On June 25, Great Britain held a special election to fill a vacant seat in the House of Commons, for Henley (near Oxford). The results: Conservative John Howell 19,796; Liberal Democrat Stephen Kearney 9,680; Green Mark Stevenson 1,321; British National Party Timothy Rait 1,243; Labour Richard McKenzie 1,066. The Labour Party, of course, is the party with a majority in the House of Commons.
Britain and Canada are two-party systems, under the original meaning of the term “two-party system”. “Two-party system”, coined in 1911 to describe the British system, means a system in which two particular parties are far larger than all the others, and only two particular parties at any given time have a realistic chance of forming the government. But because Britain and Canada have non-discriminatory election laws, other parties do win seats and do exert influence. Britain and Canada have equal ballot access laws for all candidates; all candidates have an equal chance to be listed on the top off the ballot; all candidates face the same campaign finance rules. Under that environment, which existed in the United States in the 19th century as well, elections are far more fluid, as this recent British election shows. The Henley seat was vacant because its former member of Parliament, Boris Johnson, had resigned in order to take office as Mayor of London. Thanks to Eric Garris for this news.
And all sorts of unintentionally hilarity will ensue with the Haltemprice & Howden By-Election where 26 candidates are running, but where Labour, the LDP, BNP, and UKIP aren’t standing.
The party breakdown for that election is 1 Conservative (David Davis), 1 Church of the Militant Elvis, 1 Make Politicians History, 1 Official Monster Raving Loony, 1 National Front, 1 Miss Great Britain, 1 Christian Party, 1 Green Party, 1 English Democrat, 1 Socialist Equality, 1 New Party, Harnish Howitt is running as Freedom 4 Choice, David Icke is also running, also 13 independents are running.
Not only was the Labour party candidate outpolled by the Green Party candidate, he was even outpolled by the candidate from the British National Party.
The U.K. regime is an EVIL and VICIOUS indirect minority rule regime.
TOTAL gerrymanders with NO written constitution.
NO permanent *rights* for anybody.
With the 3 *large* parties in the U.K. the minority rule percentage is about 21 percent — 21 percent of the voters elect a party hack bare majority of the U.K. House of Commons — who then choose a tyrant Prime Minister.
Same sort of rot in Canada.
Only a bit lesser ROT in the U.S.A. due to having a written constitution, split Fed/State governments and more separation of powers.
Richard is clearly right to say that ballot access rules are an important prop maintaining two party dominance in the U.S. But I think at least three other elements are also important and should not be left out of the picture.
1. Both the U.K. and Canada are parliamentary systems and don’t have an elected head of government or head of state. Like proportional representation, parliamentary government is usually a friendlier environment for a multi-party system (in fact some people think PR and a parliamentary system are the same thing, though they are not).
2. Support for parties other than Conservative and Labor (U.K.) or Conservative and Liberal (Canada) is geographically concentrated. Both countries have constituencies that often elect members of small parties as a result. This is far less true in the U.S.
2. The U.K. (I don’t know about Canada) has a much larger national legislature, measured in terms of population per legislative seat. Smaller districts, like geographical concentration, allows small parties to win a few seats and get started in national politics.
Finally, of course, there’s proportional representation. But the U.K. and Canada don’t have PR at the national level either (the U.K. does at the regional level in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).
As Bob said, the BNP (British National Party, a group that split off from the National Front, and only slightly less fascist) beat Labour as well, a worrying front of how popular modern Nazi’s are.
I wouldn’t call Britain and Canada as “two party system” the liberal party has a sizeable control and beat the top two in different areas (usually Labour in the north, Conservative in the south) as well as forming Government as late as the 1910’s.
“And all sorts of unintentionally hilarity will ensue with the Haltemprice & Howden By-Election where 26 candidates are running”
I doubt anyone but the Incumbent, Davis, will keep their deposits. That’s £500 ($1,000) a piece, or £12,500…
…Almost enough to pay for the actual by-election!
