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How not to run a referendum campaign.

Jun 14

Posted by James in Elections, Europe, International | 10 Comments

Silvio praysSilvio Berlusconi could be forgiven for feeling confident ahead of yesterday’s referendums (even if there’s not much else he should be forgiven for). The 50% turnout threshold hadn’t been met for more than 15 years, and you might assume this week’s series of votes on closing nuclear power, blocking water privatisation, and letting corruption trials go ahead would go the same way.

But he didn’t trust to luck there. He downplayed them as only an oligarch of his sort can – his TV stations barely mentioned the votes, he didn’t campaign, and he tried to block the votes in the courts. The entire campaign wasn’t about defending nuclear power, water sell-offs, or corruption (I’d have liked to see the posters for that last one), it was about winning by default by keeping turnout low.

Loyal Berlusconi supporters no doubt stayed away rather than voting for nukes, sell-offs and bungs, meaning the overall results all came in at roughly 95% against the government.

The glorious, joyous, wonderful irony. His tactic could hardly have backfired more comprehensively. Even if every single non-voter had turned out and voted for Berlusconi’s positions he wouldn’t have had a prayer: a 95% vote on 57% turnout would have been a 54% vote against him on a 100% turnout (on that assumption). So the game-playing could never have won, and it only ensured the opposition won a victory which seemed disproportionately decisive.

It’s great to see such an extreme example of a negative campaign strategy fail so clearly, and it’s an object lesson against turnout thresholds (not that non-Tory Scots will need any reminding of that). Your time’s nearly up, Silvio. Now let’s close Scotland’s nuclear stations too.

Can the SNP win the Inverclyde by-election?

Jun 9

Posted by Jeff in Elections, Westminster | 20 Comments

The sad, untimely death of David Cairns is the cause of the first election in Scotland since the Holyrood vote last month. Speculation will of course be mounting as the date of 30th June draws nearer as to whether the SNP can wrest this seat from Labour and take its tally of MPs up to seven.

The 2010 election result was:
Labour – 20,933
SNP – 6,577
Lib Dem – 5,007
Conservative – 4,502

The 2011 Scottish Parliament election result (for what I believe is a very similar area) was:
Labour – 12,387
SNP – 11,876
Conservative – 2,011
Lib Dem – 1,934

The contest will of course be a two-horse race between Labour and the SNP, there is little point in pretending otherwise and the candidates are confirmed as Iain Mackenzie (Labour) and Anne McLaughlin (SNP).

The SNP has picked a great candidate – Anne has experience of being an MSP, was the mastermind behind the Glasgow East by-election triumph a few years back, is female and seems to be very likeable. However, Labour have picked a great candidate too as Iain is the leader of the local council and perhaps has more ‘local credentials’ than his rival. The opening salvos do seem to suggest that a common Labour refrain will be ‘this area needs a strong local voice’.

The by-elections in the last term are not much to go on in terms of by-election form. The SNP won Glasgow East with a shocking swing from Labour but were then brought down to earth with thumping defeats in Glenrothes and Glasgow North East.

The problem for the SNP of course is that it is easier for it to take seats from Labour in a Holyrood election than it is in a Westminster election. There is no ‘strategy, vision, team’ from before, there is no Swinney record to rely upon, there is no Council Tax freeze to outmanoeuvre Labour on and there is no Iain Gray to set against Alex Salmond for First Minister. In a media-driven narrative of Cameron vs Miliband, how does Angus Robertson get a look in? Let alone a Scottish Tory, Scottish Green or Scottish Lib Dem viewpoint? One genuinely has to wonder if it’s worth those three parties gambling with their deposits and instead just staying at home.  

Furthermore, the independence hare is off and running, cooped up as it was before May 5th. How many voters will that keep at home or spook into voting elsewhere? 

Labour will send busloads of activists up north telling all sorts of terrible tales about the Tories down south and, at the end of the day, if you define yourself by not watching Coronation St, you watch Eastenders instead, not BBC Alba or Gardener’s World. The 2010 election did help confirm that, in a Westminster context, Labour vs Tory is indeed the norm.

Many will seek to make inapplicable hay out of the SNP finishing second and the Salmond honeymoon being shortlived. It shall be tosh. I am sure the Nats are in it to win it but falling a few thousand votes short, as I believe they will, is a result to be proud of in a deep red area like Inverclyde and Greenock.  

Can the UK Greens win any more seats?

May 31

Posted by Guest Blog in Elections, Westminster | 37 Comments

This is a cross-post from the excellent Climate Sock. Thanks to Leo for giving permission to put it up here.

Now UK electoral reform for the Commons has been defeated, First Past the Post (FPTP) is with us for the foreseeable future. I was never convinced that Alternative Vote (AV) would be a game changer for smaller parties like the Greens, but FPTP is particularly bad for them.

