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Post by timrollpickering on Aug 13, 2018 18:22:17 GMT
The 2015 AV GE would've resulted in a few freak results, perverse incentives and unintended consequences. There would've been a big kerfuffle involving very vocal folks claiming they didn't understand how it worked and possibly a few challenges to the results in certain cases. People would demand to know why their second choice was irrelevant but their friends second choice was decisive etc. The fuss made about the current boundary review would be nothing by comparison. They could certainly ask, but it would be little different to an SNP voter in Hamilton West asking why 37% of the vote was insufficient to elect an SNP there when 32% was enough in Hamilton East. All elections will have their quirks and at least under AV the explanation that the majority of voters backed the winning candidate makes a bit more sense than explaining that it was just down to a random break of votes as in the Hamilton example. As discussed quite a bit in these threads, AV does not automatically mean that. Would this kind of Grayling Remainer logic have meant a second referendum should have happened there and then? |
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Post by timrollpickering on Aug 13, 2018 18:43:51 GMT
Then hypothetical Cameron would have been a fool (and not just because the question itself needed settling with a new popular mandate one way or the other). The Ukip vote would likely have largely plumped. Where's the evidence for that? Looking at Scottish local elections, UKIP terminal transfers (i.e. when no other UKIP candidate was available) were around 30% non-transferable and 70% transferable. The vast majority of UKIP voters did go on to transfer to other parties. Why would it be different, especially when it's explained to them how it will affect the result in a close contest such as 2015 was? All Cameron needs to know is that some of that UKIP vote is coming back his way, instead of being totally lost, as it would be under FPTP and he's less likely to worry about the UKIP effect. Maybe the Scottish explanation is clearer or the Scottish Kipper more pragmatic but English Kipper voters have been poor at using mayoral second preferences and seem much more solid on the whole "You're the LibLabCon!!!" Perhaps the presence of the SNP creates a different dynamic. |
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Post by timrollpickering on Aug 14, 2018 14:55:04 GMT
(Personally, I quite like STV. It isn't without its flaws of course, but I think its detractors overstate them, particularly the hard-to-understand one. The Irish seem to cope fine. The version which used to be used for the Australian Senate was truly awful, though.) Well the Australian Senate was a product of a number of factors but many of them stem from the lower house elections (although compulsory full preferencing appears to have existed for the upper house even before preferencing or compulsion was applied to the lower *). The parties, media and voters all focused on the lower house at election time with the upper house a sideshow. And the voters tended to follow the How To Vote cards to the point that ticket voting was originally seen as just a way to cut the spoilt ballot paper rate. It's notable that the only independents elected to the Senate in modern times have been in small states where the media had time to focus some attention on the Senate plus the independents had some big profiles (in one case originally acquired through above the line harvesting). If you have a strong party system then the voting system needs to be one that accepts parties, rather than treating them with suspicion. Too many STV advocates seem to be the sort who just can't get their heads round why anybody would regularly support a party and/or be a member of it. (* Until 1919 the Senate was elected by multi-member FPTP. A ballot paper was only valid if it had votes for as many candidates as there were places to fill.) |
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Post by therealriga on Aug 15, 2018 13:40:29 GMT
They could certainly ask, but it would be little different to an SNP voter in Hamilton West asking why 37% of the vote was insufficient to elect an SNP there when 32% was enough in Hamilton East. All elections will have their quirks and at least under AV the explanation that the majority of voters backed the winning candidate makes a bit more sense than explaining that it was just down to a random break of votes as in the Hamilton example. As discussed quite a bit in these threads, AV does not automatically mean that. Would this kind of Grayling Remainer logic have meant a second referendum should have happened there and then? Maybe the Scottish explanation is clearer or the Scottish Kipper more pragmatic but English Kipper voters have been poor at using mayoral second preferences and seem much more solid on the whole "You're the LibLabCon!!!" Perhaps the presence of the SNP creates a different dynamic. Of course it doesn't, but it makes it far more likely that the winning candidate will have 50%+ and there will be significantly fewer "if Nader hadn't stood in the 2000 US Presidential election" type post-election arguments. On the English mayoral elections, not quite the same system is it? Arguably, restricting voters to just two votes already encourages them to think about plumping. Looking at actual 2017 mayoral election results: Tees Valley: 15k out of 22k LDem and UKIP votes went Con/Lab. Cambs&P: 33k of 77k Labour, UKIP, Green, Ind and EngDem vote went Con/LD. West of Eng: 39k of 100k LDem, UKIP, Ind and Green votes went Con/Lab W Mids: 47K of 107k LDem, UKIP, Green and Communist votes went Con/Lab From that I don't see evidence of UKIP being poor at using second votes. Tees Valley had a nearly 70% rate as most LD and UKIP voters wouldn't give their second vote to the other party. In the other cases it's probable that many UKIP voters gave the second vote to a candidate that wasn't in the top 2, the independents or the English dems for example. |
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Post by timrollpickering on Aug 15, 2018 14:23:59 GMT
Tees Valley contains Hartlepool where the eventual elected mayor was actually in third place on first preferences and the parliamentary seat (with the same boundaries) has been one of Ukip's best, with them taking over a third of their authority wide vote in the borough so not a typical result. It's notable in the other examples and in London just what a large proportion aren't using the second preference for candidates who are all the signs say will be in the top two. These are still sizeable exhaustion rates and don't convince that AV would cancel out the problem.
As for the other point, it was a claim made widely by Yes campaigners (although explicitly refuted by the official explanation booklet) so given the current culture of demanding a rerun referendum at the slightest thing perhaps the first result where the winner didn't get 50% of all votes cast would have been proof.
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