Britain has always had a two-party system, but the identity of the two major parties changed around 1919. The Liberals stopped being one of the two major parties, and the Labor Party took its place.
The U.S. in the 19th century was similar. We were a two-party system, but the identity of one of the major parties changed three times. The first party system had the Democratic Republican Party (which became the Democratic Party) versus the Federalist Party. Then the Federalist Party died out and was replaced by the National Republican Party of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay (1828 and 1832 presidential elections). Then the National Republican Party died out and was replaced by the Whig Party. Then the Whig Party died out and was replaced by the Republican Party. All that fluidity in the 19th century shows that we could have had equal fluidity in the 20th century if we had not locked ourselves up in discriminatory election laws.
There is nothing in election law in the UK that limits it to a two party system however, every registered party or independent for a constituency seat theoretically has the same chance as any other; its up to them to catch the media attention and get the electorate to vote for them.
There is also the fact that Northern Ireland has its own political parties (2 big, 2 small) and Nationalist/Separatist parties in Wales and Scotland.
There is one rule for everyone: 10 constituents signatures and a deposit of £500 (which is gained back by receiving 5% or more of the vote). There is nothing like the US which constrains the system to two parties having an easy ride and the others to go through crazy levels of signatures or money, and no regional laws which makes it so difficult to run nationally. At this rate, not even the Libertarian Party in the US will be on every state for the Presidential election.
With all due respect to Dem Rep, I disagree with his rant about the British system. I won’t quarrel
with his argument that Britain has no constitution.
Many political scientists contend that it does, though it is not codified in a single document such as the U.S.
But what he means by Britain’s “TOTAL gerrymanders”
escapes me. Britain and Canada have vested the
responsibility of redistricting in non-partisan
electoral commissions so as to escape the problem
of gerrymandering as it exists in the U.S.
As Richard says, Britain and Canada have done what the U.S. has not in opening up equal access to ballot position for all candidates. From the standpoint of access, the major defect of the British and Canadian systems is that they (of course like the U.S.) hold tightly to the first past the post system instead of instituting PR.
Good points. UK shows that even with a first-past-the-post system (the same type of elections that we have for Congress), there can still be numerous political parties that win seats. Ballot access restrictions really can kill democracy.
#9 The population range in the U.K. and Canada House of Commons is much worse than the U.S.A. House of Reps. —
i.e. lots of voters packed into the fewest possible gerrymander districts aka ridings.
Democracy NOW via 100 percent P.R. before it is too late.
Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes needed for each seat winner.
Dem Rep,
You are certainly right that individual Commons districts (“ridings” in Canadian parlance) in the UK and Canada deviate more from the national population average per district than do the individual U.S. House districts. There has never been a national court ruling in either the UK or Canada comparable to Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), which mandated that districts in multi-district states be as equal in population as possible (and in effect that redistricting is to take effect in every multi-district state after each new census). In 2001, while the average Canadian riding had 97,426 people, the Yukon Territory’s one riding (presumably the least populated in the country) had 28,675. Other districts didn’t deviate from the average nearly that much, but there are considerations other than population alone that the non-partisan boundary drawers are to take into account.
In Britain, the non-partisan boundary commissions for, respectively, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, are each presented with a total number for their particular entity, that number being based primariy (perhaps not exclusively) on the population of the entity relative to the population of the country, and they are to take into account first the integrity of local governmental boundaries but also population as they draw the district boundaries.
So I agree with you that Commons districts are more malapportioned (unequal in population) than U.S. House districts.
Of course, the formula for representation in the U.S. Senate–equality of states (two Senators for California, two for Wyoming)–creates the most
malapportioned districts imaginable. Whether this is a good or bad thing is in the eye of the
beholder. And I remember that many people opposed Wesberry v. Sanders (and its counterpart for
state legislatures, Reynolds v. Sims) on the
grounds that the Supreme Court was departing from other arguably legitimate representational criteria and worshipping at the altar mathematical population targets.
