Friday 9 April 2010

Voter Power

Today’s political chatter is about a report from the new economics foundation called spoiled ballot, "why less than three per cent have a fair share of power in Britain." Actually very little of it is about the report, most of it is about the Voter Power Index which is a very web 2.0 friendly interface to the data including the compulsory video explaining what the site is about for those who don’t like to read.

In this methodology Sheffield South East turns out to be one of the most powerful in the country in marked contrast to the Electoral Reform Society data I reported Wednesday which makes me worry about the methodology and I’m thinking of emailing the authors to ask them about this. Their reports for the rest of our constituencies are Penistone & Stocksbridge, Sheffield Central Sheffield Brightside & Hillsborough, Sheffield Hallam and Sheffield Heeley.

Following on from this I decided to have a play with the data from the last general election to see what would happen if Sheffield was a super constituency elected using the method used by the UK in the European Parliament elections called the d'Hondt method. You’ll note that the nef report doesn’t have this as an option they suggest using the same mega constituencies that we do currently use for the EU elections for party list elections. They do have a suggestion that could see Sheffield elect as one, but it is based on Single transferable vote which would be impossible to do the kind of back of a napkin maths for the table below involves as it would mean guessing at voter’s second, third, etc choice intentions.

In my fictional system instead of 5 labour MPs and 1 LibDem we would have 3 Labour, 2 LibDem and a Tory (the figures in red represent an elected person). Of course there are flaws with even this extrapolation such as Green supporters only being able to express their preference in half the old constituencies and voting method influences choice but I think the result is interesting none the less.

  Sheffield Central Sheffield Attercliffe Sheffield Brightside Sheffield Heeley Sheffield Hillsborough Sheffield Hallam Total D'Hondt /2 D'Hondt /3 D'Hondt /4
Labour 14,950 22,250 16,876 18,405 23,477 5,110 101,068 50,534.0 33,689.33 25,267.00
Liberal Democrat 7,895 6,283 3,232 7,035 12,234 20,710 57,389 28,694.5 19,129.67 14,347.25
Conservative 3,094 5,329 2,205 4,987 6,890 12,028 34,533 17,266.5 11,511.00 8,633.25
Green 1,808 - - 1,312 - 1,331 4,451 2,225.5 1,483.67 1,112.75
Respect 1,284   - - - - 1,284 642.0 428.00 321.00
BNP 539 1,477 1,537 1,314 2,010 469 7,346 3,673.0 2,448.67 1,836.50
UKIP 415 1,680 779 775 1,273 438 5,360 2,680.0 1,786.67 1,340.00
Socialist Alternative   - - 265 - - 265 132.5 88.33 66.25
Christian Peoples - - - - - 441 441 220.5 147.00 110.25

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