Why all our top parties are doing voters a disservice by cramming the European Parliament ballot papers with the names of ‘no hope’ candidates
When British voters go to the polls on 22 May to elect MEPs to the European Parliament for another five years, they will face complex ballot papers with large number of candidates on them. The Democratic Audit team explain how the List PR system works and show how all the major parties follow practices that makes the ballot papers far more difficult for voters to understand than they could be.
The Netherlands’ ‘open list’ PR system makes their ballot papers even more complex. Credit: JM Luijt, CC-BY-2.5-NL
The voting system used for the UK’s European Parliament elections is called List Proportional Representation (or List PR). This is a well-respected system, one that is used widely across Europe for electing national parliaments, as well as for the European Parliament. The List PR system is generally very proportional in how it allocates seats between the largest parties. But its accuracy is much better in the largest regions (like the South East) and is quite poor in smaller regions (like the North East, where only the top three parties can win seats). Seat allocation also works better if not many voters back the smaller parties, who have no chance of winning a seat. The main influence on how disproportional List PR is the number of small parties and the total vote that they accumulate.
Here is a straightforward explanation of how List PR works. (To see how it compares to other British voting systems see the LSE’s simple guide to UK electoral systems.) The whole of the UK is divided into 12 large regions (actually the Government’s Standard Regions). They range in size from the South East (10 seats) and London (8 seats) down to the North East and Northern Ireland (with 3 seats each), depending on how many people live in each part of the country. The main parties all select enough candidates to contest all of a region’s seats (while smaller parties may only contest some of the available seats). The parties arrange their candidates in an order, to form their List. The candidates at the top of the list have the best chance of being elected, and this chance of being elected declines as you go further down the party’s ordering. The ballot paper shows each party’s List of candidates and voters choose just one party list to support, using a single X vote. (This meshes well with the X voting used in local elections, and which will be held on the same day as the Euro elections in 2014, as often happens – see Kevin Larkin’s recent post on Democratic Audit for further discussion of the impact of concurrent elections.)
We then count up the total votes cast for each party in the region, and we give seats to candidates from each party’s list in proportion to its vote share. So, suppose we have a region with 10 seats, then each party should win a seat for each 9 per cent or so of the votes that get. So if party A gets 33 per cent of the vote, they should end up with 3 of the available seats. And if party B has 26 per cent support, they should get at least two seats, and they might well win 3 of the ten available seats, depending on how other parties fare. The order that candidates are placed by the party from the top of their list determines who actually becomes an MEP. If a party only has enough votes to secure one seat, then only the top candidate on their list is elected. If they have enough votes to win two seats, then the first two candidates on their list are elected, and so on.
The problem of large ballot papers
Because it is a proportional system, and there are only 12 regional contests involved (unlike the 646 separate contests for the Westminster Parliament), the European Parliament election tends to attract a lot of candidates from smaller parties, which makes for larger ballot papers. However, in addition, the big five parties in England – namely the Conservatives, Labour, UKIP, Liberal Democrats and the Greens – plus the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales, all make things a lot worse for voters by insisting on fielding candidates for every MEP seat available. The parties behave in this very un-public spirited way, arguably, because they think it would look like weakness if they did not have a name for every slot.
In fact, fielding (say) a tenth candidate in the South East region is just insults voters’ intelligence. Such a candidate can only win a seat if their party received 90% of the available votes, an exceptionally unlikely possibility. The main parties are just clogging up the ballot papers with the names of spurious candidates who have no chance at all of being elected. And by law the BBC and other broadcasters also have to reproduce the names all these unnecessary candidates if they cover any regional contest in their broadcasts or websites. As polling days draws near even many newspapers may reprint the names of dozens of ‘no hope’ candidates.
To show British voters where the real competition is being waged the Democratic Audit team will be publishing simplified ballot papers for every UK region that show clearly which of the big 5 (or 6) parties candidates voters should really take notice of, and which they can afford to not bother finding out about. Our Chart 1 shows a simplified ballot paper for the East of England region, which covers East Anglia and some eastern counties, and which has 7 MEPs. Each party’s list is shown in one column.
There are quite a few seats to be won in this region, and we can also look at the shares of support that each party enjoys in the latest opinion polls. On this basis it is very likely indeed that the top candidates for the Conservatives, UKIP and Labour will all be elected early on in the counting process. Indeed the Tories and UKIP perform so strongly in this region that they should both get their top two candidates elected very easily, so that they are also green shaded, making 5 seats in all whose outcome is pretty predictable.