By the way, the written Constitution you referenced in an earlier posting enshrines the
principle of malapportionment in the U.S. Senate. The Constitution stipulates that no state can be denied against its will its “equal suffrage” in the Senate. So an amendment bringing about
population equality as the criterion for U.S.
Senate representation would require the approval of all 50 states.
The 1777 Articles of Confederation (requiring ALL States to approve Amdts to it) was dumped by the 1787 U.S.A. Constitution – See Art. VII (ignored by the Supremes).
ALL *area* based representation systems are automatic ANTI-Democracy gerrymanders — U.S.A. House of Reps, Senate, Electoral College, each house of every State legislature, many local govt regimes — all inherited from the old rotten borough gerrymander regime in the English / U.K. House of Commons.
I.E. ALL major regimes in the U.S.A. are ANTI-democratic — i.e. nonstop EVIL monarchy / oligarchy machinations by EVIL elites in the regimes.
Result — the pending economic collapse of the U.S.A. due to INSANE govt deficits, bailout schemes, etc.
For any ignorant People (including the party hack Supremes) — a *democratic* legislative body exists ONLY because ALL of the Electors can NOT assemble in person and enact legislation.
P.R. apparently can along in the 1840s — a mere 150 plus years ago. EVIL gerrymander regimes linger on.
typo — can along = came along
Here are links to full results and commentary from the BBC. In addition to the five candidates mentioned above, the BBC lists UK Independence Chris Adams 843; Monster Raving Loony Bananaman Owen 242; English Democrat Derek Allpass 157; Independent (Miss Great Britain) Amanda Harrington 128; Common Good Dick Rodgers 121; Independent (Miss Great Britain) Louise Cole 91; Fur Play Harry Bear 73.
I note that the Conservative got 50%-plus in the June 25 by-election, but I assume that’s not required to win a UK by-election.
John Stennis was first elected U. S. senator from Mississippi in the (nonpartisan) 1947 special election with 26.9%. William Colmer, a Dixiecrat, finished second and surely would have beaten Stennis if there had been a runoff.
The following year, the House speaker, a Dixiecrat, had the law changed to require 50%-plus to win a special election.
That’s right, parliamentary by-elections, like general elections, are run under First Past The Post – you need only a simple plurality to win.
Generally this means a votes share in the mid-thirties is needed to win, but the rise of the Green in particular raises the prospect of tight 4-way marginals, which would mean MPs being elected on vote shares as low as 25%.
This may lead to louder calls for either proportional representation or run-off elections.
I wouldn’t bet on it Gary.
The SNP,Plaid, Greens and BNP have all polled well in seats and led to the election of candidates on less than 40%. In Ulster of course the five-party system makes it even more likely.
Its notable that PR is slowly spreading in the UK. Northern Ireland and London of course also have PR for their assemblies while Scottish local goverment moved to PR at the last elections (Northern Irish ones already had it). Our Euro-elections are also fought under PR. I suspect Welsh local government will be the next bastion to fall.
That’s the good news. The less good news is that there are already at least three (arguably 4) DIFFERENT PR schemes being used!
Comment #7: The party which eventually became the Democratic Party was first called the “republican interest.” It was then called the Republican Party, or the Jeffersonian Republicans. After the Federalist Party died, two factions developed within the Jeffersonian Republicans– the National Republicans and the Old Republicans. In the 1820s, the party began to be called the Democratic Republican Party, and Andrew Jackson was the first president to call himself a Democrat.
In late 1833, the National Republicans became the nucleus of the new Whig Party, which ran its last presidential candidate in 1852 and finally died in the mid-1850s. The Republican Party founded in 1854 consisted of former Whigs, Democrats, and adherents of smaller parties.
Comment #9: the U. S. has two exceptions to the “first past the post” system for congressional elections. Georgia has runoff general elections (they have changed the threshold several times, and I can’t recall whether 45% or 50%-plus is now required to avoid a runoff).
And Washington state is implementing the “top two” system this year, which will include congressional elections.
BTW: why is the by-election necessary in David Davis’s district in the U. K.?