Electoral Systems - Supplementary Vote Flashcards
MAJORITARIAN principles - SV
This system is designed to try to ensure that a person/party elected has a broad majority of electorate support.
Very few elections have only 2 candidates and so elections held under majority systems have 2 stages predominantly.
If any candidate wins a majority in the first stage, then they are elected but this is not usually happen.
First stage is used to reduce the contest to one that is between just 2 candidates - this eliminates all the other but the top two.
If their second choice was a remaining candidate, then their votes are added onto theirs.
The Second stage is then a run-off between the 2 most popular candidates so one receives an absolute majority - a separate round 2 election or redistribution of second preference votes is done.
Where is SV used?
Electing Mayors or the Crime Commissioner elections in the UK
How does SV work in steps?
- Voters have two preferential votes - one in the column for the first choice and second in the next column for their second choice.
- winning more than 50% of the first-choice votes? They are elected!!!
- none win? Then all but the top two candidates are eliminated, but the ballot papers of the eliminated candidates are then counted.
- the candidate with the most first and second choice votes are elected –> if people selected a third party, then their vote doesn’t count in the second round but If they voted for one of the two big parties, then their vote counts in either elimination or election.
Positives - always backed by a majority
2021 London Mayoral election case study
The winner always gets at least 50% of the votes and even if Labour and Cons are in the top two, everyone else still gets a ‘second vote.’
This increases the legitimacy of the results inevitably and also keeps extremist parties out of influence and leads to a strong, one-party government which prevents coalitions.
In the first round, Khan on 40% in the first round, and he got 55% in the second round.
Sadiq Khan won with a vote share of 55% in the second round of votes, whilst Shaun Bailey won with 45% of the vote share.
Positives - voter choice
Voters have far greater choice than in FPTP because they can vote for their smaller party using their first preference but use their second vote to vote for Labour and Conservative to make sure their vote is not wasted.
Positives - simplicity
SV is much easier to understand than STV or AMS - because you can understand how votes are cast and they are counted for afterwards.
Positives - encourages moderate campaigning for all parties
Because gaining the second-choice votes are important for the two main parties, but also for all the minor parties in the first round.
Positives - MPs would be more legitimate
They would have the majority of support from their voters.
Single-member constituencies can flourish because the constituency-MP links can be maintained.
Negatives - two-party dominance remains
The elimination of all but two of the candidates in the second round means that the two-party dominance system still remains because third parties are unlikely to do well. The result is not proportional and it encourages tactical voting rather than providing a better choice for the voters.
the only independent was Ken Livingstone in 2000, but that was only because he lost the nomination to lab candidate Frank Dobson.
since 2000, in 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and in 2021, all results have been either Lab or Conservative.
2004 - Livingstone as Lab 2008 - Boris Johnson 2012 - Boris Johnson 2016 - Sadiq Khan 2021 - Sadiq Khan
Negatives - a false majority?
A candidate only needs to gain the majority of the valid votes - the votes that count.
Within the second round, anyone that does not have a second preference or whose second preference has been eliminated is ignored, which means that the winning candidate may not actually have the legitimate majority.
Negatives - confusing ballot papers?
114,000 first preference votes were rejected. This is a record number of rejected votes… all due to a confusing ballot paper. This makes up to 5% of this year’s first preference votes.
this happened in the 2021 Mayoral election to elect London Mayor.
Turnout for the 2021 London Mayoral election
41%
