Where is my vote?!

Well, it's been quite a week. Gordon Brown and Labour out of power, the Con Dem coalition coalescing and making soothing noises in all our ears and a new Secretary of State Against Scotland who even Lib Dems have never heard of. As electoral reform seems to be on the agenda it seems timely to take a closer look at the election results. And besides, I've been too busy at work to capitalise on that "Con Dem Nation" headline I was going to use (and no doubt many others already have).

Under first-past-the-post (FPTP) the votes for losing candidates achieve zero representation in parliament. So, just how many votes do our elected MPs muster between them? How enfranchised are we? And does this vary much across the UK?

Area	"Wasted" votes	"Winning" votes	% "Wasted" Votes	% "Winning" Votes
UK	15,667,992	28,650,211	34.57%	65.43%
England	13,170,102	25,043,629	34.46%	65.54%
Wales	841,982	1,466,991	36.47%	63.53%
Northern Ireland	366,730	673,871	35.24%	64.76%
Scotland	1,289,178	2,465,720	34.33%	65.67%

So, rather interestingly our fabulous FPTP form of democracy threw away over 1 in 3 of the votes of the British demos this time round! For the whole UK we see that 65.54% of the votes cast were for the winning candidates. In other words we could say that parliament as a whole has a mandate of 65.54% of those who voted. The remaining 34.46% of the electorate are effectively disenfranchised, their votes counting for precisely nothing when it comes to representation in parliament.

Variations within the nations of the UK are not pronounced, although I note that Scotland appears to have the highest proportion of "winning" votes, marginally ahead of England - probably no great surprise given the vast majorities for Labour in much of the central belt, and ditto for England, with the safe Tory shires of the south and traditional Labour heartlands of the north. Things seem to be a little more competitive in Northern Ireland and Wales.

And that is another way of looking at these numbers, as a measure of hegemony. If all voters in a constituency voted for the winner then that MP could be said to have a 100% mandate (although this might not be a sign of a healthy democracy!), if only half voted for the winner then the mandate would be only 50%, etc. The table above shows then that Scotland has the highest degree of hegemony, i.e. seats in Scotland are generally safer and majorities tend to be larger. Interestingly Wales shows the lowest hegemony, albeit only marginally lower. Perhaps this reflects the improved performance of the Tories in Wales, serving to equalise the share of the vote between the 4 main parties there.

This hegemony can also be seen in the following table. It shows the cumulative % share of the vote by party in all of the seats that they won (i.e. total votes for party X in all of the seats that they won divided by total votes in those seats).

Area	Con	LD	Lab	Lab Co-op	SNP	PC
UK	48.41%	46.03%	46.17%	48.65%	39.98%	38.44%
England	48.59%	47.10%	45.70%	46.96%	-	-
Wales	41.50%	45.95%	42.96%	43.43%	-	38.44%
Scotland	38.04%	41.06%	50.10%	58.16%	39.98%	-

Under FPTP one might reasonably expect to win a seat with around 40% of the vote (an opposing candidate would then have to poll around 2/3 of the remaining votes to win, difficult in a multi-party election). So Tory seats in England appear to be pretty safe, less so in Wales and Scotland (albeit with a sample of only one!). Lib Dem seats are safe in England and Wales, with a lower share of the vote securing their seats in Scotland.

Labour (here divided into Labour and 16 Labour Co-operative MPs) seats also appear generally solid in England and Wales, but in Scotland the average vote share in Labour seats is over 50%! Contrast this with the SNP and Plaid Cymru, winning their seats with around 38-40% vote share.

To reinforce this point, take a look at the average majorities that each party enjoys in their seats.

Area	Con	LD	Lab	Lab Co-op	SNP	PC	All parties
UK	9,465	5,580	7,845	8,916	3,497	3,768	8,362
England	9,624	5,354	7,408	7,061	-	-	8,466
Wales	4,244	5,549	5,843	8,463	-	3,768	5,477
Scotland	4,194	6,469	11,175	16,017	3,497	-	9,645

Again the main lessons can be drawn from the outliers: the Tory majorities in Wales and Scotland are less than half those in England. The Lib Dems are somewhat safer in their Scottish strongholds than elsewhere in the UK (I wonder if the coalition will affect that situation...). Labour's grip in Wales seems to be weaker than elsewhere in the UK (only 2 Lab Co-op MPs in Wales, so their higher majorities won't lift the average much), in stark contrast to their utter dominance in their Scottish seats. The SNP and PC have rather weaker holds on their constituencies than the other parties, perhaps due to the squeeze they tend to suffer at Westminster elections.

