Unequal and Unequally Distributed Votes: The Sources of Electoral Bias at Recent British General Elections
| Date | 01 December 2012 |
| Author | Galina Borisyuk,Michael Thrasher,Colin Rallings,Ron Johnston |
| Published date | 01 December 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00941.x |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
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P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S : 2 0 1 2 VO L 6 0 , 8 7 7 – 8 9 8
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00941.x
Unequal and Unequally Distributed Votes:
The Sources of Electoral Bias at Recent British
General Electionspost_941877..898
Ron Johnston
Galina Borisyuk, Michael Thrasher and Colin Rallings
University of Bristol
Plymouth University
Using a method for decomposing electoral bias in a three-party competitive system we contend that discussion
surrounding electoral reform for the House of Commons is largely based on misconceptions about bias sources at
recent British general elections (Northern Ireland is excluded from the analysis). Labour is the principal beneficiary
across these seven elections while the third party, the Liberal Democrats, consistently suffers from a negative bias.
There is no clear pattern for the Conservative party, however; it experienced a positive net bias at two of the
elections but was disadvantaged for the remaining five. For three bias components – electorate, abstentions and
minor party – Labour consistently has a positive advantage and the Conservatives are always disadvantaged.
Abstentions contribute relatively strongly to Labour’s advantage but differences in electorate size are not a major
contributor to overall bias. Despite this, legislation changing the independent boundary review process is predicated
on the assumption that new rules should remove much of the pro-Labour bias. The analysis finds instead that
most bias stems from the geography component: differences in the distributions of each party’s votes and the
translation of votes into seats. Vote distribution is clearly the largest component explaining the Liberal Democrats’
disadvantage but it is also the largest component for both Conservative and Labour parties in five of the last
seven general elections. Although future boundary reviews will remove the effects of unequal electorates,
this process is not designed to address either the impact of turnout/abstention or vote distributions on overall
electoral bias.
Keywords: electoral bias; electoral geography; third parties
Although electoral reform has been at the core of the Liberal Democrats’ (and their
predecessors’) aspirations for many decades, both the Conservatives and Labour have
generally sustained a commitment to the status quo (although with small elements within
each committed to a move away from the current system). The year 2010 was thus unusual
in that all three parties included some form of reform for parliamentary elections in their
general election manifestos.
The Liberal Democrats’ manifesto maintained their promise to introduce a ‘fair, more
proportional voting system for MPs’ using the single transferable vote (STV); they also
proposed reducing the number of MPs by 150, to 500.1 Labour’s commitment paralleled
earlier flirtations with the idea of voting reform when they feared they could not win again
under first-past-the-post (FPTP) rules.2 In the early 1990s, for example, two reports were
commissioned (Plant, 1991; 1993) which commended a version of the alternative vote (AV)
later adopted for the election of mayors in England.When still uncertain of its prospects in
1997, the party’s manifesto included a commitment to hold a referendum on the parlia-
mentary voting system, following a report from an independent commission. The Jenkins
report (1998) recommended a change to a more proportional system (known as AV+) but
was quickly shelved after the landslide general election victory.
© 2012 The Authors. Political Studies © 2012 Political Studies Association
878
RO N J O H N S TO N ET AL.
Labour returned to the issue in 2009 when victory at the forthcoming general election
looked doubtful although a hung parliament appeared a distinct possibility. Gordon Brown
indicated that if re-elected Labour would hold a referendum on changing from FPTP to
AV; this offer was added to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill 2010 but the
relevant clauses were removed before it was enacted. It was renewed in the party’s 2010
manifesto and addressed at the Liberal Democrats, the party with most to gain from a switch
to the preferential AV system (which in 2010 would probably have given them a slightly
more favourable outcome than FPTP: Sanders et al., 2011); were there a hung parliament,
Labour would hope to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, so the smaller party
was being offered a share of power.3
The Conservatives, with the exception of the small Conservative Action on Electoral
Reform (CAER),4 have always been strongly committed to FPTP. Changing the voting
system has never been a manifesto commitment. However, the party became increasingly
concerned with aspects of how FPTP is structured and operates in the UK and its 2010
manifesto promised measures to negate some of those. These measures were first raised in
a pamphlet published by Conservative Reform (Tyrie, 2004), publicised in a bill presented
to the House of Lords by Lord Baker in 2007 and, with one slight change, repeated in a
proposed amendment to Labour’s Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill 2010 (on
which see McLean et al., 2009). The 2010 manifesto indicated continued support for FPTP
but also an intention to ‘ensure every vote will have equal value by introducing “fair vote”
reforms to equalize the size of constituency electorates, and conduct a boundary review to
implement these changes within five years’, while reducing the number of MPs by 10 per
cent (from 650 to 585).5
In the post-election coalition bargaining, the Conservatives met the Liberal Democrats’
desire for both a reduction in the number of MPs and putting the issue of voting reform
to a referendum, although only AV and not proportional representation. After one of the
longest parliamentary debates, the bill facilitating a binding referendum on a switch to AV
in May 2011, reducing the number of MPs and introducing new rules for delimiting
constituencies was passed on 16 February 2011. Voters rejected the move to AV but other
aspects of the legislation continue.
