UK Election Arcana, Explained By Software

An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in 35 years the UK government is looking to be at risk of getting a hung or coalition government. (The most recent previous hung parliaments were in 1974 and 1929.) The voting rules are somewhat arcane and the votes this time are such that there are many strange possible outcomes and a surprisingly large number of permutations of coalitions that could be formed and political strategies that may go into their forming. There are at least 60 permutations, some more politically plausible than others. Adam Back wrote some software to work out the permutations, and lists some of the arcane factors affecting the outcome. If Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown chose to, it would appear even that he could simply refuse to resign, ostensibly trying to form a coalition indefinitely, maybe even forcing the Queen to dismiss the current government, which last happened in 1834 under King William IV."

Comments

Silly Brits

[ShakaUVM]

Silly Brits.

This is why they need a reasonable, commonsense system like our electoral college.

Re:Silly Brits

[vadim_t]

No, that's the wrong way to see it.

"Well, at least it's better than in bumfuckistan" is a justification for complacency. Don't wait for it to get worse, do some work and help make it better.

At least you guys -have- minority parties. Good luck finding a single person in the US congress that isn't a republican or democrat (or an 'independent' who votes 99.999% with one of the 2 parties).

So are you trying to do something about it, or just complain about it online?

The grandparent is setting an excellent example here.

Re:Silly Brits

[IAmGarethAdams]

Yes, no countries anywhere successfully use a proportional representation system

Re:Silly Brits

[Capsaicin]

Works well in Australia. ... The lower house is more about local issues, whereas the senate is about larger issues that dont necessarily have enough local interest to get a seat in the lower house but enough so that they can have a seat in the upper house.

With all due respect to my compatriot that is a very strange characterisation of the Australian political system. The lower house was always intended to be about inter- and intra-national issues (we are a federation of states), whereas the upper house was intended to represent the interests of the states as a house of review. This is why upper house members are elected (proportionally) on a per state basis. The lower house members being elected on a seat-by-seat representative basis.

That was, historically, the theory, however the fact of party politics means that the Senate (upper house) reflects the interests of the party rather than the state (except perhaps for Queensland where the majority conservative party is the minority partner in federal conservative govts). In effect the lower house is the house of government dominated by the major parties, while the upper functions primarily as a house of review. "Local issues" are handled by state and local government.

It is true, it does work well, if not as designed. Because of the representative nature of the lower house, the two major parties are favoured (even in the face of preferential voting), giving government a measure stability lacking from systems which have proportional representation (PR) in both houses. Whereas the semi-PR nature (ie PR on state-by-state basis), better reflects the diversity of the electorate, giving minor parties a review role. IMO it could be improved by making the upper house PR on a national basis, but the obstacles to achieving that are probably insurmountable.

Re:Silly Brits

[Don_dumb]

The vast majority of britons looked at what the lib dems offered, said 'he looks nice but no thanks' and actually reduced their vote share - yet they could get cabinet seats.

Wrong. The Lib Dems got 23% of the vote, an INCREASE of 1%. Citation - BBC Full election results.
They had a reduction in the number of seats. - more votes, less power.

It has to be a broken system that gives them less than 10% of the seats for almost a quarter of the vote. Especially when you consider that they increased their vote, yet decreased their number of MPs and that Labour got 29% (only 6 per cent more) of the vote somehow giving them 4 times as many seats. In fact both Labour and the Tories (Conservatives) got over 10% more power (seats) than their share of the vote.

Re:Arcane?

[thetoadwarrior]

It's not arcane but it is a bit outdated and arguably unfair in the sense the Lib Dems had nearly as many votes as Labour but a fraction of the seats.

If you look at the numnbers, they have the following number of seats:
con: 306
labour 258
lib dem 57.

It sounds like the conservatives trashed the lib dems but that's not really the case.

If you look at the actual votes it goes like this:
con: 10,706,647
labour: 8,604,358
Liberal Democrat 6,827,938

While I don't want Labour back in power if they do form a coalition I don't think it's that bad of a deal. More people did get what the party they voted for and Labout and Lib Dems do actually have more in common.

I think the system needs tweaking to reflect the portion of votes that each party received. Should Lib Dems have such little power (assuming no coalitions) compared to Labour when nearly as many people picked them? Arguably all systems are like this when you group a whole nation's total votes but the UK is small enough, imo, that perhaps it should. You can't really say different blocks within London, for example, are so different that we should leave things as is.

The problem both parties have with PR

[Budenny]

The problem both Labor and the Conservatives have with PR, is that it would lead to coalition governments. This is easy to see. The Liberals had 23% of the last vote, the Conservatives 36%, and Labor 29%. This is more or less the share of the popular vote that the three parties have had for the last 30+ years.

You can see that if each party has the same number of seats as they have percentage of the votes, then no party is generally going to have a total majority over the other two. You will just about always have a situation, like in Holland, where the third party is in every government, sometimes in coalition with Labor and sometimes with Conservatives.

The reason why both of the two larger parties do not want this, is that they represent essentially minority interests. The Conservative Party historically represents inherited wealth and also the rural areas. Which are dominated by large landowners. The Labor party represents big cities, the industrial workforce and the public sector trade unions. And of course the large welfare population of dependents. Both are ready and eager to impose heavy costs on the country as a whole, as long as they get some, often fairly small, percentage of those costs for their own interest groups. This tendency, which is a form of looting, gets more extreme with the second and especially the third term of any government. In the first term of any government, it tends to behave responsibly. The first Blair term, for instance, was marked by restraint in public spending and no deals with the public sector unions.

The second and third terms have seen enormous public spending, mostly on public sector union wages, which has been marketed as 'investing in our great public services'. This has imposed costs on the country which dwarf the benefits to the recipients of the benefits, but no-one cares what it costs the country, as long as they are doing better.

The Conservatives are no better. We can expect something similar in the second and third terms of any Conservative government. The interesting difference about this Labor government has been its approach to the finance sector, which is referred to in the UK as 'the City'. This Labor government has been much closer to the City than any previous one.

You can see that this pattern of behavior will be eliminated by coalition governments. The problem is, in your first term you generally govern for the country, the better to get a second term. When in the second or third term you move to payoff time, and start the outrageous rewarding of your interest group, if its a coalition government, the other partner will just say no, force an election, and then move into coalition with the other large party. It will be game over.

The sheer rage that the idea of proportional representation arouses in the hearts of Conservative Party stalwarts is due to this. They are seeing the prospect of the second and third term troughs being smashed before their eyes. No more feasting. The whole rationale of the parties goes.

What happens with coalition government, on say the Dutch lines, is that it replaces the focus on who is in power, with a focus on what the program is going to be, what the policies are. In the UK at the moment all anyone cares about is who is in power, because whoever it is, can hand out the spoils. Once you cannot do this any more, you have to focus on governing for the country. Now that is not what either of the two large parties want to do, at least, no more than they absolutely have to.

And this is why far more of the UK wants PR than anyone in either of the two big parties will admit. It is not just the 25% that vote Liberal. It is also those who routinely switch from one party to the other, to give the other guys a chance.

If you think about it, in the situation I have described, what does the rational voter do? He/she is confronted with a two party system in which the second and third terms of any government are going to feature irresponsible looting of a sort mos