Electoral reform getting rejected by 2:1?

[RandBlade]

Results are coming in the AV referendum in the UK. I voted No, I have no major problem with AV, but massively hate any form of Proportional Representation (which this is not). I voted No, not to stop AV, but as a "slippery slope" vote, I'd rather have all talk of electoral reform stopped dead and not have AV this time, but a switch to eg STV next time.

Looks like the country has rejected the change by a margin of about 2:1 - I hope this does kill talk of changing the voting system dead for a generation or more. Stop tinkering with the constitution and get on with doing the job instead.

[agamemnus]

Moar info plz.

[RandBlade]

Current electoral system is First Past The Post - every constituency votes, people put an X next to the one they want to win, whoever gets the most votes wins. How Congress is elected too I believe.
Proposed system was Alternative Vote - again in constituencies, people vote 1,2,3,4 etc for all candidates. If one gets 50%+1 votes then they win, if not then the lowest-ranked candidate is eliminated and their votes transferred to second-choice. If now 50%+1 of remaining votes they win, if not the now-lowest gets eliminated and their votes transferred to next choice. Repeat until someone gets 50%+1 of votes in any round.
PR is what most of Europe have some variety of, not in single-member constituencies but instead a system based more where a party that gets 40% of vote gets 40% of seats, 20% of votes = 20% of seats etc ... realistically no single party would ever normally have an outright majority. That is popular with some in the UK but was not an option today.

Current votes with 3/4 of the votes counted is a lead of more than 2:1 to the Noes.

[Steely Glint]

Currently trying to decide if the drubbing received by the yes campaign was due to the exceedingly dirty campaign by the noes, the yes campaign's own ineptness, genuine dislike or just indifference from the voters.

[agamemnus]

That doesn't sound too bad, but I don't think there's significant enough data quite yet to show that a round-based system is better than a straight vote, or what kind of round-based system is better.

[RandBlade]

All of the above, I'd add in the fact that the No Campaign managed to claim the mantle of "Fairness", which Yes no doubt thought was going to be theirs. The slogan "one person, one vote" is a simple soundbite that could be understood.

I can't believe what an amazingly bad campaign was ran by the official Yes one. It was marked with unbelievable hubris. No pulled in and adopted speakers from all over the spectrum - a majority of Labour, the Tories, even a few Lib-Dems like David Steele.
Yes got Ed Milliband saying he wouldn't share a platform with Clegg, and comedian Eddie Izzard. Farage said that UKIP would support Yes, but the Yes campaign being dominated by "progressives" completely spurned him. The SNP said yes but also got spurned, the SNP just campaigned for the Scottish Parliament.

No had dozens of spin-off groups - "Vote Labour, No to AV", "No2AV, Yes to PR" etc, etc ... Yes just stuck in a "progressive majority" groove and ignored everyone else, even potential supporters.

The people fronting the No Campaign were deliberately largely off the left, since they had the right vote. Reid, Prescott etc - Yes should have included Farage as a keynote speaker, not ignore him as someone they don't want to be associated with.

So we ended up with the right fairly united against, the left divided ... there was no way mathematically that you can ignore half the population in this country and think you can win.

[Lebanese Dragon]

I kinda like the proposed change though.

Let's say like we have 3 people. 40% like guy A. And 60% are split evenly between guys B and C. And B&C have similar views and agenda, and there just splitting up their supporters.

Then once say guy C gets dropped. And they do the voting again. You'll something like 40% for guy A and 60% for guy B now.

Like in the u.s. where we have primaries to avoid this very risk of splitting votes for their candidate adn consolidating votes for their rivals. Its an interesting proposed system. Pretty nice for more than 2 people running actually. hmmm. How do you want to change it RB?

One thing i dislike is multiple cycles of voting, trying to think if we can get it done in one set of voting. hmmm...

[RandBlade]

It gets done in one round of voting, its multiple rounds of counting.

I don't think we need to change it, I'm happy with a simple most votes wins.

[wiggin]

Does anyone really care about this other than the Lib Dems anyways? I don't think the Tory/Labor split would shift much in AV vs. FPTP (though PR would probably favor Tory more?), but Lib Dems would probably get a nice boost.

[RandBlade]

Voting reform has often been viewed as an issue of the left, especially the Lib-Dems. It is long considered that the Lib-Dems are more left, closer to Labour - though as it happens, Labour are in coalition with the Tories. The last time the Liberals were in government it was also with the Tories. It was believed by many that the left vote was split, thus the Tories were benefiting - I think its simplistic now to call the Lib-Dems simply left.

At the last election the Tories supported FPTP, Labour supported AV (which got rejected today, thinking they'd get the Lib-Dem transfers), Lib-Dems supported STV (a form of PR).

