General Election 2015: General: (5) - More alternatives

Final post on this subject, promise.

CURRENT FPTP SYSTEM by country (NI excluded as always):

Wales (total 40 seats)

Conservatives 407,813 votes (27.2%) - Actual seats won:  11

Labour 552,473 votes (36.9%) - Actual seats won:  25

Plaid Cymru 181,704 votes (12.1%) - Actual seats won:  3

Lib Dem 97,783 votes (6.5%) - Actual seats won:  1

UKIP 204,330 votes (13.6%) - Actual seats won:  0

Green 38,344 (3.6%) - Actual seats won 0

Scotland (total 59 seats)

SNP 1,454,436 votes (50.0%) - Actual seats won:  56

Conservatives 449,264 votes (15.4%) - Actual seats won:  1

Labour 691,980 votes (23.8%) - Actual seats won:  1

Lib Dem 219,675 votes (7.6%) - Actual seats won:  1

UKIP 47.078 votes (1.6%) - Actual seats won:  0

Green 39,205 (1.4%) - Actual seats won 0

England (total 533 seats)

Conservatives 10,483,321 votes (41.0%) - Actual seats won:  319

Labour 8.087.164 votes (31.7%) - Actual seats won:  206

Lib Dem 2,089,404 votes (8.2%) - Actual seats won:  6

UKIP 3,611,260 votes (14.1%) - Actual seats won:  1

Green 1,073,260 (4.2%) - Actual seats won 1

FPTP Overall (total 632 seats)

Conservative 331 - Labour 232 - SNP 56 - Lib Dem 8 - Plaid 3 - UKIP 1 - Green 1

PURE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION by country

Wales (total 40 seats)

Conservatives 407,813 votes (27.2%) - Seats won under PR:  11

Labour 552,473 votes (36.9%) - Seats won under PR:  15

Plaid Cymru 181,704 votes (12.1%) - Seats won under PR:  5

Lib Dem 97,783 votes (6.5%) - Seats won under PR:  3

UKIP 204,330 votes (13.6%) - Seats won under PR:  5

Green 38,344 (3.6%) - Seats won under PR:  1

Scotland (total 59 seats)

SNP 1,454,436 votes (50.0%) - Seats won under PR:  30

Conservatives 449,264 votes (15.4%) - Seats won under PR:  9

Labour 691,980 votes (23.8%) - Seats won under PR:  14

Lib Dem 219,675 votes (7.6%) - Seats won under PR:  4

UKIP 47.078 votes (1.6%) - Seats won under PR:  1

Green 39,205 (1.4%) - Seats won under PR:  1

England (total 533 seats)

Conservatives 10,483,321 votes (41.0%) - Seats won under PR:  219

Labour 8.087.164 votes (31.7%) - Seats won under PR:  169

Lib Dem 2,089,404 votes (8.2%) - Seats won under PR:  45

UKIP 3,611,260 votes (14.1%) - Seats won under PR:  76

Green 1,073,260 (4.2%) - Seats won under PR:  23

TUSC/Left Unity (0.1%) - Seats won under PR:  1

There is a slight skewing in the England results due to the large number of spoilt ballots (under a pure PR system, spoilt ballots would have two seats of their own).  TUSC strictly speaking would only be entitled to 0.69 of a seat, so I rounded this up, the other went to the Lib Dems as they would be next closest to gaining another (well, they had to go somewhere).

Pure PR Overall (total 632 seats)

Conservative 239 - Labour 198 - SNP 30 - Lib Dem 52 - Plaid 5 - UKIP 82 - Green 25 - TUSC 1

The above two systems restrain the total number of English/Welsh/Scottish MPs to 632, but alternative systems could be used. As it would be guesswork to try to predict a result under AV, the only other obvious thing to look at is a system that generated MPs according to minimum percentage of the vote by constituency, This would reflect more honestly the views of the electorate, but would necessitate an increase in the number of MPs; most seats would have one MP, but a good number would have two and possibly even three (although this would be a bit of a freak result).

