England’s local elections show the warped world of First Past the Post Local people are best placed to decide the priorities of their local government. But as we say today, voters in England and Wales have very little impact on who sits in their local council chambers.... Posted 03 May 2024
Voters are being treated as guinea pigs in this year’s local elections Today, the 2nd May, millions of voters will head to the polls to elect more than 2,500 councillors, 37 police and crime commissioners, 10 metro mayors, 1 MP (by-election in Blackpool South) and London Assembly... Posted 02 May 2024
Changes to First Past the Post style Electoral College increase chances of Trump victory Barring an act of God, 5 November 2024 will see a rematch of the 2020 US Presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Looking back at the nationwide result in 2020, you would be... Posted 26 Mar 2024
Vote splitting trick won’t work with Scotland’s Single Transferable Vote On March 7th voters in Hillhead in Glasgow will be heading to the polls for a council by-election. Among those standing are candidates from the Scottish Greens and Independent Green Voice (IGV) – plenty of... Posted 04 Mar 2024
How many hung parliaments has the UK had? Westminster’s First Past the Post (FPTP) system often results in some parties gaining far more seats than their vote share deserves. But there is no guarantee that this un-earned ‘bonus’ always means one party gets... Posted 14 Feb 2024
Change to London mayoral elections complicates thinking for independent candidates Over the weekend The Sun reported on rumours that Paul Scully MP, the former Conservative Minister for London, was considering running as an independent candidate for London mayor. We can’t comment on whether these Tory... Posted 05 Feb 2024
First past the post distorts public opinion on small boats Last week’s YouGov MRP poll showing Labour on course for a 1997-style general election victory created a big splash. In addition to asking about people’s general election voting intention, YouGov asked respondents about their views... Posted 22 Jan 2024
Changing boundaries shouldn’t change election results For the past 30 years, political scientists Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher have been investigating how new boundaries will impact the political makeup of Parliament. Whenever new constituency maps are designed, they estimate what the... Posted 16 Jan 2024
The Non-Battleground Election: Millions of voters are ignored Last week, the Labour Party started the process of selecting their general election candidates for 211 ‘non-battleground’ constituencies in England. The description of these seats as being ‘non-battleground’ is telling, implying that Labour will not... Posted 18 Dec 2023
Strong government vs good government? First Past the Post means our governments will always fail to deliver Government failures are always in the news, but we rarely question why it is that our governments often seem so wholly incapable of delivering on their objectives. It’s easy to point at individual ministers and... Posted 30 Nov 2023