If you've stuck with this slightly unusual analysis this far you'll no doubt be wondering what the point of it all is! (I'll confess you're not alone there!) Well, firstly it's not the kind of analysis I've seen done elsewhere, so it at least has novelty value.

Secondly, I've deliberately focussed my efforts on the idea of "wasted" votes in FPTP. As shown above, 1 in 3 votes counts for nothing! A whole third of the voting electorate disenfranchised! On that basis alone electoral reform is a must. Every vote should count.

Thirdly, and slightly contradicting the previous point(!), whilst Scotland has fewer "wasted" votes, it is worrying for one party to be quite so firmly entrenched as Labour is in their Scottish fiefs. Our democracy is only healthy when parties are ousted for poor performance, and this will only happen when tribal loyalties are broken down and attractive alternatives are put before the voters. That is the challenge for the Lib Dems, Tories and SNP in Scotland.

Finally, look again at the share of the vote that Labour in Scotland have where they win - just over 50%. No wonder they proposed AV as their favoured voting reform - more than 50% in round one means no counting of second preferences! We'd still end up with over 40% of the voters in Labour seats being disenfranchised. If the UK needs PR for Westminster elections, that is doubly true for Scotland.

A "major" pain

A good post over at Moridura. I agree with most of it, but I might just have made the following tiny but important amendment - quotation marks around the use of that old saw "major parties". The casual observer of politics is constantly told about "the major parties" - no wonder they so rarely vote for anyone else! After all, why vote for a "minor party" in a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system? What sort of stupid choice would that be?! Duh!

You can have any colour you like, as long as it's blue. Or red.

Only two valid choices for you, little voter,
The fate of us all in the hands of these floaters.
Labour or Tory, Tory or Labour?
Empty blue boaters, or reds rattling sabers?

Labour or Tory, long to reign over us!
Don't try to fight it, change is too onerous.
The "minor parties" must never win,
Little voter 'twas ever thus, just give in.

No prospect of change, no hope for the future,
Democracy stitched up with red and blue sutures.
Forty percent, a resounding majority!
(The sixty percent deprived of authority)

Labour the winners! Even if they lose,
Tories the winners! Even if they lose,
Give in little voter, snooze, snooze,
Don't bother to vote, you don't get to choose.
Snooze, snooze, snooze, snooze,
Snooze, snooze, snooze, snooze...

But enough cynicism! Why vote for a "minor party" at Westminster? Well, because change does happen, even if only occasionally under the anti-democracy of FPTP: sitting MPs, ministers and governments do get turfed out; Liberal parties reign supreme then wither away; Labour parties spring up; SDP's rise ("I feel a surge David!") and fall; and of course "minor parties" like the SNP and Plaid Cymru rise and impinge on the "natural parties of government".

Overuse of phrases such as "major parties" unthinkingly (and sometimes thinkingly!) serves to prevent these kind of changes, the very lifeblood of democracy, from happening. And by subtly denying the possibility of alternatives in this way, we are led to the current sorry state of affairs in which only a small gaggle of die-hards will actually be voting for the Labour or Tory parties. Most of the electorate will actually be voting against one or other of them: either "we can't let Labour continue, remember the last 13 years", or "we can't let the Tories back in, I remember the last lot". No wonder people are disillusioned with Westminster politics.

Fortunately the solution to this mess is simple. Contrast the vibrancy of elections to the Scottish parliament and the moribundity of the Westminster elections. The difference is proportional representation (PR). The difference is genuine competition for every vote, a genuine opportunity for different political viewpoints to be represented and a genuine chance for change. Genuine democracy you might say.

Neither of the "main parties" want to bring PR to Westminster, Turkeys voting for Christmas and all that. So if it's change you want, vote for a "minor party" committed to PR for Westminster. In a hung parliament the "minor parties" might not be so minor after all.

Poll results: Which voting system do you favour for elections to Westminster?

FPTP: 2 votes
STV: 22 votes
AV: 1 vote
WTF?: 3 votes

So STV by a landslide. Assuming most visitors to Brigadoon are independence-friendly (as suggested by the onward rumbling constitutional settlement poll) I guess that makes sense. After all, the SNP have routinely gained many fewer MPs than their share of the vote would justify.

It's been interesting to see some of the arguments from various corners of Westminster about PR vs FPTP. Essentially the argument seems to have been that yes, PR is more democratic, but it precludes the formation of a strong government (unless of course a single party polls >50%). Perhaps they should cast their eyes northwards to see a strong minority government in action, aided by a few fleeting glimpses of a new, more consensual style of politics...?

Sadly I fear the BNP gaining 2 MEPs will scupper any chances of PR appearing in Westminster elections any time soon: it's the perfect excuse to keep the cosy Lab/Tory duopoly for evermore.