How democratic are the reformed electoral systems used in mayoral and devolved elections?

As part of the 2017 Audit of UK Democracy, Patrick Dunleavy and DA staff examine how democratic the two big reformed electoral systems used in the UK – the ‘Additional Members System (AMS)’ and the ‘Supplementary Vote (SV)’ are, and how successful they have been in showing the way for more modern electoral systems under British political conditions.

The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan in October 2016. Photo: Lee via a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence

This is an old version of this article. An updated, 2018 edition is available here. You can also download the full 2018 Democratic Audit from LSE Press here. 

What does democracy require for an electoral system?

• It should accurately translate parties’ votes into seats in the legislature (e.g. Parliament)
• In a way that is recognised as legitimate by most citizen (ideally almost all of them).
• No substantial part of the population should regard the result as illegitimate, nor suffer a consistent bias of the system ‘working against them’.
• If possible, the system should have beneficial effects for the good governance of the country.
• If possible, the voting system should enhance the social representativeness of the legislature, and encourage high levels of voting across all types of citizens.

Since 1999 voting systems in the UK have diversified. The first Blair government, with Liberal Democrat co-operation, created proportional Additional Member Systems (AMS) between 1998-2000 for new devolved bodies in Scotland, Wales and London. These will have their fifth round of elections in May 2016. Labour also set up the successful London Mayor system, and since 2010 Conservative ministers have encouraged ‘strong mayor’ elections elsewhere, further expanding the use of a second ‘Supplementary Vote’ (SV) system.

‘Additional Member’ Systems in Scotland, Wales and London

Used for: choosing MSPs in the Scottish Parliament, AMs in the Welsh National Assembly and members of the Greater London Assembly (GLA).

How it works: In ‘classic’ versions of AMS (used in Germany and New Zealand) half of the members of these bodies are locally elected in constituencies using first-past-the-post’, FPTP voting. The remaining half (the ‘additional’ or ‘top up’ members) are elected in larger regional areas, where a whole set of seats are allocated using a proportional representation system – so as to make parties’ seat shares match their vote shares as accurately as possible. Voters cast two ballots: one for their constituency representative, and one for their top-up region representative.

In ‘British AMS’, because constituency representation was seen as historically and culturally important in the UK, there are more local constituency seats than top-up seats. In Wales though, the proportion of top-up seats (at 1/3) is sometimes too small to ensure proportional outcomes, if one party is heavily over-represented in the constituency seats. In Scotland and Wales the top-up areas are sub-regions. For the Greater London Assembly the top-up area is the whole of London.

Voters get two ballot papers, one for their local constituency and one for the wider regional contest, and they mark one X vote on each paper. The local constituencies use FPTP, so whoever gets the largest vote in each local area is the winner.

In AMS voters also have a second vote for their regional top-up members. To decide who gets top up seats, each party puts forward a slate of candidates (their ‘list), and voters choose one party to support. We look at how many local seats a party already has within region A from the local contests, and what share of the list votes it has in the A region. If a party already has its full share of seats, it gets none of the top-up members. But if the party does not have enough seats already it is assigned additional members, taken from its list of candidates, so as to bring each party as closely as possible to having equal percentages of seats and votes (for the top-up area stage).

There’s a formula for doing this that works near perfectly given large top-up areas. However, it may over-represent larger parties if a lot of the list vote is split across multiple smaller parties, which tends to happen quite a lot in British AMS elections.

Recent developments

A key rationale for the three AMS systems is to offer proportional representation for each of the bodies involved. In evaluating this claim it is worth bearing in mind as a benchmark the Westminster electoral system’s deviation from proportionality, which is 22.5% (see our Audit on FPTP). Table 1 below shows that the Scottish AMS system has performed twice as well in terms of matching party seats shares with their vote shares, and the London system has fared almost as well. In Wales DV scores are higher, because there have been too few top-up seats, especially in 2007. But still, on average, DV scores are routinely two thirds of UK general election scores.

Table 1: The deviation from proportionality (DV score) of British AMS elections

Note: The DV score shows the percent of representatives not entitled to their seats in terms of their party’s share of the overall vote. Its practical minimum level is c.5%.

Proportional voting systems tend to produce coalition or minority governments, unless some party can command a clear majority of votes on its own. Table 2 shows that the AMS systems have only delivered two single-party government outcomes: in London in 2016, and when the SNP won an outright majority in Edinburgh in 2011, following a period when they ran a minority government (2007-11). In Wales Labour has been continuously in government, but has never had an outright majority. The arrangements for forming governments have generally fared well in all three bodies, without prolonged uncertainty and with party divisions generally not being rancorous.