The contention of this article, however, is that much of the discussion within and
between the various political parties about the operation of the current voting system is
based on fundamental misconceptions so that elements of their arguments for supporting
some form of electoral reform are faulty. To clarify these points we explore recent election
results, using an enhanced method of measuring electoral bias ( Borisyuk et al., 2010).
Having identified the nature and extent of the bias affecting each party the different biases
are decomposed to understand their origins better. It appears that much, but not all, of the
current electoral bias will prove immune to changes in either the number of MPs who are
elected or the redrawing of constituency boundaries.
Why Reform? Recent UK Election Results
The reasons why the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are at present concerned with
the current electoral system are readily appreciated by perusal of the last seven general
election results. Table 1 gives each party’s shares of the UK votes and seats, and the
© 2012 The Authors. Political Studies © 2012 Political Studies Association
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2012, 60(4)
U N E Q UA L A N D U N E Q UA L LY D I S T R I B U T E D VOT E S
879
Table 1: Results of British General Elections 1983–2010
Per cent of
Party
Election
Votes
Seats
(Seats–Votes)
Conservative
1983
42.4
61.1
18.7
1987
42.2
57.7
15.5
1992
41.9
51.6
9.7
1997
30.7
25
-5.7
2001
31.7
25.2
-6.5
2005
32.4
30.7
-1.7
2010
36.1
47.2
11.1
Labour
1983
27.6
32.2
4.6
1987
30.8
35.2
4.4
1992
34.4
41.6
7.2
1997
43.2
63.4
20.2
2001
40.7
62.5
21.8
2005
35.2
55
19.8
2010
29
39.7
10.7
Liberal Democrat
1983
25.4
3.5
-21.9
1987
22.6
3.4
-19.2
1992
17.8
3.1
-14.7
1997
16.8
7
-9.8
2001
18.3
7.9
-10.4
2005
22
9.6
-12.4
2010
23
8.8
-14.2
difference between the two. For the Liberal Democrats, the problem is acute: they were very
substantially under-represented in the House of Commons, with much smaller shares of the
seats than votes (the largest deficit being in 1983, when with over one-quarter of the votes
cast they obtained only 3.5 per cent of the MPs).
For the Conservatives, the main problem is seen when comparing their performance in
similar situations with Labour’s. At each election Labour obtained a larger share of the seats
than votes, by an average of 20.6 percentage points at the three it won – in 1997, 2001 and
2005. For the Conservatives, on the other hand, at their four victories (1983–92 and 2010)
the average difference between share of seats and votes was only 13.8 percentage points.
Furthermore, at the three which they lost they obtained a smaller share of the seats than of
the votes (an average of 4.6 percentage points less) whereas when Labour lost it still gained
a greater share of the seats than votes (an average of 6.7 percentage points more). Indeed,
in 2010 Labour had a ‘bonus’ of some 10.7 percentage points in its share of seats compared
to its vote share, which was almost as large as the Conservatives’ bonus as the winning
party (Dorey, 2010). Additionally, with 40.7 per cent of votes in 2001 Labour won a clear
majority (62.5 per cent) of seats but in 1992 the Conservatives, despite winning a similar
vote share (41.9 per cent), barely secured an overall majority of seats (51.6 per cent). The
© 2012 The Authors. Political Studies © 2012 Political Studies Association
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