Ken Clarke has claimed that the Alternative Vote would make it easier for extremists to be elected to Parliament. This is the opposite of the truth. But it is one of a number of questionable and misleading claims about extremism being made by opponents of the Alternative Vote.
Ken Clarke has claimed that the Alternative Vote would make it easier for extremists to be elected to Parliament. This is the opposite of the truth. But it is one of a number of questionable and misleading claims about extremism being made by opponents of the Alternative Vote. Let’s look at the evidence.
1. AV would make it harder for extremist candidates to win
Despite Clarke’s misunderstanding of the impact of AV, it is entirely rational for Nick Griffin and the BNP to be campaigning against the Alternative Vote, and calling for a No vote.
Leading pollster Peter Kellner has set out why the BNP’s call for a No vote makes sense from the viewpoint of their own party interest – and has called AV:
“The most extremist-proof of all electoral systems.”
The reason why is captured in today’s shock opinion poll in France, which has Le Pen of the Front National as the leading candidate with most first preference votes:
Marine Le Pen (NF) – 23%
Sarkozy (UMP) – 22%
Aubry (Socialist) – 22%
Le Pen may be the first-past-the-post leader in this one poll. But, under the French second ballot, a close cousin of the Alternative Vote, we know that Le Pen would be opposed by 75% of voters if she made the final two-candidate run-off, as centre-right and centre-left voters would rally to the mainstream democratic opponent, as we saw in 2002, when the Front National eliminated the Socialists, whose voters supported Jacques Chirac.
Supporters of systems of proportional representation may well have to accept that these increase the possibility of the BNP winning seats if the far right party could increase their share of the vote to 5% or more (they won 1.9% in 2010). By contrast, supporters of the Alternative Vote have a cast iron case that it makes BNP victories even less likely.
It is only fair to point out that the BNP remain a long way short of winning a Westminster constituency under first-past-the-post. Honest supporters of the No campaign would have to acknowledge that they would be even further away under the Alternative Vote.
The BNP have been able to win local election seats on minority votes. As Kellner argues, it very likely that Alternative Vote elections would wipe them out in local government.
(One irony of Eric Pickles’ offer last year to consider withdrawing the Conservative candidate from Barking to ensure that the BNP could not split the mainstream democratic vote to win was that such a tactic would be entirely unnecessary under the Alternative Vote: there would be no case at all for disenfranchising Tory voters by removing their opportunity to vote for their party. But a full field of mainstream candidates would never present the risk of an extremist victory under AV which Pickles clearly felt was a risk under first-past-the post).
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Few opponents of the Alternative Vote claim extremist candidates can win. (They mostly make the entirely contradictory argument that only lowest common denominator candidates will win 50% of the vote).
But several other claims about how AV might boost the BNP were used during last Thursday night’s Oxford Union debate, where I was part of the Yes to AV team, with Katie Ghose of Yes to Fairer Votes! and ex-independent MP Martin Bell, which won the students’ vote on the night.
2. The Churchill canard: do the second preferences of the least popular candidates given a higher priority?
Bernard Jenkin MP produced a splendidly entertaining Winston Churchill impression at Thursday night’s Oxford Union to promote the claim that AV decides elections on “the most useless votes for the most useless candidates”, as Churchill once claimed. Shrewsbury MP Daniel Kawczynski complained that this meant that, if the BNP did badly and came last, it might be that only their voters would decide the winner, because those transfers “would get counted first”.
This claim that transfers for less popular candidates count for more than those of a more popular candidate placed third is both illogical and innumerate.
The Alternative Vote puts a “post” into first-past-the-post election. A candidate can get past the post without any transfers at all by getting 50% of the first preferences. If they get 49%, and then pass the post after only one or two candidates have been eliminated, it is not the case that the lowest placed transfers have been given greater weight than untransferred votes.
The untransferred votes are part of the equation too – an equation which shows that, once the 50% ‘post’ has been passed, the leader could not now be overtaken, even if every remaining vote would transfer to the same rival candidate. It is clear too that every voter only has one vote in every round of the count, whether that vote is still with their first choice candidate while they remain in the race, or has transferred after their elimination.
3. Would extremist second preferences decide the result?
Daniel Kawczynski told the Oxford Union that it was quite wrong that BNP voters could decide the result in his Shrewsbury constituency. This struck me as nonsense. Kawczynski has a 15% lead over the Liberal Democrats and a 23% lead over Labour. The 2% who vote BNP can’t decide who wins.
Shrewsbury 2010 election result:
Conservative: 43.9%
Lib: Dem 29.0%
Labour: 20.6%
UKIP: 3.1%
BNP: 2.2%
Green: 1.1%
Perhaps Kawczynski means they could do in an extremely close election. But this is a very weak and rather misleading objection to the idea of seeking to elect the candidate with majority support in the constituency.
The leading candidates must appeal to over a quarter of the remaining electorate to build majority support; of course, that means that any candidate who pandered to the 2% BNP vote on the fringe would expect to pay a heavy electoral price for doing so.
4. Why would extremist voters vote mainstream too?
In any event, BNP voters are the least likely of all to have a second preference – as this relies on their deciding to “vote extremist – and vote mainstream too”.
The “BNP voters will decide the result” claim entirely depends on most voters who have gone to the polls to express a “send all the immigrants back” message or a “plague on all your houses” message deciding to vote for a mainstream winning party too.
Is that how voters think? The “No to AV” campaign’s claim would depend on large numbers of voters thinking something like this in the voting booth:
“Well, it’s the BNP for me. I’m sticking two fingers up to the entire political class.
“Oh! I see I’m allowed a second preference too. Hmm. How interesting. Well, come to think about, maybe the Liberal Democrats aren’t so bad after all. I’d quite like to see them defeat the Conservatives around here!”
