Posted by Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson
One possible explanation of declining voter turnout in recent UK elections, and of the movement for voters to support smaller parties, is that voters are unhappy with the unfairness or disproportionality of the British voting system at general elections. The UK has seen historically high levels of disproportionality in how votes are reflected in Parliamentary seats, as the “first past the post” method of counting votes fails to adapt to the electorate wanting to back more and more parties over time.
The general voting system (also used for local councils in England and Wales) is a very ancient and now rather primitive system, dating back to mediaeval times when techniques for counting were very crude. As many candidates as wish to can stand in 650 constituencies, mainly representing parties but with a scattering of independents. In each local area, the candidate with most votes wins. Winners do not need to get a majority of votes (i.e. 50 per cent +1) to win. They only need to get a plurality of votes – i.e. one more vote than anyone else has got. So with more and more parties contesting elections, MPs will very often be elected with far less than majority support in their area – indeed most MPs in 2005 had only 35 to 49 per cent support locally.
The system has survived so long because it favours the top two parties, who pile up most votes in their ‘safe’ areas – Labour in inner cities and industrial regions, and the Tories across the south-east and eastern England. It heavily discriminates against the Liberal Democrats and against other, smaller parties like UKIP, the Greens and the BNP, who all get appreciable levels of support across the country as a whole, but find it harder to build up a top of the poll position in particular local areas. The Liberal Democrats have begun to do better in regions like south-west England against the Tories and in some urban areas against Labour, but are still under-represented. In Scotland the SNP and in Wales Plaid Cymru have suffered less, gaining some seats in particular areas.
The main orthodox measure of unfairness is called ‘deviation from proportionality’ (the DV score)- it shows what percentage of MPs in Parliament are not entitled to be there in terms of their party’s national vote share. The lower the score, the more representative the assembly is. We have calculated DV scores for elections in the UK since 1992, and it is clearly far higher in all general elections (shown in red below) than it is in the proportional representation elections (shown in green below).
The minimum practical DV score is around 4 per cent – however, accurately any system allocates seats in relation to votes it is almost impossible to do better than this. But as you can see from the chart, the last three DV scores for UK general elections (shown in red) are more than five times this number. This pattern looks certain to repeat in 2010 – with one in every five MPs not justified in terms of their party’s national share of the vote.
What is more, British voters now know that the general election system is severely disproportional – because they have extensive experience of proportional representation systems used in the European Parliament, Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and London Assembly. The Figure above shows that the most recent London and Scottish elections were around twice as fair as general elections in terms of matching parties’ seats to their overall vote shares.
A second way of looking at DV scores is to think about how fair or unfair the general election system seems to be in allocating votes at the regional level – how do voters experience the system as fair or unfair in the area where they live? Because both Tories and Labour gain from the current voting system in different parts of the country, these two biases offset each other in the national DV scores. If we look at regional level DV then we get rid of this obscuring effect and as the diagram below shows the level of unfairness that voters experience varies far more markedly. In 2005 4 out of every 10 votes in Yorkshire and Humberside and the North East region were converted into Labour seats at the expense of other parties’ representation – and DV scores in all but three regions were well above the national DV score. DV is most marked in Wales and the North where levels are typically over 35 per cent. London and the South East are somewhat better in their proportionality, but levels are still over 20 per cent.
Even these regional DV numbers do not show quite how grossly unfair the UK’s system has become in an era of multi-party politics, however. The DV score looks as if it should run to a maximum at 100 per cent – but in fact we would only get such a result if gave all the seats in Parliament to a party with no votes, which of course would not be a liberal democracy at all!
Our solution here is a much better version of the DV score which says that the limit of a country being a liberal democracy at all occurs when the largest party gets 100 per cent of all seats. In other words the maximum feasible amount of ‘false’ representation there can be is 100 per cent minus the largest party’s vote share (which it has won fairly). This measure is called “Alternative DV” (the ADV score) and it does run from 0 to 100 per cent as a good index should. What the ADV score shows is how far along a country or region is to not being a liberal democracy at all in terms of allocating seats to the ‘wrong’ party in terms of overall vote shares.
