Cards on table, I have favoured the Alternative Vote system for some time for two reasons: (i) It maintains a clear constituency link; (ii) Because you need to secure the support of at least 50% of voters, it encourages direct engagement with more voters in any given constituency (for me this a weakness of multi-member constituency systems- you can still concentrate on a core.)
However, John Curtice has projected what the result would be based on current polls under an Alternative Vote system. One note of caution: his results do depend on a universal swing calculator so they import all the deficiencies of that (his ‘probable’ outcome in terms of seats based on current polls is too strong a description for me.) But let’s run with the forecast for now (it won’t be as bad as that in my opinion.) Could we really argue for a system that hits one party disproportionately badly and in an unfair way?
This calculation will have to be done after the election given the massive shortcomings of current seat by seat projections. Nonetheless, if an outcome such as John Curtice suggests was the result then AV is dead on arrival.
Anyway, onto tmg.co.uk’s (weighted) seat predictor. Liberal Democrats continued to make gains in support and seats yesterday. Labour are -2 on yesterday and the Lib Dems are +2- Conservatives are 19 seats short of a majority,
April 27th, 2010 at 12:41
I think we absolutely can argue for that, if the party that is getting hurt ought to be getting hurt, on the basis of what voters’ preferences are. I’m certainly willing to believe that Labour voters in unwinnable rural seats near me would prefer a Lib Dem to a Tory MP.
And of course, the other point to make against John C’s work is that the system is dynamic. Under PR of any sort, the parties’ positions will modulate, and some parties may even split, to reflect the signals that voters are sending them, and the rules under which the game is to be played. The benefit of that might be less preaching to the core vote, and more engagement with issues that can build a coalition of support from those with differing political philosophies.
Personally, I think the value of constituency link is a bit overrated, so I would rather use STV than AV, but both are better than the current mess in a situation where you have three realistic majority parties.
April 27th, 2010 at 13:20
I must also state my preference for STV. One of the reasons I prefer STV is that actually it makes politics even more local than AV or FPTP. They use STV in Ireland where it is often criticised for making politics TOO local (it is argued that candidates are beholden to their local electorates too much and will vote against party and national interest for local one. I fail to see how this is a bad thing personally).
AV would certainly screw the Tories considerably though, and it has the potential to be even less proportional than FPTP. They use AV in Australia, and the poor Australian Greens are locked out, despite regularly getting ~7% of the vote, though the Senate fortunately uses STV. In the Jenkins Report on electoral reform they simulate elections in Britain under different electoral systems and their 1997 projection gives the Tories only 116 seats, whereas Labour would have had an even larger majority. The Lib Dems would have had more seats, but it barely matters when all the power is in the hands of the majority party anyway.
April 27th, 2010 at 15:05
ATV turns a two-party system into a three-party system, whereas STV does not exclude anyone, making it democratically superior. However, it still encourages the distortion of tactical voting.
This problem can be overcome by using Approval Voting, in which the voter marks their cross against as many candidates as they can stomach, instead of ranking them.
I wouldn’t vote for anything else!
April 28th, 2010 at 00:36
An argument in favour of FPTP:
The Government to which we are preparing to say farewell is the most abominable in living memory, exceeding even John Major’s and Ted Heath’s in its destructiveness, stupidity, dishonesty and incompetence.
April 28th, 2010 at 09:51
Yes, and that government was elected on only 35.2% of the vote, thanks to FPTP…