It is very likely that many BNP voters will cast only their first preference, while others might also vote for the English Democrats, or perhaps a more mainstream anti-politics appeal of UKIP, before exhausting their ballot without voting for the major parties who are in the top two in all constituencies.
BNP votes could decide results under AV only if several extremely unlikely conditions were met. They would need to have more votes than the winning margin (which is very rare); their voters would need to express a mainstream second preference (which is unlikely in most cases), and even where they do, those preferences would need to break very unevenly for one major candidate over another to have the potential to be decisive (and there is no evidence that they would do so). The electoral geography of BNP support – strongest in heartland Labour seats – makes their ability to affect results even less plausible.
Pandering to BNP votes would prove a self-defeating strategy under AV. The winning candidate needs to seek 50% of the vote – since the BNP have under 2% of the vote and 80% of voters very strongly disapprove of them, any association with them is going to be toxic. There is simply no hard evidence that BNP voters would be more likely to play a decisive role under AV than under the current system, where extremist voters could already decide to vote for one of the likely winning candidates over another.
The fact that the extremist BNP prefer first-past-the-post to the Alternative Vote does not and should not delegitimise the arguments of mainstream democrats from the Conservative or Labour parties who think first-past-the-post a better electoral system for their own quite distinct reasons. But it does make their attempt to argue that the Alternative Vote would be good for the BNP especially unconvincing.
66 Responses to “How would extremists fare under AV?”
Jeanne Massey
Good Q & A about UK's Alternative Vote . RT @ PJfacey RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH #yes2av
Perdita Patterson
RT @Jon_Bartley: RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH #yes2av
Poi
Start a campaign to encourage 3rd preference tactical voting?
I had a few hours and tried to calculate whether one could manipulate the AV system to have a disproportionate number of seats for small left-wing candidates by getting people to vote for them as 1st and 2nd preferences and a mainstream party (one in particular). I also thought about what incentives would encourage people to vote tactically. The main answer to that question was to ask people to vote for small parties if they are interested in them, but fear Conservatives getting in; to vote 1st, 2nd prefernces as small parties and have a mainstream party as a back-up. If people wanted to vote for a mainstream party as a 1st preference, they could be encouraged to vote for small parties as 2nd and 3rd.
The experiment worked on a worst case scenario basis. That the BNP, UKip, Conservatives all voted for each other. That Labour and Conservatives never voted for each other. That Labour 1st prefernce voters only voted Liberal Democrats 2nd and no smaller parties. That the Greens and a second left-wing party i.e. Left Foot Forward voted for each other. That the Greens voted specifically for Labour as a third preference and the small left-wing parties had no third or mainstream preferences. That Liberals 1st preference voters split their second preferences to Labour and Conservatives, but that some voted for a third left-wing party. Lastly I split the votes importantly 60% of voters voting leftish (Greens, 2nd left-wing party, Labour and Liberals) and 40% (BNP, UKip, Conservatives and Liberals again) reflecting the public mood. I did different scenarios based on whether 90%, 60% and 40% of population (from both left and right) would try to vote for small parties first and the rest voted for mainstream as if still in FPTP system.
The emphasis is on third preferences. I found that it is more proportional. Even if the entire right-wing voted for each other, by getting to the third round, more votes were counted in thus reflecting by how much people according to their political direction. So the right-wing could not collectively get a vote to 50% ffor ANY candidate. Furthermore, I found that by the third round, the Liberals being inbetween were more likely to have their votes bolstered by mainstream parties to about 40%, which leaves a tactical vote to play for with the smaller parties. The most tactical thing I found was to vote Labour to have more votes than the Liberals to about 40-45%, thus in the fourth round Liberal Votes would be distributed to a left-wing party, thus bolstering an already strengthened in the second round green or other left-wing party (strengthened by each other’s votes) past 50%. In this worst case-scenario, the Greens won for the 90%, 60% trial, but Liberals ended up winning for 40% trial. However lots of things could be played with. You could more likely produce say a Left Foot Forward win if the Liberals were encouraged to vote for them as well. If they used a third preference as well as the Greens to manipulate the situation. If Labour choose left-wing parties as second or third preference (remember was worst case scenario). Even if the BNP and UKip replicated the idea, because people are unlikely to vote for them from the much needed 60% leftwing, at most they could win seats in very conservative areas but this was a worst case scenario. Many Conservative voters for example will not vote BNP.
If this is true, I’d start a campaign first beginning by encouraging voting alliances between groups of 2 leftish small parties and seeing where similarities in policy lie to see if there is much difference or not. Just in case people are upset if one party’s candidate wins and not theirs. This is to help each other in the second round with second preferences.
Then I’d start a campaign telling people not to worry if they vote for a third party because can use mainstream party as 3rd preference back up. I’d also ask those who adamently vote for a mainstream party as a 1st preference (they may not believe it would work or want their party to win atall costs), to vote for small parties at any preference just in case or for symbolic reasons to help boost democracy.
Lastly depending on your area I’d start getting local discussions started, especially for small parties’ 1st preference voters as to how use their 3rd vote to manipulate numbers, so that in the fourth round, the people from which party that is more likely to vote for small parties is the first one to have their votes transferred in the run-off.
Could be wrong. What do you think?
marjorie narey
RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/gVKyN9 #political #blog
David North
Oldpolitics, in your example, C is presumably the centre party of the three – otherwise it is highly unlikely that their voters will prefer B to A and A’s voters will prefer C to B. Therefore, B’s voters will probably prefer C to A. Therefore, in head-to-head contests, C would beat B 67-33 as you say, and C would beat A 65-35. It seems rather misleading to describe the candidate who would beat either of the others as “the least popular”, despite the fact that they got the fewest first preference votes.