The diagram below shows the ADV scores for all regions in Great Britain, compared with the DV scores. And the picture of disproportionality painted here becomes very worrying indeed:
In 2005 Yorkshire and Wales were dangerously close to not being liberal democracies at all, and other areas in northern England are not very far behind them. In fact, the entire country, save for the South West had an adjusted DV score of over 50 per cent – more than half-way to not being a liberal democracy at all.
Seen this light it is perhaps unsurprising that voters are turning away from the major parties whenever they get an opportunity to vote in proportional representation elections. For instance, in 2009 (less than a year ago) the Conservatives and Labour took only 43 per cent of the vote in the European elections Parliament elections. Far fewer voters will support other parties besides the big 3 in the May 2010 general election, because they know that doing so risks ‘wasting’ their vote. But many citizens will also not turn out to vote at all, partly because they correctly identify the voting system as skewed towards artificially boosting Tory and Labour MPs representation.
The implications of this clash between an out-of-date voting system (designed only for 2-party politics) and an electorate with increasingly diverse multi-party loyalties is that electoral reform is once again on the agenda of British politics. In a report published for the British Academy this month, LSE professor Simon Hix and his co-authors argue that:
‘If a country has a multiparty system, single-member constituencies tend to lead to unrepresentative parliaments. And, if seat-shares in parliament do not correspond closely to vote-shares in the election, this usually leads to disproportional representation in government: where the party which forms the government has less than 50 per cent of the support of the electorate and, as a result, might be some distance either to the left or to the right of the average voter’.*
In 2005 Labour secured a third term in government with less than 36 per cent of the British voters backing them, that is, the positive endorsement of just 21 per cent of British citizens. All the indications so far are that the next British government in May 2010 will have an equally defective basis in popular support.
*The British Academy report, Choosing an Electoral System, was prepared by Simon Hix, Ron Johnston and Ian Maclean with research assistance from Angela Cummine.
Nice to see, after today, how democracy works in the UK. The judges that are payed by the tax payer, the M.Ps that are payed by the public and including the bank of England payed for by the tax payer. These all seem to go against Brexit when the majority of the British Public voted against it. The Scottish government listened to the Scottish public again over the split.from the UK democracy always works. Wonder why I will never vote again, because it does not matter. Lets have Anarchy it seems to work better!
good work but nothing here reflects or touches upon the much more obvious and unfair realities on the ground felt and reported on and known – ie: in cambs we have the largest constituency sizes in all the uk-every mp in cambs .-meaning the worst representation in all the uk
we have the lowest per pupil funding in all the uk and have done for many years.
we have the most unregistered and newly emigrated voters on top of the largest constituencies..
hs2will cost us in cambs over 200 pound per person and ongoing and harm our economy and of course hs2 willnot be here or benefit here -we have about the worst infrastructure spending in the uk- look at st.neots and look at the fens and even Peterborough -its like living in the 1950’s here and not even a promise or hope of any reform or rebalancing.
the Barnett formula called unfair and temporary and despised by mr Barnett and still unreformed and in place-so the poorest and most hindered and least represented in cambs subsidises all of Scotland even the millionaires and yet we have the lowest pupil funding and historically we have mostly been the lowest wages area too for generations as farm labour was our lot though it is starting to diversify and thus improve. slightly.
given this state of affairs on the ground and in reality-its apparent to all fairness has never been any ones objective at any level of government or in any area of government-not drug provision or nhs hospital access or treatment provision or pupil funding or constituency sizes or anything else-so we subsidise and suffer the most to benefit every other person and place in the uk-thats how it works-if you have unions you benefit if you vote labour you benefit if you live up north or in London or anywhere but east Anglia and especially cambs you benefit.
who cares about us in cambs ? will everyone accept if fairness is an objective that they must all suffer to make it fairer here in cambs? the scots refuse to reduce their subsidies and they will resist boundary reform and they sit in our parliament and in Scotland too so I think in every way including hs2 immigration low-wages etc cambs is the least fairly represented or protected in the uk and always has been -yet your graphs and results and the points you make do not reflect this nor accept it is possible or likely – but how can you discuss representation fairness democracy and every economic and social measure and come to an extremely different outcome and range of possible outcomes to the one I am describing?
