'Should we change the general election voting system?' poll discussion

[Deleted User]

Kered wrote: »

There is a by-election and there are 5 candidates standing, there is a 37% turnout of eligible voters.
No candidate gets over 50% share of the vote but one of them has 46.7% the next nearest has 39% and the rest are well below the mark but their voters have all marked the candidate that is in second place as their AV, does this mean that this will result in the second placed candidate actually winning the election? and if so when you multiply this result by every seat in the house, does that mean this country will have a second rate parliment and become the laughing stock of the free world?

In order to understand why the chances of this sort of thing happening are fairly slim, you need to look at elections extant where optional preferential voting takes place, such as Ireland.

In practice, what we see in Ireland is that typically between one-sixth and one-quarter of voters plump for a first choice and don't specify additional preferences. This goes for minor parties and independents as well - so it would be very difficult for someone with 39% of first preferences to catch up with someone with 46.7% of first preferences, because not all ballots will get transferred when no-hoper candidates are excluded.

Bear in mind also that individuals may cast their ballots in an assortment of ways - just because two parties are closely aligned does not mean that when one party's candidate drops out, all transferred ballots go automatically to the other party. Some voters will cast second preferences for other parties instead.

So in your example, a likelier outcome is that your candidate with 46.7% of first preferences will pick up some votes from excluded candidates anyway, and between that and ballots being exhausted (having no preferences left to transfer to another candidate), this would normally be enough to push them over the winning line even if the candidate isn't all that transfer-friendly.

Given that it's pretty unlikely to happen in one instance, let alone six hundred, I think there's no fear of the sort of "laughing-stock" outcome you describe.

[Deleted User]

Just to illustrate the above - if had an election where:

E: 76,000 V: 28,120 Turnout: 37.0%
Alice: 13,132 (46.7%)
Bob: 10,967 (39.0%)
Carol: 4,021 (14.3%)

Bob would need to gain, from Carol, 2,166 more transfers than Alice in order to win. That's a fairly tall order, because some of Carol's ballots will not have a second preference marked, and some will have Alice marked as second preference - and that's in an election where there's just one other candidate. If there are more candidates sharing those 4,021 votes, the chances of Bob gaining the required number of transfers are that much slimmer. It can happen, under some circumstances (for instance if Bob and Carol are closely aligned), but it's unlikely that it'll be commonplace.

grahamm

I've just seen on another site that someone from the "No2AV" campaign has created a phony website that calls anyone who is voting against AV "an !!!".

This is really childish and petty and shows the desperation of those who oppose the idea of AV.

I'm not going to link to that fake site as it will only boost its rankings, instead I'm linking to http://yes2av.wordpress.com/ which is the proper Yes2AV site and the more people who link to that via forums, facebook, twitter and so on, the more chance we have of the fake site being pushed down the rankings.

Gareth_Lazelle

There is also this:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/voting-reform-will-not-cause-more-cuts-treasury-insists-2226784.html

Published today debunking the money issues,

rpb

Kered wrote: »

There is a by-election and there are 5 candidates standing, there is a 37% turnout of eligible voters.
No candidate gets over 50% share of the vote but one of them has 46.7% the next nearest has 39% and the rest are well below the mark but their voters have all marked the candidate that is in second place as their AV, does this mean that this will result in the second placed candidate actually winning the election? and if so when you multiply this result by every seat in the house, does that mean this country will have a second rate parliment and become the laughing stock of the free world?

Marvin_the_Martian wrote: »

In order to understand why the chances of this sort of thing happening are fairly slim, you need to look at elections extant where optional preferential voting takes place, such as Ireland.

...

Given that it's pretty unlikely to happen in one instance, let alone six hundred, I think there's no fear of the sort of "laughing-stock" outcome you describe.

Marvin, you are absolutely right - it's very unlikely it would happen in any given constituency, and for it to happen in enough of the 600 constituencies to make any difference are even smaller.

But I maintain that even if it did happen it's the right result! As Kered stated (in his extreme and unlikely hypothetical case), the candidate with the most "first choice" votes had 46.7% and no second choices from anyone else. That means that 53.3% of the voters - a majority - didn't want anything to do with him! So FPTP would elect someone that the majority didn't want anywhere on their list of choices! :eek: And AV wouldn't! :T Correct result! The "second" candidate gets in because he/she was the first choice of 39% of the voters and second choice of 14.3% of the voters. And so 53.3% of the voters were happy with that candidate winning because they voted for him/her!

So again, this is The Right Thing To Do. One or more minor candidates were eliminated, and the candidate with 53.3% support got the seat, and the candidate with 46.7% support lost.

AV does the right thing again, and this is a fine example of why AV is preferable to FPTP.

If I was one of the voters whose first choice was eliminated, then I'd want my vote to go to my second choice - and that's just what AV does in your example!

Dave_Gould

grahamm wrote: »

http://yes2av.wordpress.com/ which is the proper Yes2AV site

Official site of the Yes! campaign is http://www.yestofairervotes.org/

It's an awful site (friends don't let friends use Blue State Digital) and the people running the campaign are a bit clueless but at least they're on the right side.

MothballsWallet

So when's the leafletting, on the high street and doorstep campaigning going to start then?

I've seen, heard or read little to nothing about all this recently, other than on MSE.

TheSaint_2

I don't see a problem with it. If you do not agree you only need vote for 1 person.
I think the more important changes that go along with this referendum are the boundary changes - which personally I think are a good thing as it makes every MP represent around about the same proportion of voters.

Greybeard0151

I quite like the idea of AV, or indeed any system which would increase the chances of a "hung" parliament, in order to reduce the influence of both the "loony left" and the "rabid right".:beer:

bargepole

A simple illustration of how AV works can be gleaned from the last Conservative party leadership contest - ironically, held under the very AV system that Cameron now opposes, but one which saw him elected leader which he wouldn't have been under FPTP:

1st round (MPs only voting):

David Davies 62 (31%)
David Cameron 56 (28%)
Liam Fox 42 (21%)
Ken Clarke 38 (19%)

So Clarke is eliminated, and a second round held:

David Cameron 90 (45%)
David Davies 57 (29%)
Liam Fox 51 (26%)

... which means that most of Clarke's supporters had transferred their votes to Cameron, and the original "winner" under FPTP had failed to pick up second preferences.

With Fox now eliminated, the voting was thrown open to the wider Tory party membership, and Cameron secured 68% of the votes to get the Leadership job.

The only difference between the above, and the proposed new AV system we're being asked to vote on, is that we will put preferences 1,2,3 on the ballot paper instead of a series of new ballots. Simples.