoral system has operated and been used by electors. It’s not a report on why the SNP won the election.
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/images/dynamicImages/ScottishReport2011_FINAL.pdf
The interesting points from the report from me are
The D’Hondt system used in Scotland is much, much proportional than the Single Member Plurality system. *** No great surprise there, using proportional representation gives you a more proportional result. What was interesting was that the this result was no more or less proportional than other results in Scotland using the same system in previous elections.
The D’Hondt system using regional lists tends to favour larger parties. What makes the result look less proportional is that the previous government Party was in fact two parties, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. With the disproportionality concentrated more in one party’s favour than in two it looks starker. Also, the disproportionality has favoured the SNP when it wasn’t supposed to.
Curtice appeared to take some glee in pointing out to the Labour Party that they have reaped what they have sown when they set up the system thinking that they would always be the largest party. I think there is a word of caution there for the Tories with their support for Single Member Plurality. When you pick an electoral system because it favours you in the current structure then you shouldn’t be surprised when you suffer badly if the structure changes. I for one look forward with great joy to UKIP winning some seats at the next UK General Election. If I were a Labour supporter in a safe Tory seat I’d vote UKIP.
Due to the combination of the D’Hondt method and the use of regions there appears to be a de facto threshold of 5% of the vote in order to win any seats. Not quite but nearly. Running the result on the same votes using a national rather than a regional top up would give the Liberal Democrats 7 members rather than 5 with the Greens on nil rather than 2. Using a 4% threshold the Greens would be allocated 6 seats.
Curtice has usefully run the same votes through a different but similar method of seat allocation the Sainte Lague method. This gives a more proportional result and corrects some of the bias towards larger parties. Using Sainte Lague the Greens would have been allocated 7 seats. The same votes, in the same places counted slightly differently triple the representation of the Green Party George Galloway would have won a seat. Make of this what you will.
What you can’t see from running the votes cast through different system is how people would have voted using that different system. Would more people have voted Green if it looked likely that they would win 7 seats rather 2? Who knows?
Electors seem to be quite savvy about the system. Green voters are slightly more likely to cast a blank ballot in the constituency vote where Green candidates don’t stand. Voters generally seem happy to split their vote between the constituency and list ballots; often favouring incumbent constituency candidates.
The Labour Party’s refusal to allow candidates to stand in both the constituency and list ballots has resulted in a large turnover of Labour MSP’s. Proportionately they are very inexperienced. I fear that they could be overwhelmed as the largest non-government party and carry a record of ineffectiveness into the next election. Coupled with the advantage that incumbents have in the constituency vote I think Labour may struggle for a few terms with the effect of their “winning loser” policy.
The big take aways for me were; Labour have shot themselves in both feet and if you support a smaller party, or just favour greater proportionality, a small change in the voting system could make a big difference.
** http://www.crest.ox.ac.uk/curtice.htm
*** AKA First Past the Post