Chart 1: Simplified ballot paper for the East of England, indicating chances of winning a seat
The real battle zone of this election is fought out over the two remaining MEPs, and here the five candidates in yellow shaded boxes are all vying for contention. If any one of them can get 15 per cent of the overall vote they should be home and dry. The Liberal Democrats have a sitting MEP here, Andrew Duff, who has a good chance of retaining his seat, but only if can perform better than his party is doing in the national polls. The Greens have a local bastion of support in Norwich and they are doing well amongst students in Cambridge and nationwide so they might just be able to win the last seat. However, they will be competing with Labour, who are likely to poll much better nationwide this year than they did in 2009, and perhaps with UKIP who just might be able to win a third seat in the Eastern region if the tide was running strongly in their favour.
Once we get beyond the candidates in the green and yellow shaded boxes the rest of the candidates for all the big 5 parties have little or not chance of being elected. The candidates in the white-shaded boxes are particularly just there for form’s sake – they fill out the party lists but they could only get to be elected if some completely unexpected political earthquake were to happen.
Over the next couple of weeks we will publish our simplified ballot papers for every UK region and make crystal clear for all British voters who stands any chance of being elected to represent them and who does not. Our intention is not to undermine the electoral process by predicting its outcomes before the voters have had their say, but to enhance the process by giving voters more straightforward, accurate information about the choices available to them. In the future we would also urge all the big 5 parties in future to stop stuffing their ballot papers with overly long lists of names that serve only to confuse voters and make their task more difficult than it needs to be.
Our background briefing for each of the UK regions will also cover all the leading candidates for the European Parliament (EP). For example, we provide full information on all the sitting MEPs seeking re-election and show how hard-working they have been in Brussels on their constituents’ behalf, how they have voted on major EP decisions, and how much party loyalty or independent thinking they have shown in how they voted. We will also cover all the leading candidates seeking election as an MEP for the first time and provide links to their biographies and details.
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Note: This post represents the views of the author and does not give the position of LSE or Democratic Audit. Please read our comments policy before commenting. Shortlink for this post: buff.ly/QxaoPt
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Democratic Audit's core funding is provided by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Additional funding is provided by the London School of Economics.
If parties were truthful about their election prospects, European Parliament ballot papers would look very different https://t.co/WSXrYEjz1P
V good article by .@democraticaudit on #EUelections ballots esp #EasternRegion: https://t.co/IKP2rERek1“
Top parties do voters a disservice by cramming European parliament ballot papers with names of ‘no hope’ candidates
https://t.co/bkVb2KnMDV
Are you accurate in your claim that state radio and tv in the UK (the BBC and others) have to reproduce ALL the names of all the other candidates when mentioning one? When I stood in 1999 and 2004, I was specifically told that the description “there are other candidates” was now sufficient and that they could ignore the names, as indeed they ignored us all the time!
Ballot papers for EU elections made more complex by UK parties standing many ‘no hope’ candidates https://t.co/FKEKRoPzNk via @PJDunleavy
@mcneilwillson @PJDunleavy See Chart 1 which every voter should see, for their region. s. East here: https://t.co/iLC6dSZHFn
Ballot papers for the European Parliament are made more complex by UK parties standing dozens of ‘no hope’ candidates https://t.co/0qccNn92NE
Also, your explanation of how just the top candidates have a good chance of winning is probably very useful for the British public, however, your simplified ballot is effectively prediction of the outcome of elections (based on opinion polls), what actual value-added information does it give to voters except for maybe swaying them to vote strategically if they think their first party of choice won’t win many seats – and that’s still a speculation, even if based on latest opinion polls?
I love the analysis but I don’t see the problem – small list or big list, voters don’t have a choice over which MEP gets elected, a party decided that really. Are you saying it is confusing because voters might think that some candidates lower on the list might be elected? Surely it is then a problem of not understanding what list voting is as opposing to large parties providing many candidates?
Parties needlessly confuse voters when they field dozens of paper candidates in European Parliament elections https://t.co/Vcnfljy1ft
Very good article by @democraticaudit of how parties clog EU ballots by listing candidates for all contested seats: https://t.co/oqocgYEXWa
On a side note, the image at the top is definitely a Dutch voting pass, not a Belgian one, although the Dutch also have an open list PR system
Thanks Michael, you’re right. Blame wikipedia.