I am just a nobody idiot-so where I am inaccurate and wrong I apologise-this is just my view and info I have gleaned from the media-but surely even if I am slightly wrong about the detail -most of you realise there is a lot of truth in whati am saying?
if fairness what the criteria then I think cambs would benefit in almost every way more than any where else in the uk.
the uk is the nhs postcode lottery writ large in every aspect-from local government to national govt and in education infrastructure nhs access to drugs/treatments services and hospitals and infrastructure spending and democratic representation inc constituency sizes.
look at st.neots -zero facilities/state services-nothing -look at the roads around raunds look at Clacton/jaywick sands the poorest location in the uk look at peterboro and the roads and everything in the fens and then there is Yarmouth and luton -this area [Anglia ]is dirt poor and has no champion unlike wales and Scotland and the north who have industry and unions and the labour party -we have no one and nothing here except for a continuation of the historic inevitability we will remain the worst represented and worst provisioned county in the worst provisioned region and if I ever hear a northerner or scot or welsh person saying that on tv I will die of shock-everyone one is selfish and we have always been the ultimate victim .
st.neots is 40 000 according to wiki and is going to be 60 000 in 10 yrs according to wiki and yet we have no mp- the independent boundaries commission proposal to give us an mp was overturned by djanogly the huntingdon mp-how undemocratic is this? its probably the worst example for decades of how undemocratic and criminally unfair the uk can be in my opinion.
st.neots has no services-no bus station-no hospital-no clinic no council offices big enough to queue in no serious police presence no social services and nothing else I haven’t listed either-for a town of 40 000 racing towards 60 000 how can this be? who cares? where are the protections to prevent this level of abuse of the citizens of the uk?
I never hear northerners or scots or welshies or Londoners ever take an interest in fairness per sae – just fairness as it relates to them or the big championed areas that make the tv-and east Anglia and cambs and st.neots never make the tv-though we are bigger than wales in area and population -but we are invisible it seems.
I don’t feel a single thing I have mentioned is even hinted at in your piece tho I support your points they just mislead people into not realising the scale of the disconnect and unfairness and fairness simply doesn’t seem to matter to anyone in the uk because we would not be where we are now if fairness had a voice at all the different tables in council meetings and parliament debates and planning committees.
I think a simplified set of laws not guidelines that cannot be changed and that guarantee fairness in pupil funding and nhs provision and infrastructure spending/benefits and in constituency sizes etc is what most ppl would want and understand and it would be moniterable too by the simple folk like me and any improvements to the voting system also of course-none of that has ever existed so arguing about detail seems silly and misleading and in itself it is unfair-the powerful and the beneficiaries must surely defend and speak for the unrepresented and powerless and the victims of the unfairness or things can never change and I see no sign of the folk in Manchester or Edinburgh or Cardiff or London or Newcastle or Bristol or Birmingham shouting about fairer treatment for st.neots or cambs or east Anglia-will I ever? I doubt it very much.
our country has the most complex tax laws and system of government inc district county and town as well as parliament and European and regional -all this is to allow victimisation and exploitation-that’s why rich ppl don’t pay tax and why we have a nhs postcode lottery-no one defends what we have -so why cant it be changed forever? for the same reason we still have the house of lords and hereditary peers and bishops in the second chamber -the country is so corrupt that everyone says thay want lords abolished or reformed but it never happens and no one defends it either- the reality is complex means unfair and unfair is good for ppl who don’t believe in fairness but will those ppl ever admit that on tv ? never-just like tax avoiders and lords supporters they never state it publically but it goes on and never changes..
