Boundary changes will not ensure ‘fairness' for Conservatives - Parliamentary Affairs article now available online - Dec 18, 2009
Labour's real advantage at next election is a better distribution of voters
January 2010 issue of Parliamentary Affairs
Discounted rate for Hansard Society members
In the forthcoming January 2010 issue of Parliamentary Affairs, leading academics demonstrate that changes in the redistribution of seats to create uniform constituency sizes have only a minor impact on the outcome of elections - the geography of each party's support base is much more important.
The article, Parliamentary Constituency Boundary Reviews and Electoral Bias: How Important are Variations in Constituency Size? by Galina Borisyuk, Ron Johnston, Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, examines the contention that equalising constituency sizes would address the inbuilt bias towards Labour in the current First Past the Post British electoral system.
The 2005 election demonstrated the ‘unfairness' of the voting system
- Labour got 36.1% of share of votes and 56.5% of the seats
- Conservatives got 33.2% of the votes and 31.5% of the seats
- Liberal Democrats got 22.6% of the votes and 9.9% of the seats
The authors show that the rules and procedures applied by the Boundary Commissions preclude the achievement of substantial equality in constituency electorates. Furthermore, the research measures electoral bias in a three-party system to demonstrate that variations in constituency electorates had only a minor impact on the outcomes of elections after the last two redistributions.
Almost half of the bias enjoyed by Labour in 2005 stemmed from geography and its superior vote distribution - on average it was more likely to ‘win small but lose big' than its opponents. In England at the 2005 general election, for example, Labour obtained one seat for every 28,111 votes that it won, whereas the ratio for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were 41,982 and 110,591 respectively.
Professor Michael Thrasher, co-author of the Parliamentary Affairs article, commented: ‘Our research shows that equalising the electorates is not the key issue. Labour's real advantage currently stems from a better distributed vote - it acquires fewer surplus and wasted votes than its rivals and benefits more than other parties from the general decline in electoral turnout, requiring fewer votes for its victories. These are the reasons that, despite the boundary changes that come into force at the next general election, the Conservative Party needs, all other things being equal, to hold a double-digit lead over Labour in the popular vote in order to secure even a slender majority in the next House of Commons.'
For further information, contact Virginia Gibbons, Head of Communications at the Hansard Society on mediaprog@hansard.lse.ac.uk or 020 7438 1225
Editors Notes
- Parliamentary Affairs is a long-established journal published by Oxford University Press in association with the Hansard Society. Individual subscriptions cost £57 a year; special reduced subscriptions for Hansard Society subscription members cost £26 a year (UK), €39 (Europe), US$52 (rest of the world).