It’s been a while since my last post, but despite it being a time of constant political crisis and upheaval, punctuated by increasingly desperate parliamentary shenanigans, not much has actually changed. We still don’t have a deal to allow the UK to leave the European Union in an orderly fashion and we still don’t know really know when (or if) we will actually leave. Theresa May is still Prime Minister, in an unlikely feat of political survival worthy of Tyrion Lannister.
Why Is Britain Still Electing Members of the European Parliament (MEPs)?
The latest chapter in the long running saga is the upcoming elections for the European Parliament, which will take place across Europe on 23 May, 2019. The UK has to participate, as we are still a member of the EU, and so we find ourselves in the bizarre situation of spending £100m to run national elections for a body we are desperately trying to leave. In normal times (remember them?), there is very limited interest in these elections – turnout the last time we voted in 2014 was just 35.4%.
This time, however, despite the likelihood that the elected British MEPs will have a very short tenure (they will cease to be MEPs once the UK formally leaves the EU), there is an intense and feverish focus on the outcome. Will the newly formed Brexit Party sweep in and be the largest party, despite having no policies and having only existed for a few weeks? Will the Conservatives have a disastrous night and sink to fourth or fifth place – signalling, finally, the end of Theresa May’s time as Prime Minister? Will the Liberal Democrats experience a resurgence in popularity? Polling shows that the results could be very surprising, and that lots of voters are abandoning the traditional politics of Conservative versus Labour in protest at the inability of the major parties to resolve the Brexit crisis and are instead turning to alternative parties to send a simple and familiar message – Leave or Remain.
Let’s Talk About Voting Systems!
So many people abandoning their traditional party loyalty has put tactical voting front and centre. But how does someone vote to ensure the maximum number of MEPs for their preferred Brexit position and send the right message to Westminster? And therein lies a fascinating question which merits further discussion; let’s start by looking at the voting system that is used for the European Parliament elections and how it differs from other UK elections.
First Past The Post
In a UK general election, 650 MPs are elected to the House of Commons using what is know as the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. The country is divided into 650 constituencies and each one has its own competition on election day, with the candidate who gets the most votes being returned as the MP for that constituency. The government is then formed by the party which has the most MPs once all the votes have been counted. This system will sound familiar in the US as congressional elections follow a similar pattern (albeit with bigger constituencies), with each state electing its own representatives to each national legislative body.
FPTP has some advantages over other systems. There is strong local accountability as each MP represents, and is directly elected by, a specific group of voters. The system tends to result in strong and stable governments (if you’ll pardon the phrase) as usually one party will have the majority of MPs in the House, despite not winning a majority of votes overall, which allows the government to implement its agenda without having to compromise with other parties. It’s also simple and easy to understand for the electorate.
There are serious drawbacks, however. The threshold to elect an MP is very high – a party needs to win a large proportion of the vote in a particular constituency to get an MP and that’s difficult for the smaller parties. This can result in the proportion of MPs being elected differing wildly from the proportion of votes cast for the various parties. This was particularly apparent in the 2015 general election where the UK Independence Party (UKIP) obtained 12.6% of the vote but only had 1 MP (0.2% of MPs). Its votes were spread across the country, so it failed to win individual competitions despite coming second or third in many constituencies. This means that votes for parties other than the main two or three parties can be seen as wasted, which pushes people towards the main parties or can lead to people feeling disenfranchised.
Proportional Representation
Because of the problems with FPTP, proportional representation (PR) systems are popular alternatives, particularly in other European countries. In essence, PR consists of trying as far as possible to make sure the elected body reflects the popular vote and is therefore fairer. In the simplest form, each party puts up a list of candidates in order and they get the number of representatives which reflects their vote share. So, the higher up the party list you are, the more likely you are to be elected.
PR also has issues, however. Because smaller parties get more representation, it’s unusual for one party to have a majority of representatives and so governments tend to be coalitions made up of one big party supported by several smaller ones. This can result in smaller parties being able to impose their agenda on larger ones, in return for agreeing to be part of a ruling coalition. Whether you see this as a good or bad thing will often depend on whether you agree with the policies in question – liberals may see it as a good thing that the Green Party can push governments to be more environmentally conscious, but would be more worried if, for example, a nationalist party insisted on harsh immigration policies. It can result in unstable governments (coalitions have a habit of falling apart) which are forced to implement some policies which don’t reflect a large proportion of people in the country. And it’s complicated – when you vote for a particular party you don’t know if their platform will make it into the government’s agenda even if they do form part of the government.