my last point is-number one policy and fear of the electorate is lack of immigration controls-its always a top 3 and often number one- but all parties except ukip support the status quo? ? ? ? liberals tories labour greens plaid cymru snp -this is so undemocratic it seems impossible yet it is true- no wonder no one listens to politicians or believes them or bothers to vote
we must leave Europe and vote ukip control immigration and simply the laws and hope to reform the lords and move to pr or av and remove the Barnett formula -which ukip promise to do-this is the least bad of all the choices we have – why only ukip in the uk want immigration control like the 80% of us who is shocking and shows how undemocratic and anti caring and anti fair all our parties are except for ukip- this is why ukip have more meps in the uk than any other party and it explains why the tories are in power and why the greens have so much sympathy and why Scotland is now a one party state.
if anyone has read my ramblings … thank you and sorry if I have been inaccurate or offensive -I am just a simpleton and expressing my personal views as well as I can. I fully support pr or av and I want national standards and rights and equal constituency sizes -just in case you don’t realise that is my position-its just that there is so much more to fairness than those simple few measures.
good work but nothing here reflects or touches upon the much more obvious and unfair realities on the ground felt and reported on and known – ie: in cambs we have the largest constituency sizes in all the uk-every mp in cambs .-meaning the worst representation in all the uk
we have the lowest per pupil funding in all the uk and have done for many years.
we have the most unregistered and newly emigrated voters on top of the largest constituencies..
hs2will cost us in cambs over 200 pound per person and ongoing and harm our economy and of course hs2 willnot be here or benefit here -we have about the worst infrastructure spending in the uk- look at st.neots and look at the fens and even Peterborough -its like living in the 1950’s here and not even a promise or hope of any reform or rebalancing.
the Barnett formula called unfair and temporary and despised by mr Barnett and still unreformed and in place-so the poorest and most hindered and least represented in cambs subsidises all of Scotland even the millionaires and yet we have the lowest pupil funding and historically we have mostly been the lowest wages area too for generations as farm labour was our lot though it is starting to diversify and thus improve. slightly.
given this state of affairs on the ground and in reality-its apparent to all fairness has never been any ones objective at any level of government or in any area of government-not drug provision or nhs hospital access or treatment provision or pupil funding or constituency sizes or anything else-so we subsidise and suffer the most to benefit every other person and place in the uk-thats how it works-if you have unions you benefit if you vote labour you benefit if you live up north or in London or anywhere but east Anglia and especially cambs you benefit.
who cares about us in cambs ? will everyone accept if fairness is an objective that they must all suffer to make it fairer here in cambs? the scots refuse to reduce their subsidies and they will resist boundary reform and they sit in our parliament and in Scotland too so I think in every way including hs2 immigration low-wages etc cambs is the least fairly represented or protected in the uk and always has been -yet your graphs and results and the points you make do not reflect this nor accept it is possible or likely – but how can you discuss representation fairness democracy and every economic and social measure and come to an extremely different outcome and range of possible outcomes to the one I am describing?
I am just a nobody idiot-so where I am inaccurate and wrong I apologise-this is just my view and info I have gleaned from the media-but surely even if I am slightly wrong about the detail -most of you realise there is a lot of truth in whati am saying?
if fairness what the criteria then I think cambs would benefit in almost every way more than any where else in the uk.
the uk is the nhs postcode lottery writ large in every aspect-from local government to national govt and in education infrastructure nhs access to drugs/treatments services and hospitals and infrastructure spending and democratic representation inc constituency sizes.
look at st.neots -zero facilities/state services-nothing -look at the roads around raunds look at Clacton/jaywick sands the poorest location in the uk look at peterboro and the roads and everything in the fens and then there is Yarmouth and luton -this area [Anglia ]is dirt poor and has no champion unlike wales and Scotland and the north who have industry and unions and the labour party -we have no one and nothing here except for a continuation of the historic inevitability we will remain the worst represented and worst provisioned county in the worst provisioned region and if I ever hear a northerner or scot or welsh person saying that on tv I will die of shock-everyone one is selfish and we have always been the ultimate victim .
st.neots is 40 000 according to wiki and is going to be 60 000 in 10 yrs according to wiki and yet we have no mp- the independent boundaries commission proposal to give us an mp was overturned by djanogly the huntingdon mp-how undemocratic is this? its probably the worst example for decades of how undemocratic and criminally unfair the uk can be in my opinion.
st.neots has no services-no bus station-no hospital-no clinic no council offices big enough to queue in no serious police presence no social services and nothing else I haven’t listed either-for a town of 40 000 racing towards 60 000 how can this be? who cares? where are the protections to prevent this level of abuse of the citizens of the uk?