There’s no doubt that FPTP exaggerates results. Below a certain share of the national vote, parties get fewer seats than they would under a PR system. Above that level, they get more.

Yet the UK Greens do have one MP, and they are in fact less hard done by under FPTP than the other UK-wide parties of similar size: the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the British National Party (BNP).

In the 2010 election, the Greens nationally won 286k votes (1.0%); UKIP won 920k (3.1%); and the BNP 564k (1.9%). Yet of the three, the Greens were the only party to win a seat, despite receiving the fewest votes (although this one seat was itself equivalent to only about one sixth of the seats they would have won under a fully proportionate system with that share of the vote).

So, why was this the case, and what does it say about the Greens’ prospects under FPTP?

To win a seat in a multi-way marginal, a party typically needs at least 30%. Caroline Lucas won Brighton Pavilion with 31% of the vote; the next target for the Greens, Norwich South, was won by the Lib Dems with 29%. Other Green targets were won with slightly higher proportions.

Yet, with a lower national share than UKIP and the BNP, explanation is needed for why the Greens were able to mobilise 31% in a particular constituency, while the others were not able to do so.

At least part of the answer is suggested by the huge poll conducted by Michael Ashcroft for the Tories.

A key source for this debate is the question on how likely respondents are to vote for particular parties. A response of 1 signifies that they will definitely not vote for that party, and 10 means that they will definitely vote for that party.

The proportions who say they are extremely likely (let’s say 9 or 10) to vote for each of the three parties is roughly what we’d expect: small, and similar to one another.

But the differences are very interesting when we look lower down the scale:

UKIP support

BNP support

Green support

So both the BNP and UKIP have much more of the electorate fixed against them: 84% and 68% respectively, compared with 55% for the Greens.

If we return to a figure of around 30% needed to win a multi-way marginal constituency, it is clear why this is so hard for the BNP. On a national level, 84% have said they wouldn’t consider voting BNP, leaving very little to play for.

Even for UKIP, to reach 30% of the electorate, the party would need to go all the way down the scale to people who say they are just 3/10 likely to vote UKIP.

Yet for the Greens, winning 30% requires going down only as far as those who are 5/10 likely to vote Green: a much less daunting prospect and a result that suggests that future seats may well be winnable for the Greens.

Just a couple of caveats. Firstly, this makes an assumption of uniform national distributions. Clearly that isn’t the case: it’s an approximate model. Yet, the size of the differences between the parties suggests that it is useful.

Secondly, I’ve treated each party’s scores on these scales in isolation, when that isn’t quite right. A respondent could have said they were 10/10 likely to vote for several parties. What this shows is potential support, not guaranteed support.

For the Greens to win more Westminster seats they would need to take support from the major parties. Given their relatively wide level of latent support, this may be within reach, even under the current electoral rules.

A wee project for Better Nation.

May 30

Posted by James in Elections, Holyrood, Housekeeping | 42 Comments

Holyrood's chamberAs electoral stats wonks, it’s annoyed all four of us that there isn’t a decent single point of information about Scottish election results. The broadcasters’ pages aren’t terribly usable, although the BBC’s maps are nice, the Wikipedia pages are good but not purpose-built, and dear old alba.org.uk is a tad partisan, plays annoying sound files, and doesn’t have the 2011 results.

So, we thought (OK, I thought, before I twisted my colleagues’ arms) Better Nation could attempt to fill the gap, and as a result you can see a wee addition to the navigation above. It’s been a fair bit of work over the evenings and weekends, and we should also give proper thanks to Aaron (blog, twitter), who helped process some of the tables.

And now it’s ready. More accurately, it’s in beta testing now. You will find errors (honestly, there’ll be the odd + for a -, people’s names spelt wrong, all sorts, we’re sure - please do tell us in the comments to this post and we’ll fix them as promptly as we can), and you may find the odd note of inadvertent partisanship.

The national results are here, regions look like this, and as a sample, here’s the First Minister’s constituency page. All the constituencies are listed alphabetically here. For vote changes and vote share changes in the new constituencies, we’re using the Denver notional results from 2007 as the baseline.

In addition to finding mistakes, please do also let us know, if you find this useful, where you think we could take it next. Obviously doing historic pages for the three previous elections is on the to-do list, but that might take until the summer. Should we add each constituency’s regional vote breakdown to those pages? Should we ask all 129 MSPs for a short biog and have a page each? Should we try and do each and every ward ahead of next year’s locals?!

Who knows. Right now we’re a bit knackered and phase two is unlikely to start this week. But we hope you find it useful. Even if you don’t, we will!

Labouring to get things right

May 19

Posted by Guest Blog in Elections, Parties | 73 Comments

Another guest post today, and another look at the reasons Labour lost the election so heavily.  This time, John Mackay is the author.  John was Scottish Labour’s Holyrood candidate for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross, and was also his party’s candidate in the 2010 General Election in Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross.