The Coalition has probably challenged many old assumptions already anyway. I agree there wouldn't probably be much change between AV and FPTP, PR would be a very dramatic change though and completely shake up everything, the Lib-Dems would get a big bump from that probably as would UKIP and other minors.

Neither Labour nor Tories will support PR, especially after today, so short of the Lib-Dems winning an election there's not going to be any reform I suspect.

[Lebanese Dragon]

You don't feel that sometimes, like the situation i painted, a person loses who if it was just them and the winner on the ballot they would have won. Or do you feel that situatin is few and far between? or not important?

[RandBlade]

Not important.

[Lebanese Dragon]

I think it is... kinda silly. We could have some idiot 20% of the people support because they like his absurd views, but 80% of people are split between geniuses. It's very well possible. Maybe the conservatives are consolidated on their guy but the liberals are split. I guess i think it happens rarely, but it could happen and it would be a pity. Maybe the added cost and time rounds of voting would take it wouldn't be worth it compared to the few times the "wrong" person wins.

[Loki]

Let's be honest here, given the geographical and ideological distribution of British voters, an AV system would prevent the Tories from ever getting elected (without some serious changes to their platform). What I find amazing is that so many left-wingers voted against this change.

[RandBlade]

I have never seen any FPTP election won by just 20% of the electorate, however hypothetical you want to make it. Even if it does, any electoral system throws up peculiarities.

[Loki]

Just to add, under an AV system, Labour would have received a majority of the seats in the Commons in the last election.

[RandBlade]

No it wouldn't.

It's estimated that at the last election Labour would have won a few more, the Lib-Dems a few more, the Tories less. Labour and Tories would be about the same seats won, despite Tories winning millions more votes. Could have meant a Labour/Lib-Dem Coalition though.

[Steely Glint]

AFAIK none of the recent elections would have had a different result under AV, though the winning margins would have been changed slightly. Of course it is all speculation, since second, third &c preferences are not currently recorded.

[Loki]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/poli...-under-AV.html

Not quite a majority, but far more than the Tories.

[Hazir]

Not a majority is not a majority in a parliamentarian system. I am not surprised that it was rejected; the whole thing sounds too complicated and voters typically reject things that sound complicated, regardless of the merits of the system.

[Loki]

It has nothing to do with the merits. Under the AV system, Labour would finish first in every election. I'm amazed that it didn't fully support it.

[Steely Glint]

How on earth does the Torygraph determine what the vote of the 2010 election would have been under AV? Don't tell me they're using that YouGov survey they used for their hypothetical 2011 election to get AV results from the 2010 one...

[Loki]

They detail their methodology at the bottom of the article. It's by no means perfect, but it's a better proxy than the previous ones used.

[Steely Glint]

Also, my ballot paper for the local elections had three choices.

Labour
Greens
Some Guy

WTF.

[Steely Glint]

They detail their methodology at the bottom of the article.

Yeah, I read that bit. They're more than a little vague about where their 2010 AV results come from.

Why does Labour gain so many seats under AV compared to FPTP in 2010, but lose four under AV in 2011? Are they just plugging the YouGov poll results into the 2010 results, and assuming the way people would vote for their second preferences back then is the same as how they'd vote for them today? Because if so, that's balls to the wall retarded, if not outright dishonest given the huge change in the respective popularity of the three parties between then and now.

[RandBlade]

They detail their methodology at the bottom of the article. It's by no means perfect, but it's a better proxy than the previous ones used.

Using a poll taken by YouGov* (who've had a pretty poor track-record lately) in 2011 to determine how people would have voted in 2010? WTF?

As the article says, that outcome is not what other research has determined.

* YouGov performed as nearly the worst pollster in 2010 and the worst pollster in judging the AV Referendum.

[Loki]

It comes down to the preferences of Lib Dem voters. Do we have any reason to believe they're any less likely to favor Labour today than they were in 2010?

Using a poll taken by YouGov (who've had a pretty poor track-record lately) in 2011 to determine how people would have voted in 2010? WTF?

As the article says, that outcome is not what other research has determined.

Other research was based on even worse assumptions...

[Steely Glint]

Their goggle maps app thingy is cool, though.

[RandBlade]

It comes down to the preferences of Lib Dem voters. Do we have any reason to believe they're any less likely to favor Labour today than they were in 2010?

Yes, the coalition has changed preferences as has been recorded in plenty of polls since May 2010.

Other research was based on even worse assumptions...

It was based on polling taken at the time of the vote, that's much better. Especially because the polling was taken by a much more accurate polling company too.

[Steely Glint]

Do we have any reason to believe they're any less likely to favor Labour today than they were in 2010?

Labour are far more popular today than they were in 2010, and the Tories, and especially the Lib Dems are far less popular. Second preference votes as they would be cast today would give a huge boost to Labour if they were retroactively applied to the 2010 election.