Hung parliaments are now more likely than ever

Fascinating bit of research here from top psephologist John Curtice who makes the point that hung parliaments are now quite likely to keep happening, even under First Past the Post.

He cites three preconditions for FPTP to be able to regularly deliver overall majorities:

If first past the post is to be a reliable instrument for delivering single party majority government to whoever comes first in votes, three conditions have to hold. First, the system should dissuade most voters from backing third parties on the grounds that doing so constitutes a wasted vote. Moreover, when votes are cast for third parties they should indeed receive little reward in terms of seats.

Second there needs to be plenty of seats that are marginal between the two main parties so that when the nation swings a point or so in one direction of the other, many seats change hands. That way, even a party with a relatively small lead in votes should still be able to establish a clear lead in seats.

Third, the system needs to treat the two largest parties equitably. If one of those parties would secure an overall majority of, say, 30 seats if it had a two point lead over the other in votes, then the same should be true of the other party if it had a similar lead. Otherwise the system could deliver a majority to the wrong winner.

None of these conditions now hold with sufficient force to ensure that hung parliaments could not become a regular feature in Britain even if the first past the post system were to be retained.

He then goes on to explain how those preconditions no longer hold. It's well worth reading the full article for the details underpinning this but he concludes:

...the system can no longer be relied upon to give either Labour or the Conservatives an overall majority if they only have a narrow lead in votes. Meanwhile the Conservatives cannot secure a majority even if they secure quite a substantial lead — such as the seven point lead they obtained on 6 May.

Doubtless those who campaign in the forthcoming referendum against switching from first past the post to the alternative vote will do so on the grounds that the change would make hung parliaments more likely. That is undoubtedly true. The only problem is we are likely to be stuck with them in future anyway.

I think what is fascinating about Professor Curtice's final point is how it may well undermine one of the major planks of opposition to proportional electoral reform, never mind AV. Even defenders of FPTP will often concede some of the major drawbacks but then counter with the crucial "fact" that it produces overall majorities. Earlier this month that was shown not to be the case and the research above shows that that is probably not a freak occurrence but instead a likely regular feature in future elections.

The proponents of change can quite credibly claim that if we are going to have hung parliaments anyway then we might as well have a fairer system.

I await the counter arguments to this with interest.

Hattip to John Rentoul for drawing my attention the the research.

Lib Dems and "proportionally earned seats"

I was having a look at data from previous elections recently with a particular focus on the number of seats and percentage of votes gained by the third party in the last few decades.

The first thing that is clear and which I already knew is that in the last three general elections, the Lib Dems have consistently increased their number of seats. The figures are:

1997: 46 (+26)

2001: 52 (+6)

2005: 62 (+10)

The huge leap in 1997 is often put down to our improved targeting campaign techniques championed by Chris Rennard.

There is something else interesting in the figures which I had not realised. I wanted to see what happened when you compare the percentage of seats we had won with the percentage of "proportionally earned seats" we would have got in a proportional system. I was particularly interested to see if and how this had improved over the years and indeed it has.

In fact when you look at the figures since 1970, this is what you get:

This chart shows vote share plotted against seat share:

As you can see there is not much correlation between the two. The vote share bounces around all over the place but the share of seats is clearly trending upwards with a few small interim falls.

This graph shows the "proportionally earned seats" share on its own though:

In every general election since the second one in 1974 (so the last 8, coincidentally every single one since I was born in July 1974) the proportion of seats won with respect to the share of the vote has increased.

The fact is that the third party has consistently got better and better at fighting first past the post elections.

Whenever I have been asked how I think the Lib Dems will do at the next election I have always said that I think our share of the vote will be higher than last time (22%) but that our number of seats may well fall. A number of other Lib Dems have taken me to task on this suggesting that I am not taking into account how difficult it is for our opponents to shift us once we win seats and that I am being too pessimistic. The data above backs up their view.

The history of elections in my entire lifetime would suggest that if the Lib Dem share of the vote goes up then our number of seats will too. If this doesn't happen then it will be bucking a 36 year trend.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that we will not lose seats at the coming election.

This has been cross-posted from Lib Dem Voice.

The case against Tom Harris' case for first-past-the-post

Tom Harris, the leading blogger and Labour MP has done a blogpost today which I feel needs a riposte. I know some people think I bang on about electoral reform too much but today I can honestly say a bigger blogging boy made me do it.

I have quoted his main points along with my thoughts below:

...even those of us who aren’t brainy enough to understand the arguments in favour of ditching first-past-the-post (FPTP) have valid reasons for keeping the system the way it is. And yes, one of those reasons is that it benefits the Labour Party – there, I’ve said it.