MINIMUM PERCENTAGE VOTING by country

Wales (number of seats 40, number of MPs variable according to vote share)

27.5% requirement: Conservative 17 - Labour 33 - Lib Dem 3 - Plaid 5 - UKIP 0 - Green 0  (58 Welsh MPs)

30.0% requirement: Conservative 17 - Labour 30 - Lib Dem 1 - Plaid 4 - UKIP 0 - Green 0  (52 Welsh MPs)

32.5% requirement: Conservative 13 - Labour 28 - Lib Dem 1 - Plaid 3 - UKIP 0 - Green 0  (45 Welsh MPs)

Scotland (number of seats 59, number of MPs variable according to vote share)

27.5% requirement: Conservative 10 - Labour 31 - Lib Dem 9 - SNP 59 - UKIP 0 - Green 0  (109 Scottish MPs)

30.0% requirement: Conservative 5 - Labour 24 - Lib Dem 8 - SNP 59 - UKIP 0 - Green 0  (96 Scottish MPs)

32.5% requirement: Conservative 4 - Labour 10 - Lib Dem 6 - SNP 59 - UKIP 0 - Green 0  (79 Scottish MPs)

England (number of seats 533, number of MPs variable according to vote share)

27.5% requirement: Conservative 395 - Labour 292 - Lib Dem 30 - UKIP 11 - Green 1  (729 English MPs)

30.0% requirement: Conservative 380 - Labour 280 - Lib Dem 22 - UKIP 8 - Green 1  (691 English MPs)

32.5% requirement: Conservative 365 - Labour 267 - Lib Dem 18 - UKIP 2 - Green 1  (653 English MPs)

Overall (number of seats 632, number of MPs variable according to vote share)

27.5% requirement: Conservative 422 - Labour 356 - SNP 59 - Lib Dem 42 - UKIP 11 - Plaid 5  - Green 1  (896 MPs)

30.0% requirement: Conservative 402 - Labour 334 - SNP 59 - Lib Dem 31 - UKIP 8 - Plaid 4 - Green 1  (839 MPs)

32.5% requirement: Conservative 382 - Labour 305 - SNP 59 - Lib Dem 25 - Plaid 3 - UKIP 2 - Green 1  (777 MPs)

Interesting, eh? No.  Oh well.

General Election 2015: General: (4) - Micro-Parties

Uh?

What are they?

Why are they there?

What do they think they're doing?

Why do they think that we want to listen to them?

Should we?

Let's see.

For the purposes of this post, micro-parties and independents can easily be defined - strip out the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, UKIP, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru - i.e. the main defined political parties - and look at whatever remains.

Of the micro-parties, the left-wing Trade Union And Socialist Coalition (TUSC) fielded easily the most candidates; as sometimes they stood alongside Left Unity (LU) I've treated TUSC/LU as a single party, fielding 138 candidates and cumulatively receiving 36,945 votes (268 votes per candidate). Their top ten performing candidates (Dave Nellist's 3.91% in Coventry Northwest and Jenny Sutton's 3.11% in Tottenham were notable standouts, but 10th place on the list and support is down to 1.20%) all lost to Labour candidates.

From the right, the only party standing a semi-significant number of candidates were the English Democrats in 32 constituencies. They managed 6,531 votes (204 votes/candidate) and even their best-performing candidate only managed 1.30% of the vote.  Curiously, all their top candidates all lost to Labour too.

The usual suspects (Christian Party et al, Loonies and affiliates, regionalists) also stood, but as ever made no significant inroads.  Beyond that, the only others of significance were the National Health Action Party (12 candidates, 20,210 votes, but significantly down on the last election) and most intriguingly given current political manoeuvrings, CISTA.

CISTA campaign for the legalisation of cannabis and put up 28 candidates, accumulating 6,566 votes (235 votes/candidate). Whilst this might seem as feeble as the average independent or small party, for a brand new party without a history, this could well be significant. If there is no move by the government to change the classification of cannabis before the next election - and let's face it, politicians are so shit-scared of the issue that there will be no move - there would be enormous value for them to go all-out for the next one. Most people with a CISTA candidate standing in their constituency weren't aware until they saw the ballot paper; with prior name recognition, and another five years of Tory rule, this could be a party that could build a lot of popular support.

But for the first time for a while, no independents or representatives of small parties won any seats at all. Obviously this is an idiosyncracy of our broken voting system, but it's still a bit worrying.

Next...best performing independent candidates.

Things get complicated from herein...

General Election 2015: General: (3): Some scenarios

Parliamentary MPs returned under FPTP

The winners

SNP:  1,454,436 votes / 56 seats / 49.87% popular vote / 25,972 votes per seat

Conservatives (inc. Speaker):  11,340,398 votes / 331 seats / 37.83% popular vote / 34,261 votes per seat

Labour:  9,331,617 votes / 232 seats / 31.13% popular vote / 40,222 votes/seat

Plaid Cymru:  181,704 votes / 3 seats / 12.13% popular vote / 60,568 votes/seat

Obviously the SNP and Plaid have a big advantage because they concentrate their efforts on seats in their respective countries and probably should be considered as a separate bloc.