The D’Hondt System
To counteract the negative effects of PR a plethora of variations of PR have been developed, each with its pros and cons. The EU requires member states to use a proportional system for elections to the European Parliament but leaves it up to individual countries to decide which system to adopt. Since 1999, the UK has used the D’Hondt system – other EU nations use different systems. The D’Hondt system is named after Belgian mathematician Victor D’Hondt who described it in 1878 for allocations of parliamentary seats. In the US it is known as Jefferson’s Method, after Thomas Jefferson introduced it in 1792 for apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives following a census. It was used until 1842. It works like this:
The UK is divided up into 12 regions. D’Hondt is only used for 11 of the regions – in Northern Ireland the Single Transferable Vote system is used. Each region is allocated a certain number of MEPs from the UK total of 73, based on population. So, for example, the West Midlands has 7, London has 8 and Wales only has 4. Voters in each region cast their votes for a party not an individual. Votes are counted and then a mathematical process is applied to allocate MEPs. The party with the highest number of votes gets the first MEP. Their votes are then halved, and the party with the new highest number of votes gets the next MEP. The second party’s votes are then halved and the process repeated. When a party makes it to the top of the pile again and is allocated its second MP, its original vote tally is divided by the number of MEPs it has plus 1. So, after its second MEP, its total is divided by 3, after its third MEP its total is divided by 4 and so on. The process is repeated until all the MEPs have been allocated. There is a good explanation of how it works in practice here.
The system still allows for local accountability (as MEPs are elected to represent a region), which is its advantage, but it does have some drawbacks. The regions are decided according to existing political boundaries rather than according to population which mean that in some regions in particular the number of MEPs is too small for true proportionality as the threshold problem still arises. Competing in North East England (three seats), a party typically needs to win over 15% of the votes to convert into one seat and over 30% to win two seats. Whereas in South East England (ten seats), 8% tends to be easily enough to win a seat, 15% sufficient to win two.
So How Does Tactical Voting Work?
The result of this disproportionality is that MEP allocation doesn’t reflect actual vote share that closely, and this is where tactical voting comes in. There are three unabashedly Remain parties – the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party and the newly-minted Change UK Party. They all advocate a second or confirmatory referendum with the intention of overturning the original Brexit vote and allowing the UK to remain in the EU.
There are two strongly pro-Brexit parties; one helpfully called the Brexit Party, led by ex-UKIP leader Nigel Farage, and UKIP itself. They both advocate scrapping the government’s deal and leaving the EU without a deal (widely viewed as being hugely damaging to the UK economy as discussed in a previous blog).
Then there are the the two main parties (Labour and Conservatives), both of which are officially pro-Brexit though Labour’s actual position is far from clear.
A recent analysis of voting intentions for the 2019 elections puts those intending to vote for remain parties on 27% of the electorate compared with Brexit parties (excluding Conservatives and Labour) on just under 30%. So pretty close. But remain parties are projected to only get 9 MEPs (12.8%) compared to the Brexit Party’s 29 MEPs (41.4%). UKIP’s fortunes have waned – it is not predicted to get any MEPs this time, despite winning 24 seats in 2014.
If the remain parties united their vote, they would get 21 MEPs and reduce the Brexit Party to 23. There is therefore a drive to encourage remain voters to vote tactically to maximise the number of remain MEPs that are elected – led by Remain Voter. If remain voters in a particular region shift their votes to one party, even if it isn’t the party they support, that party is more likely to make the threshold and therefore gain an MEP.
It’s a dangerous tactic however, as if enough voters don’t get the message then you just split the vote even more. There wasn’t enough time, once it was confirmed that the UK would definitely be taking part in the elections, for the three parties to agree a formal pact and perhaps put up joint candidates and this may result in the tactical voting push failing. It will be very interesting to see what happens on Thursday, whether enough voters are willing to cast their votes in this way.
Tune in Friday to See What Happened
However it works out, it’s certain that the results of the election will reverberate through British politics. if the vote goes as predicted, the Brexit Party will be a new political power seeking to repeat its victory at the next general election. And that general election could be sooner that expected, as if the Conservative vote plummets and the party chooses a new leader and Prime Minister then the prospect of another early snap election increases. It doesn’t look like things will return to normal anytime soon!