(”What?!” I hear you say, spitting your muesli onto your laptop screen. “A Labour MP wants a system that will benefit his party? Outrageous!” Yeah, and the LibDems support STV for entirely altruistic and principled reasons…)

I would not use the word "outrageous" but it hardly a good argument for someone to openly favour an electoral system that disproportionately benefits their own party for that reason. It's a bit more than this though because Tom is MP for Glasgow South which is a pretty safe Labour seat and hence he is personally also a strong beneficiary of the current system.

As for his comment about the Lib Dems not supporting STV for entirely altruistic reasons well I can't speak for the party as a whole but I was in favour of a proportional system for the Commons for many years before I joined the Lib Dems. Indeed it was one of the things that attracted me to the party in the first place. I know that there are certainly plenty of other members of the party for whom electoral reform is a point of principle. There are more than a few within Tom's own parliamentary ranks too.

One of the reasons (but not the only one) I support FPTP is that it enforces the two-party system, and that, as far as I’m concerned, is A Good Thing. FPTP forces the parties to make an effort to be as broad a church as possible and to try to include an impressively wide range of political views within them. That means having a degree of collective discipline, which I know is frowned upon these days. But that’s preferable to having a new party formed every time a party member goes in a huff at every policy decision he disagrees with.

Whilst the parties themselves may have a broad range of opinion within them, what FPTP actually does is make the party leadership focus on the 100,000 or so swing voters in marginal constituencies. These floating voters in those seats are not hugely interested in politics and tend to be part of what is often termed "Middle England". Therefore the parties are trying to crowd in on that territory and the needs and concerns of the millions of people who are not floating voters in marginal seats get sidelined. This is why our politics has become so anodyne and speeches by government ministers or opposition spokespeople are almost interchangeable. Then, of course once a "strong" government is elected with a sizable (and disproportionate) majority, then the concerns of these voters can be actioned because of course their votes will be needed again next time round. So the "broad church" is neutered as whipped vote after whipped vote is pushed through to satisfy this tiny minority. The bigger the parliamentary majority, the easier this is to do. For example in 2005, Labour got 55% of the seats on around 35% of the vote.

FPTP is also the best way of electing governments. Yes, of course general elections are about electing 646 constituency representatives, but it’s also about much more than that. Most people, I think would prefer to know exactly who is going to form the government and which manifesto they should hold them to.

Which brings me to the main point: PR (so not AV, usually) would give the smaller, annoying parties a proportionate number of MPs (which is bad enough) but an entirely disproportionate amount of power in the hung parliaments PR is designed to produce. I’ve seen it happen at Holyrood: the parties stand for election on their own manifestos and then, as soon as the electorate have their say, the leaders go behind closed doors, away from the cameras, and thrash out a deal without any reference whatsoever to the public or to the manifestos they’ve just voted on, bargaining away policy after policy in return for ministerial cars. That is not democracy: it’s the precise opposite.

This presupposes that what the electorate want is a manifesto that only just over a third of the country has voted for pushed through completely unopposed. What on earth is wrong with the idea that there may have to be some compromise? The manifestos of the parties are decided behind closed doors and presented to the electorate as a "take it of leave it" option at the moment. With coalition or minority governments, more interests are taken into account in decision making. That is more democratic, not less.

And while PR might well ensure that you can keep a particular party out of government, wouldn’t it be better to argue positively for a particular platform rather than rely on shifty electoral calculations to stymie a particular viewpoint? Had PR been introduced in the ’80s or ’90s, Tony Blair would not have had to argue that Labour should change; he would simply have phoned Paddy Ashdown and asked him how many Cabinet seats he wanted. Job done. And it was dashed inconvenient, afer all, having to ditch Clause IV and actually make an effort to engage with the views and aspirations of ordinary people…

That is just not true. If PR had existed in the 90s, Blair would still have wanted to reform his party. Just because a party is unlikely to achieve a majority of seats does not mean that it does not want to increase its vote. It's just that under PR, it will be able to do this without having to focus on a very narrow section of the electorate.

The Tories won more elections than the Left in the 20th century, not because of the electoral system, but because the public voted for them. They voted for them because they preferred Tory policies and politicians to ours. Democracy sucks, doesn’t t? Maybe if Labour had better policies they might have won more elections, yes?

As to the argument that electoral reform improves engagement and turnout, how much higher is turnout in the European elections now compared with the last time we used FPTP?

