A Level Revision Notes: Voting Systems

Letter:	Stand For:	Meaning:
P	Proportionality	% of vote = % of seats
A	Accountability	Can you get rid of your MP if you want to?
V	Value	All votes should count/be equal in weight
E	Effectiveness	Does it produce strong, single-party government?
C	Comprehensibility	Is it easy to understand?

Type Of Voting System:

Simple Plurality Voting: FPTP
Majoritarian System: Alternative Voting & Supplemented Voting
Proportional: LIST & Single Transferable Vote
Mixed Systems: Hybrid System, Additional Member System & Alternative Voting Plus.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of The FPTP System:

Advantages

Usually produces strong, stable, single-party government with working majorities. 2010? 2015? 2017?
It is simple and familiar, results are easily understood.
Provides and maintains a close MP/constituents link
Usually, avoids “hung” Parliaments/ provides single party government.
Usually, avoids the need for a coalition government. Coalitions require negotiating, “horse trading” and deal making. Voters won’t have voted for a coalition government.
Keeps so-called “extremist” parties such as the BNP, UKIP and Communist Party out of Parliament.
It works, why fix it?

Disadvantages

It doesn’t accurately reflect the way people voted and penalises the third party. In 2017 the Conservatives won 42 % of the vote but 49% of the seats. In 2015 UKIP won 13% of the vote but just 0.2% of the seats. In 1983 the Alliance (Liberals and SDP) had 25% of the vote, 3.5% of the seats!
No party since 1935 has had over half the vote. In 2017 the Conservatives had around 30% of the total eligible vote.
It can result in “electoral deserts” (Lord Jenkins – Jenkins Report) in different parts of the country. Between 1979 and 1997 Scotland and Wales, and major northern cities in England become almost Conservative free zones. In 1997 20% voted Conservative in Scotland but they didn’t win a single seat. In 2015 Scotland returned just 1 Conservative, 1 Labour and 1 Lib Dem MP.
A high proportion of votes are wasted in each constituency. Votes for the losing candidate and excess votes for the winning candidate haven’t counted for anything – the votes had no value.
Too much emphasis, as a result of the voting system, is placed on marginal seats. The system creates too many safe seats. In safe seats, seats, where a party is guaranteed to win, turnout as a result of the foregone conclusion, is usually low.
It is possible for a winning Party to have more seats but fewer votes than its rival. For example in 1951 the Conservatives won the election in terms of seats but had fewer votes! The same thing happened in February 1974, Labour had more seats but fewer votes!
It discriminates against women and ethnic minorities in that selection committees tend to choose a “safe” candidate and go for the type for most likely to win; a white male.
Lord Hailsham (1976) spoke of the system as producing an “elective dictatorship”. In other words, the system gives too much power to the Government who use their majority and whipping system to ensure that everything they want goes through Parliament. And this is with the winning party having less than 50% of the votes!
The system encourages some people to vote tactically and not always for their first preference if their favoured candidate has no chance of winning.
Professor John Kingdom suggests FPTP only works – in other words, produces strong stable single-party government – if there are TWO main parties who between them get 95/98% of the vote. In the 1950s Labour and Conservatives had 96% of the vote. In 2017 the figure it was 83%%. Other parties have 17% of the vote.

What Functions Do Electoral Systems Need:

Representation: In a representative democracy it enables a large group to select a small group to act on their behalf.
Choosing A Government: A General Election’s determine the composition of the House of Commons but as the minority government to determine which party has the actual power
Participation: Voting is a key act of political participation for most citizens
Influence Over Power: Elections allow citizens to voice their police preferences. Issues a manifesto than a mandate.
Accountability: The government and individual MPs are held accountable can also be removed from power.
Citizen Education: Provide citizens with information on major political issues which allows people to make an informed decision.
Legitimacy: They give legitimacy to the winning party and the system as a whole.
Elite Recruitment: Parties nominate candidates for election and provide them with campaign resources and in return, they want loyalty towards that party.

Free And Fair Elections:

Elections should be competitive, fair and free
Voters should have a meaningful choice
Basic civic liberties such as freedom of speech, free press, the value of vote. Some people say the UK fails on this.
Democratic and elitists theorists hold different views, prioritise the role of people in politics.
They focus on policy influence, participation and accountability. Government should act in accordance with the wishes of the people
Elitists think elections should provide authority and stability for the political system. The elite decides what is in the interest of the people.