I never hear northerners or scots or welshies or Londoners ever take an interest in fairness per sae – just fairness as it relates to them or the big championed areas that make the tv-and east Anglia and cambs and st.neots never make the tv-though we are bigger than wales in area and population -but we are invisible it seems.
I don’t feel a single thing I have mentioned is even hinted at in your piece tho I support your points they just mislead people into not realising the scale of the disconnect and unfairness and fairness simply doesn’t seem to matter to anyone in the uk because we would not be where we are now if fairness had a voice at all the different tables in council meetings and parliament debates and planning committees.
I think a simplified set of laws not guidelines that cannot be changed and that guarantee fairness in pupil funding and nhs provision and infrastructure spending/benefits and in constituency sizes etc is what most ppl would want and understand and it would be moniterable too by the simple folk like me and any improvements to the voting system also of course-none of that has ever existed so arguing about detail seems silly and misleading and in itself it is unfair-the powerful and the beneficiaries must surely defend and speak for the unrepresented and powerless and the victims of the unfairness or things can never change and I see no sign of the folk in Manchester or Edinburgh or Cardiff or London or Newcastle or Bristol or Birmingham shouting about fairer treatment for st.neots or cambs or east Anglia-will I ever? I doubt it very much.
our country has the most complex tax laws and system of government inc district county and town as well as parliament and European and regional -all this is to allow victimisation and exploitation-that’s why rich ppl don’t pay tax and why we have a nhs postcode lottery-no one defends what we have -so why cant it be changed forever? for the same reason we still have the house of lords and hereditary peers and bishops in the second chamber -the country is so corrupt that everyone says thay want lords abolished or reformed but it never happens and no one defends it either- the reality is complex means unfair and unfair is good for ppl who don’t believe in fairness but will those ppl ever admit that on tv ? never-just like tax avoiders and lords supporters they never state it publically but it goes on and never changes..
my last point is-number one policy and fear of the electorate is lack of immigration controls-its always a top 3 and often number one- but all parties except ukip support the status quo? ? ? ? liberals tories labour greens plaid cymru snp -this is so undemocratic it seems impossible yet it is true- no wonder no one listens to politicians or believes them or bothers to vote
we must leave Europe and vote ukip control immigration and simply the laws and hope to reform the lords and move to pr or av and remove the Barnett formula -which ukip promise to do-this is the least bad of all the choices we have – why only ukip in the uk want immigration control like the 80% of us who is shocking and shows how undemocratic and anti caring and anti fair all our parties are except for ukip- this is why ukip have more meps in the uk than any other party and it explains why the tories are in power and why the greens have so much sympathy and why Scotland is now a one party state.
if anyone has read my ramblings … thank you and sorry if I have been inaccurate or offensive -I am just a simpleton and expressing my personal views as well as I can. I fully support pr or av and I want national standards and rights and equal constituency sizes -just in case you don’t realise that is my position-its just that there is so much more to fairness than those simple few measures.
Doctor, Doctor…,
The patient has a severe case of an unfair voting system.
Dr Brown suggests an AV placebo (well you won’t be any worse off …).
Dr Cameron says ‘Buck your ideas up – there’s nothing wrong with you!’
Dr Clegg is keen to try out radical STV surgery, which involves amputation of your constituency and then stitching on several others, and the whole procedure is so complex only an expert in this specialist field will have a clue what’s going on.
They haven’t grasped that what the patient needs is simple practical electoral reform that everyone can understand – one vote for the party to form the government, one vote for the representative to be the Constituency MP. This is Direct Party and Representative voting (DPR).
A very small change, but just the treatment the patient needs – no invasive surgery, no drastic medication regime. In fact for the patient, voting can carry on pretty much as normal.