All the UK’s parties do voters a disservice by cramming European Parliament ballot papers with ‘no hope’ candidates https://t.co/oeo8qpJndg
Like Tom Sharman, I am uncomfortable about this – might you be appearing to support some candidates in preference to others? If so where do you stand relative to election law and your “expenditure”?
The problem is with the list system – which distorts the electoral process which should be about people selecting their MPs – not “voters” abdicating their choice to a particular party.
But given that we have “a list” we need to see how the parties have rigged the system by assembling their list. In my region one of the parties puts a “party hack” as number two on their list – he is a complete pillock and knowing that he is number two dissuades me from voting for that party (which I consider the lesser of all evils) just in case their number two choice gets elected.
Of course, with STV a party could actually put up more candidates than there are seats – allowing us a real choice (within parties) between say “new” and “old” Labour or Europhobic and Europhile Conservative etc. – without risking split votes.
The list system forces “conformity” to the party line and squeezes out diversity. We the electorate should be able to choose our MEPs – and in large regions that should reflect the diversity of views in the constituency. The system has to allow us to select individuals and has to represent our diversity of views.
We’re not supporting particular candidates. The parties choose the order they put candidates in. We’re simply pointing out the potential outcomes of the election, and the difficulties for voters resulting from current practices.
You make a fair point about voters not being able to choose individual candidates. But there is an ‘open’ version of the List system where voters get to choose their preferred candidates within the party’s list. They use it in the Netherlands, as in the image at the top of the post.
New on DA today: The problem of large ballot papers for European elections, and what the parties should do about it. https://t.co/y8TbempJhx
I disagree with your argument for 2 reasons: 1. It’s unlikely but not impossible that a party does unexpectedly well in a region – say they win 50% of the vote but, following your suggestion, only fielded 2 candidates because they didn’t do so well? Their voters would be disenfranchised. 2. Name recognition – having all the candidates named on the ballot paper and in our communications helps set people up as future candidates – in these elections or other ones. This particularly helps the smaller parties who lack the advertising budgets of the big boys.
Thanks for the comment Tom. I’ll answer both points you make. 1. We’re not really talking about unlikely outcomes – we’re talking about inconceivable outcomes. Of course parties are entitled to assume they might do better than expected, but we don’t think it’s helpful for the voters if all parties field candidates that can only get elected on a 90% vote.
2. Your point there is about the party interest, not about the public interest. Ballot papers are not advertising space. Regardless of that, if a party fields 9 candidates, there is going to be very little name recognition for any of those individuals because the field is too crowded – and certainly not 1, 2 or 5 years later when another election comes round.
@ Tom Sharman This is totally correct. In fact, there is another point about budgets and campaign funds in elections like this which mean the candidates should actually be able to gain recognition even if it is only a name on a candidate list. In the past, state radio and tv (mostly BBC with ITV gradually scaling down any real coverage) has given millions of pounds of free advertising (advertorial style pap puff coverage) to their three chosen “main” parties during the campaigns, and barred most of the others from meaningful tv (which is, let us face it, the vital media to get your message across).
And of course you are banned from advertising on tv. In fact, once the BBC has decided, for all broadcasters, that a party is not on its proper ‘class’ of candidate list for an election, the rules demand that it has to be censored out of coverage even if it was present at an event being staged – on the basis that if it is seen, all the others in the same ‘class’ have to be shown. To now censor candidate lists just for media convenience takes us down the wrong and misguided road. So lacking in democracy are these rules that I made a submission to the Committee on Standards in Public Life about it when the right to even raise funds to counter this in a small way was potentially threatened.
Why do the big parties cram European Parliament ballot papers with candidates who could never win a seat? https://t.co/Bne9LwWdoa
Why all our top parties are doing voters a disservice by cramming the European Parliament ballot papers with the… https://t.co/SeMU9NfNGk
.@RupertRead “could very will win a seat” https://t.co/wRo84TO085
RT @PJDunleavy: All top parties damage voters’ interests by filling Euro ballots w ‘no hope’ candidates’ names https://t.co/0qccNn92NE http:…
Why all our top parties are doing voters a disservice by cramming the European Parliament ballot papers with the… https://t.co/uDRx26CU0r