This whole pseudo debate about the pro's and con's of tactical voting, which the leaders of the three main parties now officially oppose is all rather arid, and of course begs the question of why we don't move to some form of PR*.
My view is, sod it.
Vote for the party whose policies you like best, in my case UKIP. Will UKIP win any seats? Possible but unlikely. Will it make a difference to how our government behaves if ten per cent of people vote UKIP (i.e. if 2.5 million people vote for us as did at the EU Parliament elections last summer)? I very much think it would.
Would it make a bigger difference if our share of the popular vote was the same as last summer (i.e. about 16.5%)? Yes, of course. None of these votes would be 'wasted', every additional one per cent of people who vote for us has a small, but measurable impact on what will happen over the next five years. Maybe we'll even get an in-out referendum or something...
* Having looked at all the options, it strikes me that the simplest and best being multi-member constituencies, where every voter casts one vote (or several votes, in the case of some people) for one named candidate; the candidate with the highest number of personal votes chooses which of the sub-constituencies (i.e. an existing constituency) he or she wishes to represent, and then the candidates with the second and third highest number of votes choose one of the other two sub-constituencies.
Whether three or four or five is the right number of existing constituencies to be merged into a super-constituency or a multi-member constituency is a separate debate.
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Tactical Voting
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Elect several MPs (each person has one vote, top 5 to 10 win) for each county and big city. Record the results by polling station. Then use a computer program to find the centre of gravity of support for each MP-elect. Using this information, divide the counties and cities into constituencies that contain roughly the same amount of people. This will lead to more people being represented by someone they voted for.
Too late now. I wish you the best of luck tomorrow.
Anon, those are maybe the next steps, but having three or four-member MMCs is not too different from what we have now, so no big culture shock, there's still "the constituency link", no party lists, and so on.
G, thanks.
Interesting thoughts - especially multi-member constituencies. You're right to do it on one named vote, though.
Back in my leftie student past, the Labour party sent reps down to explain in detail how we could programme student members to manipulate the STV, ensuring a Labour-dominated union. Ed Balls and his ilk cut their political teeth on such matters.
btw, my son's politics class, thanks to Ed Balls, have taken to referring to 'testicle voting'.
There are some problems which can arise with that single non-transferable vote system, such as that it can end up being very non-proportional, require significant tactical management by parties and encourage parties to stand incredibly bland candidates in order to avoid splitting their vote.
If the objective is a multi-member X vote system, I tend to prefer open lists to avoid those problems.
McH, did you tell your son he was talking bollocks?
PL: "it can end up being very non-proportional"? It would certainly end up slightly more proportional than present - the bigger the MMC, the more proportional it is, obviously.
"require significant tactical management by parties"? That's the fun part. Smaller parties and independents only put up one candidate, and the larger parties have the wonderful dilemma of deciding how many candidates to field.
"encourage parties to stand incredibly bland candidates"? like this isn't already an issue? If you have a really radical candidate, then you can make it more likely he gets in by just fielding that one radical candidate - it's only if you're putting up two or three candidates in a three-member-constituency that you have to be bland.
Borda couint is best: it is actually proportional.As to multi member constituencies,out here in the sticks,there are far too many MP's, nearly all Tory ,for one horse towns like Kettering ,Wellingborough ,Daventry etc.It is not as if in national terms their interets are very much different.Suggest a return to the county representation system with whole county returning five or six or whatever MP's chosen by Borda count.This would also cut down on gerrymandering which in Northants is a fine art.
Unfortunately, I live in an area that, even if they nuked them, they'd still vote for Liebour!!
I was considering Conservative, but they still haven't come up with any clinchers. My vote's for our local UKIP candidate.
I don't think there's any chance of him getting in and as I said, the Cons don't really have much chance, but stuff them.
I just couldn't buy enough bleach to get rid of the stench of voting for the current shower that's in...
DBC, simple maths says that with a three-member-constituency, a smaller party would only need 25%-plus one of the votes cast to get an MP, so there would be neither seas of Red nor seas of Blue.
Worked example at point 4. of this post.
Yeah thats the point I was trying to make.Small town based constituencies= 5Tory one Labour MP Same area treated as one constituency and Borda counted: 2 Tory 1 Labour1 Lib dem I UKIP I Get house prices down and keep them down Party.Even if the main parties fielded two or three candidates,the sense of fair play would ensure the excluded shades of opinion got a look in.
If you had any local problems you could go to some simpatico MP not like now.And my MP is Labour !
DBC, we agree on multi-member constituencies, I am indifferent on how big they should be (the more the merrier, as far as I am concerned, but three is a nice place to start), I just don't like the Borda idea.