Admittedly life won’t be quite the same again for the Doctors and the rest of the political class. They will have to retrain, and they should start by learning about DPR voting. Fortunately for us all, it is really ever so simple.
see more at http://www.dprvoting.org
Short of a coup d’etat it is difficult to see how the electorate can influence this problem. The only solution that springs to mind is a dramatic increase in Independents and small (politically hygienic) parties getting elected.
There has not been an opportunity greater than 2010 in my lifetime for the electorate to take control. The parties are uniformly loathed and mistrusted – if the ‘others’ cannot make progress this time, then they cannot ever and that leads to some potentially dire consequences.
For my part, I am doing the most I can by standing as an Independent – http://www.stevenford.co.uk. Join in or don’t moan. Have a look at: http://www.independentnetwork.org.uk/ too.
If influential people and institutions such as the LSE were to get behind what amounts to a polite insurrection, that would be very helpful indeed – how about it?
It seems to me that implicit in the idea of unfairness in the results of the FPTP voting results is that the voters were voting for a party, rather than an individual. In practice I am sure this is the case much of the time. But in fact people vote for a named individual, who once elected as an MP is free to change parties without seeking re-election.
Therefore one aspect of the unfairness of the FPTP voting system is that voters are not able to distinguish with their vote between a vote for a party to form a Government and for an individual to represent the constituency as its MP. This may be a contributory factor in low voter turnouts.
Another issue to consider is the distinction between proportionality in terms of the voting power of each party when it comes to approving Government Bills, and the number of MPs elected. At present, if a party is over represented in Parliament it has disproportionate voting power, but this is because each MP has one vote. There are historical reasons for this but this aspect of our parliamentary procedure is worth examining.
MPs have constituencies with different numbers on the electoral roll, different numbers of voters and different majorities, so why are they all equal when it comes to exercising voting support for a Government programme?
The existing FPTP system could be converted to PR Government without changing the electoral system. This could be done simply by changing the way Parliament votes, by scaling the parliamentary voting strength of each party to reflect their total votes, rather than their seats. (This means MPs get a fractional vote less than, or more than 1, depending on whether their party is relatively over or under-represented in the House based on total votes cast.) Under other PR systems the number of MPs gets scaled to reflect the total vote. It comes to the same thing. )
We now have machine readable swipe cards that make recording votes and counting decimals easy and reliable.
Thus the existing FPTP system could be converted to a form of PR Government without changing the electoral system.
If at the same time voters had one vote to vote for a party of Government (and these votes were used to produce the PR scaling of parliamentary votes), and one vote to elect an MP, a much more candidate focussed election, a system that would still be very similar to the FPTP system would be enormously improved.
This post seems to have missed the elephant in the room: the fact that Labour gains far more than the Tories from the present system. I have seen estimates suggesting that Labour could win the election even if it polled 5% less than the Tories. This is because (a) Labour constituencies are smaller than Tory ones and (b) turnout in Labour constituencies is lower, so fewer votes are needed to elect an MP. God knows how the Boundaries Commission has let this system develop, but it is clearly in need of an overhaul.
The post also takes it for granted that “fairness” is the main objective. Well, up to a point Lord Copper (see my first para). But a decisive outccome is also desirable. Continental systems seem to be “fairer” but the result is that often the same parties perform an elaborate musical chairs of cabinet posts, with the changes usually not reflecting movements in the popular vote.
> This post seems to have missed the elephant in the room:
> the fact that Labour gains far more than the Tories from the present system.
A proportional system would remove that problem.
But that is a distraction. The elephant in the room is not whether Labour votes count 1.05 times Conservatives (or vice versa in 2015, where Conservative votes counted more than Labour votes).
The elephant in the room is the medium/small parties being underrepresented to the tune of ~100 seats – that Labour and Conservative votes count 3-8 times Liberal/Green votes, for example.
And now (2015) it is the other way around, before constituency changes..
Great post – I’ve also had a go at visualising the distortions of the electoral system in a post I’ve published at http://bit.ly/c4mhMq