I don't know the answer to Tom's question about the European elections but the turnout for those has always been relatively low anyway. The more pertinent question is about turnout for national parliamentary elections and on this subject I saw research back in 2007, presented Steve Fisher of Oxford University which used a comparative study of electoral systems data across a number of different countries to show that changing from FPTP to other, more proportional systems does have a positive effect on turnout. What's even more important though is that the research showed that it is the least politically engaged who are disproportionately less likely to vote under FPTP. The gap between voting levels for the least and most politically engaged closes when we move away from FPTP systems (by 16 percentage points!). This demonstrates to me that a move from FPTP would help with the political engagement of the most marginalised in society, an outcome that I suspect Mr Harris would wholeheartedly approve of.

This whole debate reminds me of a story Tony Blair tells when explaining the evolution of his own particular brand of politics. He says when he was a local activist in London, he joined other party members distributing a local Labour newspaper to the residents of a godawful sink estate with huge levels of crime, unemployment and ant-social behaviour. What was the central message of the newspaper to its readers? “Join CND”.

There will always be "more pressing things" to focus on than the electoral system if such a narrow view is taken. This comment from Tom completely fails to take into account how much better all the other issues that people are concerned about could be represented under a proportional system.

AV would, I grudgingly accept, change precious little, but some of its advocates in my party want it simply as a stepping stone to further reform – a halfway house between FPTP and (shudder) STV. They actually see nothing wrong in spending the next ten years arguing about electoral reform, failing to see that such a debate will do precisely nothing to “engage” the electorate. Rather, the public will see it (rightly) as a vanishingly small political elite self-indulgently discussing the number of angels dancing on pinheads.

I hope some of the points I have made above address Tom's concerns about this being a self-indulgent political elite issue. It is fundamentally about how we are represented.

Also, there is by no means a guarantee that if we were to get PR, that the Lib Dems would always be king-maker and hence permanently in a coalition. This has not happened in either Scotland or Wales. Once people got more used to the fact that their votes really counted we would see all sorts of changes in voting patterns. I suspect that both UKIP and the Greens would get much higher vote shares and hence a decent number of MPs and we could end up with a realignment of politics. The point is it would be the people who decide.

What Tom seems to want to to preserve in aspic our current 2 party system when it is clear what the public wants is a more pluralistic system. I blogged back in July how in 1951, 93% of people voted either Labour or Conservative but how by 2005 this combined total was down to less than 68%.

Our current system is no longer fit for purpose.

Mark Reckons interviews Greg Dyke

One of the fringes I have attended at this year's Lib Dem Conference was the "Moats, Mortgages and Mayhem" event run by Liberal Vision.

One of the panelists was former Director General of the BBC Greg Dyke and he had some very interesting things to say about reform of parliament. He suggested that there should be some sort of citizen's convention or jury which could take the reform decisions out of the hands of the political classes. However he did describe some of the reforms he would like to see. Amongst them he suggested that:

• Parliament could be physically moved to Birmingham, Manchester or another city well away from London.
• Halve the number of MPs.
• Electoral reform to a proportional system for the House of Commons.
• An elected second chamber.
• Abolition of the whips.

At the end of the meeting I managed to grab a couple of minutes with him and asked him a couple of further questions about his time at the BBC and the likelihood of his reforms being implemented:

If Cameron wants a Tory/Lib-Dem alliance he can prove it

There is a piece in The Observer today by David Cameron entitled: "A Lib Dem-Tory alliance will vanquish Labour".

In it he argues that The Lib Dems and Labour have a lot in common and that we should not be "drawing dividing lines where they don't exist". Here is a quick snippet:

Politics works best when instead of hiding behind false divisions we seize opportunities to work together to get things done. That's what Nick Clegg and I did with the Gurkha issue. We had different answers as to how best to repay those who had given our country so much, but we agreed the status quo was unacceptable, so we recognised it was best to work together, defeat the government and make them think again.

That same spirit should exist between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in other areas, too. That's because on so many progressive issues, there is strong agreement between our parties.

He then goes on to argue on various issues such as 42 days, ID cards, DNA database etc. the Tories and Lib Dems are in agreement in opposition to Labour.

His final paragraph is:

There's barely a cigarette paper between us in all these areas. It's clear: the real enemy of progressive politics is not the Conservatives and I would not claim it is the Liberal Democrats. In truth, it is the bureaucratic, backward-looking, big state government that Labour epitomises. That is why at our conference, instead of trying to create some artificial dividing lines between Liberal Democrat policy and Conservative policy, my message will be: if you want rid of Gordon Brown and the big brother state, and if you care about our schools, our quality of life and our liberties, then join us in one national movement that can bring real change.

