Post by thomas on Jul 20, 2015 23:04:57 GMT
Scottish Council elections since 2007 use a single transferrable vote system where typically 3 or 4 candidates are to be returned in each ward.
Multiple candidates from an individual party can stand in these wards, and parties with reasonable prospects typically field 2 or 3 candidates in each ward. Parties that are less confident tend to just put forward 0 or 1.
Candidates on the ballot paper are listed in alphabetical order by surname. It is thought that many voters loyal to a particular party typically rank candidates belonging to that party in order from the top of the ballot paper to the bottom.
A realtive of mine was standing for election in 2012 and I was drafted in on polling day to help with her campaign. There were 4 seats to be won in her ward, and she was a member of a party fielding 3 candidates (two incumbents and her)
The polling stations within her ward had been carved up by the party, and the ones assigned to her, she was allowed to hand out cards instructing people in what order to vote for that parties candidates. My job was to stand outside one of ‘her’ polling station and hand these out.
Her name fell underneath the two incumbents on the alphabetical list, and – despite my considerable card handing out skills - she unsurprisingly received far less first preferences than the other two (thankfully she still got in though.)
I pointed out that her maiden name would have had her appear above the two incumbents on the ballot rather than below. She candidly told me that if she used her maiden name, there would have been no way the incumbents would have allowed her to be on the ballot.
I was fascinated as to how where your surname happens to fall in an alphabetical list plays such a big part in the democratic election of councillors to Scottish local authorities.
I rememeber trawling through the 2012 results published by different local authorities in Scotland making a very rough count of how many A’s, B’s etc were elected (I’ve seen your gold standard thread, there were definitely some local authroities better than others at publishing these results in friendly ways.)
While the two incumbents in my relative’s ward were reportedly savvy to organising against the nomination of candidates with earlier surnames, there were countless examples across Scotland of incumbents being unseated by memebers of their own party, and in almost all cases the outgoing councillor had a later surname.
In one notable ward (I think it was on the East Coast somewhere) a wife had unseated her husband, they both were memebers of the same party, had the same surname, but her first name was earlier.
I can imagine an awkward breakfast table in that house the next morning.
I’m nearing the end of a statistics degree with the OU and was interested into looking more formally into the question to what extent this relatively recent voting system is having on who gets elected to Scotalnd’s councils.
I’m looking into the distribution of surnames in previous Scottish local authoirty elections. I would not be surprised to find a noticable shift in the last two elections towards alpahetically earlier surnamens appearing more often, and maybe I’ll have a go at predicting the distribution of surnames that we elect in 2017.
If anyone knows of other places in the world where they use STV or other multiple winner system, and voters vote for individual candidates whose party affiliation is also displayed, that parties can field mutiple candidates in the same ward, and that the candidates names are listed alphateically on the ballot, then I’d be interested to look at them too.
I'm kinda new to doing this sort of thing, so any other general advice you feel like dishing out would also be welcome.
Multiple candidates from an individual party can stand in these wards, and parties with reasonable prospects typically field 2 or 3 candidates in each ward. Parties that are less confident tend to just put forward 0 or 1.
Candidates on the ballot paper are listed in alphabetical order by surname. It is thought that many voters loyal to a particular party typically rank candidates belonging to that party in order from the top of the ballot paper to the bottom.
A realtive of mine was standing for election in 2012 and I was drafted in on polling day to help with her campaign. There were 4 seats to be won in her ward, and she was a member of a party fielding 3 candidates (two incumbents and her)
The polling stations within her ward had been carved up by the party, and the ones assigned to her, she was allowed to hand out cards instructing people in what order to vote for that parties candidates. My job was to stand outside one of ‘her’ polling station and hand these out.
Her name fell underneath the two incumbents on the alphabetical list, and – despite my considerable card handing out skills - she unsurprisingly received far less first preferences than the other two (thankfully she still got in though.)
I pointed out that her maiden name would have had her appear above the two incumbents on the ballot rather than below. She candidly told me that if she used her maiden name, there would have been no way the incumbents would have allowed her to be on the ballot.
I was fascinated as to how where your surname happens to fall in an alphabetical list plays such a big part in the democratic election of councillors to Scottish local authorities.
I rememeber trawling through the 2012 results published by different local authorities in Scotland making a very rough count of how many A’s, B’s etc were elected (I’ve seen your gold standard thread, there were definitely some local authroities better than others at publishing these results in friendly ways.)
While the two incumbents in my relative’s ward were reportedly savvy to organising against the nomination of candidates with earlier surnames, there were countless examples across Scotland of incumbents being unseated by memebers of their own party, and in almost all cases the outgoing councillor had a later surname.
In one notable ward (I think it was on the East Coast somewhere) a wife had unseated her husband, they both were memebers of the same party, had the same surname, but her first name was earlier.
I can imagine an awkward breakfast table in that house the next morning.
I’m nearing the end of a statistics degree with the OU and was interested into looking more formally into the question to what extent this relatively recent voting system is having on who gets elected to Scotalnd’s councils.
I’m looking into the distribution of surnames in previous Scottish local authoirty elections. I would not be surprised to find a noticable shift in the last two elections towards alpahetically earlier surnamens appearing more often, and maybe I’ll have a go at predicting the distribution of surnames that we elect in 2017.
If anyone knows of other places in the world where they use STV or other multiple winner system, and voters vote for individual candidates whose party affiliation is also displayed, that parties can field mutiple candidates in the same ward, and that the candidates names are listed alphateically on the ballot, then I’d be interested to look at them too.
I'm kinda new to doing this sort of thing, so any other general advice you feel like dishing out would also be welcome.
