British Study Says Instant Runoff Voting, if Used in Last British Election, Would have Helped Liberal Democrats, Harmed Major Parties

Posted on by May 4, 2011

The Economist has this article about the upcoming British vote on Instant Runoff Voting (called Alternative Voting in Britain, or “AV” for short). Toward the end of the article, one reads that the University of Essex studied exit polls and opinion polls from the last election, and predicted what would have happened if Britain had been using IRV in that election.

The actual results were: Conservative 305 seats, Labour 258 seats, Liberal Democrats 57 seats (the article doesn’t mention the seats won by other parties). Under IRV, the study predicts the results would have been: Conservative 283, Labour 248, Liberal Democrats 89. Thanks to Jerry Kunz for the link.

Comments

British Study Says Instant Runoff Voting, if Used in Last British Election, Would have Helped Liberal Democrats, Harmed Major Parties — 11 Comments

  1. ANY profs in the U.K. able to detect —

    1. UNEQUAL votes for each MP winner.

    2. UNEQUAL total votes in each MP election area.

    3. About 20-25 percent indirect minority rule — to elect a bare majority of the MPs.

    P.R. and App.V. NOW — to save Civilization from the robot party hacks.

  2. Analyses like this are very hard to generalize to the party systems of other countries or the same country at other points in time. In the circumstances of recent U.K. elections, the Lib Dems might well benefit from IRV/Alternative Vote, as predicted here. If so, the overall result would be somewhat more proportional. Given other patterns of voter preferences, in combination with different geographical distributions of support, IRV can also do the opposite — give an even larger artificial majority than FPTP to the largest party. At all depends.

  3. IF the Alt.V. – IRV passes, then the minority rule percentage would be about 30 percent as in most gerrymander legislative bodies in the U.S.A. — average 60 percent district winners in about half the gerrymander districts = 60 x 1/2 = 30 percent.

  4. The thing is IRV/AV isn’t a perfect system, I think most notable figures who have related themselves to the Campaign on either side has admitted this; its just a question of whether its better than the system we have and whether it’d hinder attempts to move to a PR system if we wanted to in future if it did pass (the reason why most minor parties is saying no).

    Almost certainly, minor parties especially in England would be destroyed, The Green’s seat had the second worst % win in the entire country, with 31% and would almost certainly not win.

    The Lib Dems would have benefited at the Conservatives expense if it does pass; on the condition that their vote doesn’t totally shatter by the time they get to an election. I can’t see the Lib Dems hitting the 60 seat mark with or without AV and I certainly won’t be voting for them next election.

  5. “hurt major parties”…I thought Liberal Democrats are a major party, albeit the third largest.

  6. If the Alt.V. passes there will be 600 seats – much easier to have gerrymanders to wipe out the LibDems and pack the Labour folks into ghetto districts.

    i.e. semi-permanent Cons control for a LONG time.

    Top LibDems are TOTAL math MORONS.

  7. #5, these definitions are not precise. To me, a “major party” is one that has a chance of organizing the government, i.e., a party that has a chance of coming in with more seats than any other party.

  8. @ Demo Rep, the constituency size, location and number are actually part of a review totally separate from the AV referendum, and will possibly be passed even if it fails.

    I’ve said before why I think reduction to 600 seats is a mistake, the lowest level since the Union of Great Britain and Ireland 200 years ago, and still no “state” representation for those of us living in England.

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