Tag: Tim Smith
Why did the Conservatives’ large lead in vote shares produce only an 80-seat majority?
Plurality rule voting systems have a well-known tendency to exaggerate the seats of the largest party. A full analysis of the 2019 results remains to be completed, but Tim Smith finds evidence that this time around the Conservatives had a modest 23 seat advantage over Labour in terms of two-party bias. The ‘leader’s bias’ advantage was also much smaller than that which Labour enjoyed in 1997–2005. This may mean that the future boundary reforms to equalise constituency sizes may not be as beneficial as the Conservatives hope.
The best of Democratic Audit’s 2015 coverage of Parliament and Parliamentary reform
2015 has been an eventful year as far as Parliament is concerned. Despite developments concerning the election, Committees, the House of Lords, party funding, and lobbying, the fundamentals of the system remain the same. Here, Democratic Audit provide the best of our coverage of parliament, parliamentary reform, and related issues. Similar PostsAudit 2017: How democratic […]
The UK electoral system now decisively favours the Conservatives
The previous Coalition government attempted to redraw the boundaries of the UK’s Parliamentary constituencies in order to remove a perceived bias against them, and towards the Labour Party. Though contentious, it was reckoned that the system made it harder to win a majority for the Conservatives than it did for Labour. Tim Smith argues that […]
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