You just cast one vote for your favourite single named candidate - the young tenants (and older people with a conscience) would all vote for the GHPDAKTDP; given they make up about 25% of the electorate, a third of all MPs would belong to GHPDAKTDP; and the small government low tax patriotic people (at least 25%) would all vote UKIP, so we'd end up with a third of MPs from UKIP.
What's not to like?
"but having three or four-member MMCs is not too different from what we have now,"
and having two-member constituencies is exactly the same as what we had in the past.
I like your idea, though I think there need not be sub-constituencies, which would give the voters a choice of MPs to go to with their problems.
Academically speaking, it all depends upon your constituency. If I was living in Watford or Eastbourne, I might be tempted to vote LD just to try to create a hung parliament that would force some sort of electoral reform vote.
In the seat where I live, it's Con vs Lab, and it's high enough up the Con targets that I need them to win it to help get a hung parliament (or else Labour wins too many seats). It's also high enough up that the swing will easily sort that out.
So, it's an easy choice to make and one I'm happy to make: UKIP.
B, the last two-member-constituencies were phased out some time after WW2, IIRC, and of course we still have MMCs at local, London Assembly, Scottish and Welsh and EU Parliament elections, it is not an alien concept.
I (personally) would keep sub-constituencies for the time being to preserve The Hallowed Constituency Link; only if your (geograhical) MP says he or she can't or won't help you can you have a crack with one of the others (otherwise there'd be too much duplication of effort).
JT, where I am is safe Tory, so I'll vote UKIP. If it were marginal, I'd vote UKIP just for the fun of seeing the guy who comes second blaming UKIP for 'stealing his votes'. It's not his vote - it's my vote.
"If it were marginal, I'd vote UKIP just for the fun of seeing the guy who comes second blaming UKIP for 'stealing his votes'."
Ah yes. That's the other way that UKIP can win power. By destroying Conservative seats. Enough where it's obvious that UKIP lost them the election (although not every UKIP voter is a natural Conservative) and Cameron would be toast.
JT: "not every UKIP voter is a natural Conservative". Not this one, anyway.
MW: It would certainly end up slightly more proportional than present - the bigger the MMC, the more proportional it is, obviously.
It can be, if the parties manage their candidates and voters well, but if they don't, it can end up less proportional than at present and become less proportional as the MMC gets larger. The example I had in mind for a three member constituency was MW standing alongside a lower profile UKIP candidate, with the other candidates being two fairly similar candidates for Party X. Assuming the seat is a UKIP strong hold, with MW being particularly popular, the result could be something like:
MW 1000 votes
UKIP candidate B 50 votes
Party X candidate A 200 votes
Party X candidate B 195 votes
The end result would be one UKIP MP and two Party X MPs, which would less proportional than FPTP, where you would get the only seat as a result of getting the vast majority of the votes. Make the consituency larger and it could get worse, with the extra seats all going to Party X.
Of course this would lead to the issue you mention where the smart move for UKIP would be to jettison MW in favour of a lower profile candidate in order to make it more likely that two candidates would be elected.
The system has some interesting features, but I think the tactics and voter manipulation which seem to result wherever it's been used end up outweighing them.
Anyway - good luck for tomorrow.
PL, indeed, but your basic premise that any candidate would ever get two-thirds of all votes cast is unrealistic - the Tories are currently on 35% and desperately hoping to win an overall majority, which would be an even bigger mockery than Labour in 2005 (who got about 40% of the votes of the 60% of the electorate who bothered to vote).
In your slightly unrealistic scenario, I would just campaign in the northern half of the constituency and let the other chap campaign in the south; or I would propose policies that appeal to the younger/male voter and leave the other chap or chappess to go for the older/female voters, or something.
The only other way to 'solve' the problem you outline is party lists, which open up a whole new realm of problems.
The options you outline for campaigning are ones that tend to get used when SNTV is used in practice, along with more direct tactics, such as suggesting men voting for a party vote for one candidate and women vote for another, or that people vote for the candidate with the birthday which comes first after theirs. They all seem to work in practice, but I'm not sure if the electorate would willingly accept the perceived manipulation. Also, as soon as seats started returning more representatives for Party X, in spite of Party Y getting more votes, which almost certainly would happen, although probably not as dramatically in the unrealistic scenario I outlined, the system would probably start getting picked apart in the same way as FPTP.
I tend to favour STV, although I'm relatively happy with open lists, as they combine the one person one X in multi-member constituencies of the system you suggest, as well as also ensuring the candidates within each party are elected in order of popularity in the same way, but it introduces proportionality and removes the need to manage votes between candidates.
UKIP - three seats, you think?
Keep the numbers of MPs in a constituency to two or three and it would lessen the chances of any part fielding more than one candidate, unless it was "blue/red ribbon round a monkey" territory.
I'm off to vote, probably for UKIP, if there is a candidate.
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