I’ve noticed all sorts of forum posts and articles implying that the UK’s electoral system, and now Talk Politics has posted about it.
I’ve summarised my view in the comments section there, but to summarise once more and, erm, add a bit I’ve only just remembered:
- First-past-the-post is not itself biased towards Labour. However, it helps regionally concentrated parties/platforms in bad years (Labour in 1983), and hinders them in good years (Labour, however, had greatly broadened their support in 1997).
- Labour-held seats are generally smaller than Tory ones. However, this is not pre-determined. The Tories have the same chance of winning those seats on May 5 as Labour, if only they hadn’t neglected urban areas for so long.
- Seats are reallocated all the time to try to equalise the size of the electorate, but not so that the character of the seat is drastically altered.
- The concept of swing works on the basis that the votes on May 5 are merely those from 2001 moved from one pile to another, when in fact all parties start from zero.
- A “swingometer” is a great simplification when there are more than two main parties.
- A swingometer is practically useless when there is organised tactical voting.
- Swing is less and less useful as people become more motivated by local issues. You can counter with “regional” swing figures, but where does it end?
So, to me, all this talk about the Tories needing to win the popular vote by a big margin, just to knock out Labour’s huge majority, is nonsense – it doesn’t have any basis in fact.
That’s not to completely rubbish the work of the psephologists (that’s electoral statistics), but you can’t get closer to the solution of any problem by making more and more generalisations, and averaging out more and more factors based entirely around past election results, which are no guide to future behaviour.
Still, they make fantastic maps!