The Conservatives may regret campaigning to keep first past the post in 2011
The Conservatives campaigned against changing the voting system in 2011, but it could have saved them from a potential wipeout at this election.
As the UK prepares for the election in July, the polls do not make pleasant reading for the Conservative party.
While some are predicting catastrophic losses, others think the Tories could be overtaken by Reform UK.
With a quarter of their 2019 voters predicted to vote for Reform in July, the Conservatives will be thinking about how this could have been avoided.
One option would have been to choose a different side of history in a divisive referendum – the 2011 vote on electoral reform.
In that campaign, the Conservatives were opposed to introducing an alternative vote system (AV) to replace the current first past the post system of voting. Their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, had been the ones who pushed for the referendum to be held, and led the campaigning on the other side.
First past the post hands constituencies to whichever candidate wins the most votes, regardless of whether they took the overall majority of votes (the combined votes for other candidates could add up to more than the winner). This system means that candidates can, and often do, win constituencies after securing fewer than 50% of the vote.
What alternatives are there?
AV is a form of preferential voting widely used in Australia, including national elections for the House of Representatives (the Australian equivalent of the House of Commons).
In the version of AV proposed for the UK, voters would have to rank candidates in order of preference on their ballot paper. For example, if there were five candidates, voters would rank them from one to five, according to who they preferred.
When counting the votes, the number of first preference votes would be counted, and if these gave no candidate more than 50% of the overall vote, the candidate with the lowest number of votes would be eliminated. The second preferences of that candidate would then be distributed to the remaining candidates. This process would be repeated until one candidate gained more than 50% of the preferences and was then declared winner.
David Cameron, prime minister at the time of the AV referendum, argued that fringe party supporters could have greater influence on election outcomes. under such a system:
If you vote for a mainstream candidate who is top of the ballot in the first round, your other preferences will never be counted. But if you vote for a fringe party who gets knocked out, your other preferences will be counted.
After a campaign that saw the British public somewhat bamboozled by what either side was arguing for, the country ultimately voted 67.9% against introducing AV.
As the party that has won the most elections under first past the post, the Conservatives saw no reason to abolish it. And when they continued to benefit from the system in every election since 2011, they would would have felt confident in that decision. For a long time, it has been other parties – such as the Liberal Democrats – who would have had the most to gain from electoral reform.
Now, however, first past the post is now threatening to reverse the Conservatives electoral fortunes, with some predicting the Labour party could win a majority of over 150 seats, on potentially quite a small proportion of the overall national vote.
The rise of Reform UK has exacerbated this, challenging the Conservatives’ ability to hold onto right-leaning voters.
Reform is not, of course, a fan of first past the post either. In a system where the candidate with the most votes wins, Reform is unlikely to win many, if any, seats.
But while first past the post limits Reform at the national level, it empowers its candidates to take chunks out of mainstream party support. If voters who have previously voted for the Conservative party now vote for Reform, this will cut the total number of votes for the Conservatives, favouring Labour or the Liberal Democrats.
Under the AV system, the threat of Reform taking Conservative seats would be reduced. In seats where Reform candidates would get eliminated, the Conservative vote would likely be bolstered by being Reform voters’ second preference, above Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
Another threat from first past the post to the Conservatives at this election is tactical voting. Because the current system only offers one preference, the public often chooses to vote just to remove the incumbent party, rather than who they would prefer to support. The Conservatives may fall victim to this, with prominent figures such as Carol Vorderman and websites such as StopTheTories encouraging the public to vote tactically and remove Conservative MPs.
But if the election was taking place under AV, tactical voting would be unnecessary because voters’ preferences get taken into account if their first choice candidate is eliminated.
Modelling after the 2015 election suggested that the Conversative party would have been better off under an alternative vote system, where UKIP voters would have ranked the Conservatives ahead of other major parties. The same is likely to be the case in 2024.
In 2011 it was the Liberal Democrats, and to a lesser extent Labour, who appeared to have the most to gain from the alternative vote system. It is somewhat ironic that the voting system once opposed by the Conservative Party might have mitigated what is predicted to be a catastrophic election defeat in 2024.
Adam Webster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.