Originally Posted by Furunculus:
that sounds like a problem of the electoral system, i.e. FPTP where the party has an inefficiently spread vote
rather than a problem of the electoral wards, n.b. which is the responsibility of the Boundary Commission.
Well yes, I reminded you of this just recently in our discussion of structural barriers to Labour politics in the UK.
FPTP is inherently likely to disadvantage certain constituencies or factions. This applies more or less also to those fixed geographic jurisdictions, in the US the "several states." After the Civil War, Republicans had enormous advantages in the Senate and Electoral College almost all the time until the New Deal (in part by using federal power to establish many small new Republican-dominated states in the West), then the Solid South gave Democrats the slant most of the time, but by the 21st century as the South finished turning deep Republican this advantage swung back to the Republican Party.
But for the most part, in both the UK and US, the jurisdictions composing the representation of the House of Commons/Representatives are not fixed. These are maps that must be drafted semi-regularly for the sole purpose of running elections. The exceptions are the single-district states in the US and national (Scotland, Wales) malapportionment in the UK (and, like, islands or whatever).
I haven't done a lot of reading on the districting process in the UK, but it seems a commonly-held observation that districting tended to be biased toward Labour in the late 20th century until rather recently - not because the districting commissions are necessarily biased, but because the rubrics they hew to had been biased toward the political geographies of Labour support. You can't claim a neutral process if the whole system is built to make one party's votes much more "inefficient" across constituencies. This is why the FPTP reform wave in the US over the past 20 years has focused on creating mathematical measures of fairness and competitiveness, such as the "efficiency gap," producing highly-competitive maps in deep-blue states such as California and Colorado, whereas as I understand it the UK districting framework largely deprecates explicit consideration of political bias and relies more on 19th-century modes of building credibility; compact borders, natural communities, and similarly-populated districts (at least compared to the US) are not enough.
From this 2001 analysis:
Originally Posted by :
There is general agreement that first-past-the-post in single-member constituencies is
one of the most disproportional of electoral systems. The reasons for this are well
understood. Much less discussed and understood, however, is the degree to which that
system treats political parties differentially, creating bias.
Such bias is well-illustrated by recent UK general elections. In 1979, the Conservative
party won 43.9 per cent of the votes cast and 53.4 per cent of the seats. Four years
later, it won 42.4 per cent of the votes but 61.1 per cent of the seats. In 1987, its
shares of the votes and seats were 43.4 and 57.8 per cent respectively, and then in
1992 its vote share fell slightly, to 42.3 per cent, but its share of the seats fell more
sharply – to 51.6 per cent. Labour won in 1997, with 43.3 per cent of the votes and
63.6 per cent of the seats. Thus over five elections, whereas the leading party’s share
of the votes only ranged between 42.3 and 43.9 per cent its share of the seats varied
more, from 51.6 to 63.6 per cent. With virtually the same share of the votes at four
successive elections the Conservatives won very different shares of the seats, and then
when Labour won with the same vote percentage its share of the seats was larger than
the Conservatives ever achieved.
The reasons for this differential treatment are found in the ‘classic’ abuses of
constituency-definition – malapportionment and gerrymandering. These – as Gudgin
and Taylor (1979) conclusively demonstrated – operate even when the redistribution
process (the UK term for redistricting) is undertaken by non-partisan, independent
bodies (in the UK, the Boundary Commissions, which operate under an Act of
Parliament with specified rules – albeit ambiguous and contradictory, as shown in a
recent detailed study: Rossiter, Johnston and Pattie, 1999)
Originally Posted by :
Thus in 1997 Labour got 43.3 per cent of the votes cast and the
Conservatives 30.7. Reducing the Labour share by 6.3 percentage points in every
constituency and increasing the Conservative share by the same amount makes them
equal, with 37.0 per cent each. But with those equal shares, Labour would have won
82 more seats than the Conservatives – a very clear bias in its favor (the total number
of seats was 659).
Originally Posted by :
Why has Labour increasingly benefited? In the 1960s and 1970s this was largely
because of the malapportionment components plus abstentions. In the 1990s
gerrymandering, abstentions and minor party influences all played a part.
Three reasons generated this change in Labour’s fortunes – given that its geography
of support remained very much the same across the 14 elections and the Boundary
Commission procedures did not change markedly.
1. The negative impact of the cracked gerrymander. A cracked gerrymander is risky
for the benefiting party: constituencies with small majorities are vulnerable if its
opponent performs well at an election. Labour benefited from its large vote share
increase in 1997 (allied with the Conservatives’ lowest share), winning many
constituencies in the usually pro-Conservative cracked gerrymander areas. The
gerrymander bias component was worth 48 seats to Labour as a consequence.
2. Labour’s focused campaigns in 1992 and 1997. Labour paid relatively little
attention to its safe seats at these two contests, knowing it would almost certainly
win them all – especially in 1997. In the absence of intensive local campaigns,
turnout was generally low, increasing Labour’s advantage from the abstentions
component (from 10 seats in 1987 to 20 in 1992 and 33 in 1997) without it losing
any seats.
3. Tactical voting (the British term for strategic voting). In 1992 and, especially
1997, the volume of tactical voting in Conservative-held seats increased
substantially, as an increasingly sophisticated electorate (many of them
determined to unseat the Conservative candidates) responded to cues provided by
the parties and other interest groups to support the opposition party best-placed to
achieve that. In general, the second-placed party in Conservative-held seats
increased its vote share by more than the average amount whereas the third-placed
party’s share fell (often absolutely). As a result, many of the second-placed parties
won – increasing the number of minor party victories – whereas the number of
wasted votes per seat lost by third-placed parties fell. (On tactical voting see
Johnston et al, 1997, and Evans et al 1999.)
Together, all three strategies meant that Labour substantially reduced both its number
of surplus votes per seats won and number of wasted votes per seat lost (which for the
first time fell below the Conservative level). Not only did it increase its vote share
substantially between 1992 and 1997, therefore, it also increased the efficiency of its
vote share: it got a much better return on its votes (a higher seats:votes ratio) than ever
before.
But of course political geographies can change, coming from above (e.g. change in districting authorities, or contraction/expansion of the legislature), or below (e.g. the rise of new parties or coalitions). I can't say how the maps are being changed by the long-term shift of college-educated voters into center-left parties as that continues. And one might also argue that it is not a desirable principle for elections to be more competitive, though I don't know why low competitiveness would be preferable in any healthy electoral democracy.
But, so anyway, with the past 6 UK elections having been conducted using districts based on data from 2000 or older, and that map becoming biased against Labour representation since the end of the Blair era, I can only hope new boundaries in the 2024 election wind up helping Labour. I'm sure someone has done low-maths analysis of the possibilities.