The can't-really-complain brigade

LibDem:  2,415,862 votes / 8 seats / 8.06% popular vote / 301,983 votes/seat

Given that they were always going to be up against it after cosying up to the Tories, they did remarkably well, all things considered. If they hadn't spent the last thirty years shoring up their targets, they'd have been wiped out completely. 8 seats was a good result.

The losers set up to lose

Green:  1,150,809 votes / 1 seat / 3.84% popular vote / 1,150,809 votes/seat

UKIP:  3,862,740 votes / 1 seat / 12.86% popular vote / 3,862,740 votes/seat

The most striking thing here is that if Labour had backed the Lib Dems on the AV vote in 2012 (and won) then the Conservative party wouldn't have a majority of any description (nor would anyone else, but it does seem in retrospect a very poor decision on Labour's part).  It's impossible to tell how the election would have turned out under AV - as there isn't any data - but it couldn't have delivered a Conservative majority under any circumstances. You can pretend to know where the second, third, etc. choices would have gone, you can make a guess, but no more than that. Point is, it would have given a hung parliament.

FPTP is a great system for those in power as it artificially preserves the power base long after the support has in reality gone elsewhere. That's why Labour and the Conservatives like it...they get loads of votes from it for free.

Here's the FPTP vote:

This would have been the result under PR:

Doesn't say much really. Worse? Better?

I have other ways.

More later.

General Election 2015: General: (2) - turnout

OK...

...I think I'm happy with my election results now (I know it's months since the election, but you know, stuff) having finally got all the figures for spoiled ballots, or at least as close as I think I can get. And I've not done Northern Ireland (where apparently 0.66% of votes cast were spoiled); this is just for the 632 English/Welsh/Scottish seats.

Anyway, just some quick general stats for now:

• Potential electorate:  45,116,156
• Total votes:  30,078,383 (66.67% of electorate)
• Valid votes:  29,978,905 (66.45% of electorate)
• Spoilt ballots:  99,478 (0.33% of votes cast)

Turnout and spoilt ballots by region:

Midlands - Valid turnout 65.17% (lower than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.38% (higher)

Eastern England - Valid turnout 67.56% (higher than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.37% (higher)

London - Valid turnout 65.39% (lower than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.33% (average)

NW - Valid turnout 64.32% (lower than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.39% (higher)

SE - Valid turnout 68.55% (higher than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.38% (higher)

SW - Valid turnout 69.51% (higher than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.31% (lower)

NE/Yorks - Valid turnout 62.78% (lower than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.35% (higher)

Scotland - Valid turnout 71.00% (higher than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.13% (lower)

Wales - Valid turnout 65.65% (lower than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.21% (lower)


Very noticeable that Scotland had (as a region) both the highest % turnout and the lowest % of spoilt ballots, but nothing much else stands out until you really look at the details.

In terms of spoiled ballots, the real standout constituency is (of course) Buckingham, the Speaker's seat. This is always a mess...other main parties aren't supposed to stand as the Speaker is meant to be impartial, but they sometimes do (this time UKIP and the Greens stood candidates) and it all adds up to a lot of people in the constituency feeling as though they have no representation.

Notably high numbers of spoiled ballots:

Buckingham - 1,289 spoiled ballots
Leicester East - 533 spoiled ballots
Luton South - 431 spoiled ballots
Leicester South - 398 spoiled ballots
Tiverton and Honiton - 378 spoiled ballots
Blackburn - 325 spoiled ballots

For perspective, the average constituency had 157 spoiled ballots.

And, if they were to count, the total of 99,478 spoiled ballots would be equivalent to 2 seats under a system of proportional representation. That's not insignificant; if this many people are prepared to deliberately spoil their ballot paper rather than not voting at all (under the FPTP system these are the only two options available to people who feel they have no party to vote for), what if there was a "None of the Above" option on each ballot paper?

If there was the opportunity to vote NONE, it would give an extra option, so it should cut the number of spoiled ballots and stop so many people voting tactically. But most of all, it would ensure that these "protest" votes are counted and included in the totals (they are not at the moment) and so give a much more accurate reflection of the vote.

Well, something to think about.

So Simon, how's that going now?

From The Independent, 12th August 2015:

Simon Danczuk is a tit.