Elections In The UK:

General Elections: 650 MPs who make up the House of Commons, 5-year terms for governments. Must seek 2/3’s of the majority in the Houses of Commons to hold early elections.
Elections To Devoted Assemblies: Elections to Scottish and Irish assemblies which are held every five years.
Local Elections: 4-year terms and then re-elected, all at the same time. Same for police leaders.
European Parliament Elections: UK elect them every 5 years however after 2019 we won’t since we voted to leave the EU
By-Election: Held to choose a new representative if a seat becomes empty due to resignation or death of that MP
Three parts of the UK which aren’t elected: Head of state, Any member in the House Of Lord and Judiciary members.

The First Past The Post System

Used by USA, Canada and India as well the UK
Used by most countries in the world
One MP gets elected in this system and the one with the most votes will gain the seat
Minor parties’ votes are wasted in this system
For example, the SNP won under half the votes but less seats overall.
MPs can also be elected in small proportions in small areas.

Alternative Voting:

MPs get majority support of 50% at least
Can produce more disproportionate votes than FTPT
You vote using numbers in order of preference and then the votes are added, if no party has a 50% majority then the lowest votes are taken out and the 2^nd preference for those votes are counted and added on until a party gets a 50% majority.
Less tactical voting and no wasted votes
But it also means that some people can get 2 votes.

Constituency Boundaries:

Determined by an independent commission every 8-12 year
Isle of Wright has the biggest constituency.
650 constituencies will become 600 by the 2020 election.
Urban constituencies have fewer elections than rural ones.

Safe & Marginal Seats:

In safe seats the same party wins election after election because the majority is so large
In 2017, the safe seat was Watson which won 85% of the Labour vote
Marginal seats have a small majority where the rivals have the best chance to overturn the result
Turnout tends to be higher in these seats because the votes actually make a difference.
North East Fife was the biggest marginal seats in 2017 winning by 2 votes.
Marginal seats are on the decline which means that we have a more hung parliament, however, in 2017, we have seen a rise of ‘super’ marginal seats.

Features Of First Past The Post:

Two Party System:

A system in which two major parties compete for office. Favours the major parties that have strong nationwide support.
Smaller parties find it difficult to win seats
Outsider parties find it hard to win seats e.g UKIP won 12.6% of the vote at the 2015 General Election but they only won one seat
However, now we have a multi-party system however the 2017 General Election reversed this trend as 2 main parties won 86% of the votes.

Winning Bonus:

FTPT exaggerated the performance of the popular party producing a winner bonus/landslide effect.
Small lead over the second party is translated into a substantial lead. Labour did in 1997 and in 2001. The Consertivate Party did in 1983 and 1987.

Bais To One Major Party:

FPTP is biased towards one of the two political party
System favoured Labour from the 1990s to 2010, between 1997 and 2005, the proportional of seats won by the Conservative party was lower than the vote. In 2010, the Conservates led Labour by 7% but still fell 19 seats short of a majority.
There are a number of reasons:
Tactical Voting: Labour benefited from the anti-conservative tactile voting from 1997-2005.
Differences In Constituency Size: The electorate constituency by won Labour in 2015 was 3850 lower than the Tories. Due to the movement of voters from urban to rural areas.
Differential Turnout: Turnout is lower in seats held by Labour, 62% compared to 69% for the Conservative party. Labour needed fewer seats between 1997 and 2010.
Labour retained its advantage in consistency size and turnout in 2015 but Conservative vote was evenly distributed.
Tory has reaped the main benefits of the collapse of support. Labour lost 40 seats to the SNP.
The Conservative party performed best in marginal seats with a 4.5% in votes in marginal seats.
In 2017, the Tories gained 12 seats in Scotland helped by anti-SNP tactile voting, Labour share of seats in Scotland was lower than the share of votes.

Discrimination Against The Smaller Parties:

Discriminates again third parties and parties whose support is not concentrated in particular region
Mechanics: FTPT makes it hard for smaller parties to win as there are no rewards for coming second.
Psychology: Smaller parties have a credibility problem because votes for them are shown to be a “wasted vote”.
Lib Dems have been a consistent loser under FTPT notably in 1983 since they targeted particular seats and local campaigns helped them to reach 62 seats in 2005 but this was a bad outcome.
In 2015, UKIP had an increase in the share of votes but only got one MP.
Came second in 120 consistencies but only they were only 10% of the votes from winning most of the seats.
Parties in one region e.g Plaid Cymru do better in terms of matching seats.
SNP showed how one party with strong regional support when FTPT, winning 50% of the vote and only 95% of the seats in Scotland.

Single Party Government:

FTPT tends to produce single-party majority governments with working parliamentary majority.
Coalition governments are rare at Westminster.
Since WW2, there have only been 3 coalition governments.
The 2015 General Election brought a brief return to the single-party government by the majority was less than 12
4/7 General Elections held between 1910 and 1929 did not produce a majority government.

Voting Systems - An Intro, AV and FPTP