First things first, Labour had no chance of winning the Scottish election.  It was all about the scale of defeat. Forget what the polls said a few months ago, it wasn’t a case of which party was going to win; it was by how many.

Two things conspired to give Labour a hammering: SNP money and Labour incompetence.  I’ll touch on the former then concentrate on the latter from my perspective as a Labour candidate.  Scotland’s political media also get an honourable mention.

When a political party has the financial clout the SNP had, it enables them to run a blitz-like, Presidential campaign that builds and builds to saturation point come polling day.  Their strategists ran an excellent campaign to the extent it seemed like many of Scotland’s print, television, radio and online journalists were working within SNP Media HQ as well.

The SNP recognised Iain Gray was largely unknown and managed to easily frame the election as a personality contest.  There was only ever going to be one winner between Alex Salmond and Iain Gray in that sort of competition.  The SNP’s money then made sure of victory.  Yes, Labour contributed to its own defeat and the eventual scale of victory but I’ll get to that.  The Scottish Election in 2011 was won primarily because it was a well-funded Presidential campaign.  That must not be forgotten.

Before I get to my own party’s failings, what has happened to Scotland’s political journalists?  Why weren’t they highlighting the insanity of the SNP’s flagship policies?  Why weren’t they telling the Scottish people about the economic lunacy of five more years of a council tax freeze, continuing free higher education, increased NHS spending, free prescriptions, the lie of no public sector redundancies and 100% of energy being provided by renewables in 2020?  These policies will have Scotland admitting itself to the economic madhouse in a few years.  There will be no need to call for anyone in a white van with a straitjacket.

It will be pointed out that Labour copied, in whole or part, many of these policies.  I agree entirely but the media really should have been more rigorous in questioning both parties spending commitments at a time when the policies listed above simply can’t be paid for.

Whilst I’d have loved Labour’s manifesto to be realistic and to acknowledge the financial constraints that we as a government would have had to work within, the election was all about money and personality.  Even if we’d had the best manifesto ever written it would have had little effect and only slightly reduced our defeat.  There will be those who say that with decent, realistic, alternative policies Labour could have framed the election differently. I disagree.

So why was Iain Gray Scottish Labour’s leader?  And how did we come to run a negative campaign that started by being anti-Tory and Westminster focussed but then changed tack to being anti-independence?

I honestly believe Iain Gray was the best of a decidedly average Labour bunch at Holyrood.  It is this that is at the heart of the party in Scotland’s problems.  Twelve years on from devolution and Scottish Labour is still sending its best people down to Westminster (with very few exceptions).  At the next Scottish election in five years time, Labour has got to get its best MPs to Holyrood.

It’s been said there is no chance the likes of Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander will become MSPs, as they are too ambitious at Westminster.  I hope this is wrong.  If you’re a Labour Party member then your twin ambitions are social equality and social justice.  For elected Scottish Labour members, Holyrood is the place you can most readily influence those causes.

The party also has to ensure it gets its best young talent to Edinburgh.  I hate to say it but the Labour benches in the last Scottish parliament were intellectually bereft.  There were far too many MSPs who were ‘time served’ in other roles within the Labour movement.  One of the few good things to come from losing so many MSPs unexpectedly is that we got rid of much of the deadwood.

Finally: the campaign.  I can only imagine Iain Gray’s strategists decided to go with an anti-Tory, Westminster focussed campaign because it was the one freshest in their memories from last year’s General Election.  Admittedly that was a successful campaign but it was in a different election.  The Scottish electorate is more sophisticated than we gave them credit for and no wonder they were leaving a party in droves that was fighting an election they weren’t even voting in.

To make things worse, Labour decided to change course to an anti-independence strategy with a fortnight to go.  It was the latter campaign that ensured the SNP got their majority as it nailed home the message Labour had been running a negative and irrelevant campaign.  We would still have lost but not by as much and not to an overall majority. Here’s a thought: it was a Scottish election, not a Westminster election nor an independence referendum.  Labour can’t make that mistake again.

Jim Murphy is chairing a review into Scottish Labour and he must see that he is a big part of the solution if he were to be an MSP and the Scottish Labour leader.  Much has been made of a Westminster MP leading that review because it was a Westminster focussed campaign that caused many of Labour’s problems.  That is missing the point though.  It was Labour in Scotland that decided to run a Westminster-focussed campaign, not Labour at Westminster.

The party doesn’t have to do too much to resolve its current problems: Get good MSPs in Holyrood.  Get realistic and credible policies.  And contest the next Scottish election on issues relevant to the Scottish parliament.  It really is that simple.  Oh, and if there’s a transport tycoon out there with a social conscience who wouldn’t mind slipping us a few million quid, that would be handy as well.