So, Cameron is saying that there is little difference between the two parties and we should form a "national movement for change". If he really believes that then there is a simple way to facilitate this. He should argue for implementation of a proportional voting system for the House of Commons.

That way, if enough of his own party and the Lib-Dems agree with his hypothesis then the parties could work together in a meaningful partnership. He would have nothing to fear from electoral reform because he clearly thinks there is little between the Tories and Lib-Dems and hence would have no problems sharing power.

If he is not willing to put his money where his mouth is then I think it would only be fair to conclude that his article in today's Observer is not worth the paper it's printed on.

Expect a referendum on AV+ at the next election

Having listened to what Gordon Brown had to say today during PMQs and then later during his statement, I am now coming to the view that what will happen is a referendum on Alternative Vote Plus to coincide with the next General Election.

My evidence is as follows m'lud:

1) During PMQs, Gordon Brown said this:

What I say about electoral reform, however, is that I have never myself supported the policy of proportional representation for a Westminster Parliament; that has always been my view. The right hon. Gentleman has to accept that the policy of proportional representation exists for the European elections, and I do not see a proposal from his party to change it at the moment. He has to accept also that the Jenkins proposals for the additional vote plus PR laid down criteria by which it would be impossible for the British National party to hold a seat—even under the PR system—in the British Parliament, unless it won a constituency seat.

Now I know that he says he does not support a proportional system at the start of his answer, but AV+ is not proportional. Not fully anyway so by careful semantics Brown could get around this. He also goes out of his way to talk up AV+ as a system that shoots down in flames, Cameron's BNP point. Why would he do this if he wasn't trying to convince us of its merits?

2) When repeatedly asked is he was going to have a referendum on this before the General Election he repeatedly said there were "no plans" for this. Of course that could easily mean that he will do it and there is absolutely nothing to stop him having it to coincide with the next General Election.

3) Alan Johnson is now Home Secretary and after the failed coup last week, one of the most powerful people in the government and heir apparent. He has said on the record that he wants an AV+ referendum to coincide with the next General Election. He may well succeed Gordon Brown in the Autumn and if the measures announced today already have momentum, turning it into a referendum will be all the easier for a new PM with probably a bit of a honeymoon period that he can exploit.

4) Brown will feel that he has to be seen to be doing something and his calculating brain will be telling him that this measure will "stuff the Tories". I don't agree that it will at all and a proportional system will be better for everybody (once we all get used to it) but that won't be how Brown will see it, he will be looking at this like he does with everything from a partisan perspective.

So, that's what I reckon will happen. Of course my track record in predictions doesn't appear to have been great of late but I think I might just be on the money here...

UPDATE: I should probably just clarify that this is what I reckon will happen, not what I think should. I want Single Transferable Vote which is the proportional system that I think is by far the best one.

Vote for a change

I have just signed this, the petition on the "Vote for a Change" website. They are campaigning for a binding referendum at the next General Election on proportional representation and already have considerable backing from people including Stephen Fry, Damon Albarn and Philip Pullman (incidentally, if you haven't seen his barnstorming speech at the Convention on Modern Liberty earlier this year then you can do so here).

Here is what I submitted as my comment to the petition:

This latest scandal has demonstrated how woefully out of touch our political classes are with ordinary people. One of the reasons I think is because of the large amount of safe seats gifted to MPs by our rotten electoral system. There is even some evidence that the safer an MPs seat is, the more likely they are to have been involved in this expenses scandal.

We need a fair electoral system that makes all votes count and reconnects our politicians to the public.

If you agree with letting the public decide how we should elect our parliament, rather than leaving it up to the main parties who have a vested interest in the existing system then please go and sign it and/or donate to the campaign.

Cameron will say anything to avoid electoral reform

Aaaaaaagggrrrhhhh! I'm really busy today but David Cameron has forced me to take time out in order to address a bunch of canards he has come up with in a column for the London Evening Standard about proportional representation.

I was going to do a full on fisk but I don't have time so just to address his main canards:

"Canard number one please!"

Proportional representation may sound like a fair and effective system but it's anything but. Let me explain. First it removes the link between one MP and one constituency. PR comes in many forms but more often than not you find yourself voting for a party rather than just one person.

Under our current system, when you put your pencil to the ballot paper you're putting your cross against someone's name — one person to represent your interests, to go to if you have a problem: one person whom you feel a direct link to. A move to faceless politics would sever this local link and damage voter engagement.

