How I'm voting in the referendum

by Ed Bowsher on 28 April 2011  |  40 comments
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Ed Bowsher gives a personal view on how he'll vote in the referendum on electoral reform.

I’ll start with a warning. This blog post isn’t about personal finance. It’s a personal view on how I’ll vote in the alternative vote referendum. Referendums are very rare in the United Kingdom and I can’t resist the opportunity to have my say!

What is the alternative vote?

I’ll start with a quick explanation of how the Alternative Vote (AV) system would work in the UK. Imagine you’re voting in a constituency where there are seven candidates.  As things stand under the First-past-the-post system, you can put a cross by one candidate and that’s it. There's nothing more you can do.

First-past-the-post ballot paper

With AV, the voter can instead rank the candidates in numerical order like this:

AV ballot paper

The voter has chosen to rank four of the seven candidates.  He’s allowed to rank as many candidates as he wishes. :Or as few.  In other words, he could have ranked all seven if he had wished or he could have just put a ‘1’ by the Labour candidate and left it at that.

At the count – scenario one

At the constituency count, all the first preferences – the ‘1s’ – are counted. Let’s imagine the results are as follows:

Labour:  52%

Con:        22%

Lib Dem: 15%

UKIP:        4%

Green:      4%

BNP:         2.5%

Loony:      0.5%

Under this scenario, the Labour candidate has won more than 50% of the votes. AV is designed find the candidate who is supported by a majority of constituents. In this case, Labour has the support of more than 50% of voters, so there is no need to count any of the second, third, fourth, or fifth preferences. The Labour candidate has won.

At the count – scenario two

Let’s look at a second scenario where the first preference votes are as follows:

Labour:   46%

Con:         23%

Lib Dem: 19%

UKIP:        6%

BNP:         1.5%

Green:      4%

Loony:     0.5% 

Labour hasn’t won the  support of 50% of the voters, so we need to start looking at the second preference votes of the losing candidates. The Official Monster Raving Loony candidate will be eliminated and his second preferences will be counted. Let’s imagine that all his second preferences went to Labour, so in the second round, Labour now has 46.5% of the vote. Here’s the full result from the second round:

Labour:   46.5%  (includes 0.5% gain from Loony)

Con:         23%

Lib Dem:   18%

UKIP:        6%

Green:       4%

BNP:         1.5%

Labour still doesn’t have 50% support, so the BNP candidate will be eliminated. Let’s say that a third of BNP voters didn’t pick a second preference, a third plumped for the Tories, and a third went for Labour. Here are the full results of the third round:

Labour:           47% (includes 0.5% gain from BNP)

Con:                23.5% (includes 0.5% gain from BNP)

Lib Dem:          18%

UKIP:                6%

Green:              5%

No preference:  0.5% ( BNP voters who didn't vote for a second preference)

Labour still doesn’t have enough votes, so the Green candidate is now eliminated. Most of the Green second preferences are for Labour although a few are for the Lib Dems and there are some no preferences too. Here are the results:

Labour:           50.5% (includes 3.5% gain from Greens)

Con:                 23.5%

Lib Dem:         19% (includes 1% gain from Greens)

UKIP:                6%

No preference:  1% (now includes 0.5% of Green votes who didn't express a second preference.)

Labour’s candidate now has the support of more than 50% of voters and has won the election. There’s no need to count the second preferences of UKIP or the Lib Dems. Even if all the Lib Dems and UKIP supporters had used their second preference to support the Tory, Labour would still win as it has support from more than 50% of voters.

At the count – scenario three

I’m going to quickly do one more scenario. Let’s imagine there are only four candidates and the results are as follows:

Labour:             42%

Conservative:  41%

Lib Dem:           10%

UKIP:                 7%

UKIP is eliminated and its second preferences are counted. Most UKIP voters (6%) have plumped for the Tories as their second preference. 1% have gone for Labour. Here are the results:

Labour:            43% (includes 1% from UKIP)

Conservative:  47% (includes 6% from UKIP)

The Tories are now in the lead but they haven’t got to 50% yet, so the Lib Dem candidate will now be eliminated and her second preferences will be counted. These votes break 60/40 in Labour’s favour. Here are the results:

Labour:            49% (includes 6% from Lib Dems)

Conservative:  51% (includes 4% from Lib Dems)

So the Conservative candidate has won the election with 51% of the votes even though Labour was the leader after the first preference votes were counted. In other words, Labour would have won under first-past-the-post but the Conservatives won under AV.

Hopefully, these examples have explained how AV works. In Part 2, I’ll say whether I think AV is a good idea or not.

Read how I'll actually vote in part 2 of this blog post.