Table 2: Governing outcomes of the Additional Member System elections

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis

The Supplementary Vote for electing executive Mayors and Police Commissioners

Used for: choosing the Mayor of London; executive mayors in 16 English local authorities, mainly large cities; and choosing all Police Commissioners in England and Wales. From 2017 onwards SV will also be used to elect ‘regional’ executive mayors in six major areas outside London.

How it works: No election for a powerful executive position (such as a mayor or president) can operate in a proportional way, because the single office cannot be divided between parties. Instead the Supplementary Vote system tries to involve as many voters as possible in deciding on the winner.

Voters have a ballot paper with two columns on it, one for their first choice and one for their second choice. They put an X vote against their chosen candidate in the first preference column, and then (if they wish) an X also in the second preference column.

The key difference between the SV and FPTP sytems is what candidates must do to get elected, as the system is designed to make leading candidates ‘reach out’ to voters outside their own party’s ranks.. At the start first preference votes only are counted. If anyone has more than 50% at this stage then they are elected straightaway, and counting ends.

However, if no one has overall majority support, then the top two candidates go into a runoff stage on their own, where the second preference ballot papers of eliminated candidates are checked. Second choice votes for one of the two candidates still in the race are added to their piles. Once all relevant second votes are added in, whoever of the two top candidates has the most votes overall is the winner.

This process of knocking out all the low-ranked candidates at once, and redistributing their voters’ second choices, ensures that the largest feasible number of votes count in deciding who is elected. The person elected can only be one of the initial top two runners (unlike the Alternative Vote, rejected at the 2011 referendum). And yet in practical terms they always have a majority of eligible votes cast. In repeated London elections, there has been nearly three fifths support for the winner.

Recent developments

The supplementary vote was first approved has been used five times to elect the London mayor, in numerous contests for other mayors, and in the 2012 and 2016 elections of Police and Crime Commissioners. Table 1 shows that in London over four fifths of voters take the opportunity to give both a first and a second preference vote. Turnout levels in London also rose from just over a third in 2000 to over 45% in 2016.

Table 1: Major elections held under the Supplementary Vote from 2000

By contrast, the first Police Commissioner elections in 2012 were poorly run. They were held in November, at a cold time of year, with little advertising and separate from normal local elections– resulting in a 15% turnout. There was little publicity about the new positions or the candidates, and large numbers of voters were using SV for the first time. Yet, even so, just under two thirds of voters cast a second preference, and the results were accepted as a sound reflection of the views of those voting. Turnout improved significantly in 2016 but the number of second preference votes dropped sharply.

A possible key problem of the Supplementary Vote concerns whether voters can accurately identify who the top two candidates are in advance, so as to use their second preference vote effectively. If a voter does not use either of their preferences for one of the top two candidates then their input does not determine who wins. The London Mayor election has always been well forecast and Table 2 shows that even in the first 2000 election the proportion of effective votes was over three quarters. As voters learnt more about how the system worked that proportion has increased, falling back only slightly in 2016. Thus SV in London has indeed maximised the number of votes that count.

Table 2: How voters in the London mayoral election became more ‘effective’ in choosing candidates to support (millions of votes)

Outside London there has been a limited trend for major cities to adopt the executive major system (like Watford, Bristol, Liverpool and Leicester), and elections there generally operate similarly to London, with Labour versus Conservative run-off contests. However, the Labour candidate in Liverpool in 2014 won outright with 55% of the first-preference votes.

Following devolution deals negotiated between council leaders in six areas and Conservative ministers, new ‘regional mayor’ elections are expected to be set up and begin operating in 2017 in Greater Manchester (where the mayor will control health service and infrastructure spending), the Liverpool City Region, the North East, the Sheffield City Region, Tees Valley and the West Midlands.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis

Conclusion

All three Additional Member Systems have operated effectively and the electoral legitimacy of governments in Scotland and Wales has been high. Furthermore, the representativeness of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh National Assembly has not been questioned by the public or the media. In London the GLA elections have been seen as fair, and its scrutiny role has secured some public profile in holding to account the executive Mayor.

The Supplementary Vote system has also proved very successful, working very effectively in London in elections so far, and because of that also spreading out to shape the choice of more and more directly elected public officials in England, with a high degree of non-partisan support. This is a rare case of a reformed electoral system spreading incrementally to new bodies and policy areas.

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This post does not represent the views of the London School of Economics or the LSE Public Policy Group.

Patrick Dunleavy is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the LSE, co-director of Democratic Audit and Chair of the Public Policy Group.

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