Single Transferable Vote (the system favoured by most electoral reformers) still allows you to vote for a candidate directly. In fact you can rank them in order of preference to ensure that even if your favourite candidate does not get in, your views can still affect the outcome and no need for tactical voting.

"Canard number two please!"

The second problem with PR is that it gives smaller parties an unfair and disproportionate boost. This may sound good but what you'll find is that more often than not, PR turns politics into a beauty contest between various fringe parties — either peddling niche concerns or ugly extremist views.

This Thursday Britain votes in the European elections. If just eight per cent of the electorate votes for the BNP then as a result of the PR system that Labour forced on us, that party is guaranteed a seat in the European Parliament. Imagine the same thing happening in national government. Not only would the BNP get in — they would also wield influence out of all proportion to their numbers, for the simple fact that in coalition governments, it's the smaller parties that are the power brokers.

Frankly, this is rubbish. Single Transferable Vote would make it almost impossible for extreme fringe parties to get in because the second, third, fourth and so on preferences of people are taken into account. Cameron is taking the worst sort of PR system, a straight list system (which nobody is advocating for Westminster) and extrapolating from this what could happen but it is a straw man argument. NOBODY IS ADVOCATING A PURE LIST SYSTEM MR CAMERON.

"Canard number three please!"

That feeds in to the third weakness of PR — so much of the evidence from abroad shows that it leads to weak, unstable governments. Between 1947 and 1993 Italy's parliament was voted in through a system of proportional representation. During that time the average government lasted just nine months. Why? Because when you force together a number of different parties, each with different outlooks, philosophies, priorities, you're bound to get indecision and division over decisive action and unity.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no as Miles Hunt might have said. He has picked the most extreme example where arguably PR has not been a huge success. What about Ireland, Holland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Australia and many more countries who have proportional systems and who seem to function just fine? What about Scotland where the SNP are managing just fine as a minority government. Of course they have to win the argument each time in order to pass legislation but isn't that a good thing? The Poll Tax, the Iraq War and countless other policy disasters have been rammed through by governments with Commons majorities all of whom did not get a majority of the popular vote. Every political party is a coalition anyway. Is Mr Cameron really trying to claim that Kenneth Clarke, Liam Fox, John Bercow and David Davis all agree about everything? Of course not. Having to win the argument would ensure a much more rigorous process was applied before law could be made.

"Canard number four please!"

The fourth major problem with PR is that the coalition governments it inevitably creates inevitably descend into backroom deals that betray the will of the people. Instead of voters choosing their government on the basis of the manifestos put before them in an election, party managers put together a government that suits them after rounds of horse-trading and bargaining for power.

This is just not true. Any coalition discussions would be open to massive scrutiny by the media and people like me! They would not get away with dodgy deals in back rooms. Instead, the larger party would get the majority of their programme through and the minority party would get some of their programme through. In a few years time, both parties would be looking for re-election so they are still going to be very responsive and receptive to the needs and wants of the electorate. They will not be insulated from the public by massive and undeserved majorities on the back of a broken electoral system.

I have said it before and I will say it again. You cannot rely on the word of someone who has such a massive vested interest in the existing system. If the polls are right then David Cameron will have a 3 figure majority as Prime Minister within the next 12 months under the existing First Past the Post system. He will likely be in power for a decade or more with untrammelled power to do within reason whatever he likes. THAT is why he is calling for a General Election right now, because he wants that to start as soon as possible. Any change to the electoral system would reduce the power he would have. He would still almost certainly be Prime Minister but he might have to compromise on things and win the argument on issues before being able to legislate.

Mr Cameron does not want to have to do this so he will employ all the arguments he and his researchers can muster to obfuscate this issue and make sure he gets his unopposed 10 years in number 10.

Proportional representation debated on Iain Dale's internet radio show

On Friday night I called into Iain Dale's radio show to talk about electoral reform and proportional representation. I had a good stab at trying to persuade him, a sceptic on this issue of the merits of a proportional system.

They have just uploaded the podcast so in you are interested, have a listen to it here. I am on from about 8:00 minutes until about 18:00 minutes in (or via the embedded player below). There were also further calls later that picked up on this theme including a particularly interesting one from a chap in Canada where they had recently had an unsuccessful referendum on this issue.

Also, just a reminder that I will be reporting from the Bracknell count as part of Iain's election coverage show next Sunday from 6pm.

UPDATE: Ooh, ooh, Mr Peebly. I've just realised I can embed the player for the podcast so you can listen to it here:

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