Mark Pack

Are you squandering the votes of 1 in 10 of your supporters?

By | Mon 16th March 2009 - 10:20 am

The latest Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties (Volume 19, Number 1) has some interesting research into how many votes people cast in English local elections where this is more than one vacancy to be filled at once, e.g. a three member ward with all the seats up for election at once:

7-15% of total potential votes are unused …

Unused votes occur when electors have a restricted choice of candidates, principally when parties fail to field as many candidates as there an available seats … [and] unused votes stem from a misunderstanding of the electoral procedure … even when parties present a full slate of candidates, some voters (about one in fifteen in London and the districts; about one in nine or ten in the metropolitan boroughs) do not use their full quota …

Low levels of educational attainment among the population at large is also relevant to the explanation.

(Unused Votes in English Local Government Elections: Effects and Explanations by Colin Rallings, Michael Thrasher and Galina Borisyuk)

In other words, a significant minority of people go in to a polling station intending to support party X, but due to a failure to understand how many votes they can cast, they don’t give party X as many votes as they could.

Part of this is down to those running the election, and choices made over issue such as the design of ballot papers and the information provided in polling stations. However, part of this is in our hands – and how much effort we remember to make to explain multiple voting.

Read more by .
This entry was posted in What do the academics say?.
Advert

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

To have your photo next to your comment please signup your email address with Gravatar.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Please complete the name of this site, Liberal Democrat ...?

Advert

Recent Comments

  • Chloe
    Many people driving around in fifteen year old cars is an economic reality. Public transport outside of large cities is almost nonexistent at unsociable hours. ...
  • Chloe
    Of course David that's understandable. Sadly, too many times we've heard the usual PR statements rolled out. Robust measures will be put in place. Lessons mu...
  • Geoffrey Payne
    I was with you up to the online safety bill and "Should we as liberals not be advocating for a smaller government? What about being pro-business or pro-individu...
  • Geoffrey Payne
    I was holding my breathe but in the end the magic solution to the public sector funding crises did not appear. Lets look at the spending list we are committed t...
  • Nick Baird
    On the issue of loss of fuel duty, the Government is adding a new tax to be paid per mile by EVs and hybrids. At least partially replacing the lost tax revenue...