Lord Ashcroft polls: How Britain voted and why

[NonnyMouse1337]

I've always found the Lord Ashcroft polls interesting. Although he is a Tory, he does a good job of being impartial and gathering valuable data and stats.

Someone posted about his work in another thread, but it's buried under all the conversations, so I've decided to put it in a separate thread for discussion.

Maybe it's not particularly suited to a feminist forum but since we are currently having discussions around the election results, it seems like a reasonable thing to post.

lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/12/how-britain-voted-and-why-my-2019-general-election-post-vote-poll/

As a complete amateur, I've been looking at the very first graph and wondering.....

• We know this election has been a sort of re-run of the Brexit referendum, so let's assume a vote for Conservative or Brexit Party is most likely a vote for Leave.

• A vote for LibDem, SNP, Green or Labour is generally a vote for Remain or at least a fairly soft Brexit.

I say this because the very last graph asks how people would vote if Brexit wasn't an issue and most voters would still stick to their choices, so although a small percentage would move around, I'm naively going with a simple correlation between elected party and view on Brexit.
I'm ignoring the Other category as it seems like a random bunch that could be either Leave or Remain.

Would that be a correct way of looking at the data?

With that in mind....

Conservative and Brexit got 47% while Labour, LD, SNP, Green got 52%.
Seems like overall there's no desire for Brexit or a particularly hard one?

Men are more likely to vote Conservative than Labour.
The male vote is 50% for Conservative and Brexit; and 49% for Labour, LD, SNP, Green.

The female vote is 44% for Conservative and Brexit; and 54% for Labour, LD, SNP, Green.

Every age group apart from 55 onwards shows more support for Labour, LD, SNP, Green than Conservative + Brexit.

I could not find an explanation of what the codes for the socioeconomic groups were, but of the four types, only the C2 category has more votes for Conservative and Brexit Party.

If we ignore the Leave/Remain angle entirely, it still begs the question of why the Conservatives have such a large number of seats and are hailed as the party with a mandate to lead the country when the vast majority do not want them or their policies? How is this democratic?

Because our system does not work that way! The person with the most votes in a constituency wins the seat, it’s simple.

What you are essentially saying is that a particular football team didn’t actually win the Premier League because all the teams below them had more points if you added them together.

Also, it’s funny how you say 52 v 47 is a ‘vast majority’.

Irony, much? Leavers might have an opinion on that use of language.

I'm a staunch remainer Mrs Snippypants and I wouldn't consider that a vast majority either.

Good point! Poor wording on my part. Definitely not a vast majority!

But why does a minority get to override a majority? I get that the FPTP system is designed to do that, but why do we support this concept that a minority get to override a majority?

People should be able to vote for who represents them best, so why are we unable to find a healthy mix of parties from the range of political views according to their proportion?

I was just having a look for past election results and came across this, you can download the full report which you might find interesting, if you like tables and graphs (I do!)

researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7529

Interesting statistics about women voters. My DM has voted Tory all her life but for the first time didn't vote as she can't stand BJ. Looks like he doesn't need women voters though.

I voted Lib Dem as a remainer, but would have otherwise voted Conservative.

I think results would have been similar but closer if Brexit was not on the table.
Current labour is far left, current Tory is very right. Leaving nothing in between and these voters split or disillusioned.

Is the constituency size dependant on population? Would densely populated inner cities be the same as a leafy suburb with less people?
That would account for the descrepancy too - so a 100,000 people in inner city would get 1 MP , same as a leafy suburb with 50,000?

I think this affects US politics a lot - not sure if it's the same here in the UK.

Mango
Yes, they are roughly similar. Which is why there are huge constituencies by area, Ross, Skye and Lochaber and tiny like Islington North.

However, depending on who will benefit, different parties will disagree with it and name it gerrymandering. For example roughly the same amount of constituents per area seems fairer but some MPs have complained that means they can’t represent all their constituents equally if they have a vast area to cover. Some (Emily Thornberry) have in the past claimed that having an inner city constituency means that eg Europeans living there should be allowed to vote because otherwise they’re not represented (which in her case, at the time, would have increased her constituency by nearly 10,000). There always be someone who thinks whatever the system it’s not fair.

Further to ‘how is this democratic’, there was the opportunity to adopt the AV system, put forward by the Lib Dem’s Nick Clegg (which would have benefited them in particular) in 2011. But the electorate rejected it 🤷‍♀️

Thanks for that link TheShoesa. I'll have a nosy at the tables and graphs. I struggle to interpret them but doesn't stop me from doing it. I'm sad like that.

Further to ‘how is this democratic’, there was the opportunity to adopt the AV system, put forward by the Lib Dem’s Nick Clegg (which would have benefited them in particular) in 2011. But the electorate rejected it 🤷‍♀️

Already posted on another thread but firstly, AV is not true PR. Secondly,the AV referendum was deliberately rushed through by the Conservatives as a sop to the LD coalition with a very minimal information campaign.

Looking at the thread on PR, it seems like Ireland have a good transferable vote system.

Wow. Only 28% of those who did vote Labour put its Brexit position as a priority. I know there are a lot of remainers hereabouts (I voted remain myself) but it does indicate that it was a big mistake to go the second referendum route.

The good thing about FPTP is that it keeps the extremists out. Without it, we'd have a far right presence in parliament as many European countries do.

AV is not true PR
Indeed, and yes, it was minimal and above all confusing but nevertheless it did highlight that of those who voted, the majority preferred the status quo. And of all the flavours of PR the Irish system seems fairest (is it single transferable vote?). Though, as above, in the UK would have allowed representation of more extreme parties but in the positive would mean it would be worth voting for who you really want rather the least worst option. It’s extremely frustrating living in a very safe seat with an incumbent dinosaur, of forty years standing, who doesn’t represent me or my views.

It's more nuanced than people voting for a given party automatically supported a given side in the EU referendum. For example, a lot of Labour voters would have voted leave.

That's really interesting. It does show that the only way a second Brexit referendum would give a different result is if you gerrymander it by reducing the voting age and letting EU nationals who aren't British citizens (so they get to vote in 2 countries!) vote

Lumping all people 65+ in one group seems wrong nowadays. That's an age span of over 40 years, and 12 million people.

why does a minority get to override a majority?

Why should a minority get to prevent a majority decision? There has to be a way to get things done, it involves seeking the majority vote. There is never going to be a way to keep everybody happy, democracy is about agreeing that everyone goes with the majority decision. Otherwise nothing would ever get done.

Judas
I remember the AV referendum and how I HAD to vote no because the alternative vote system was in my opinion ridiculously over complicated and meant my vote could be discounted and added to someone elses. Just had to remind myself on Wikipedia.
The question should have been would you like to see an alternative vote system to the current first past the post or similar. Then if answer was yes further debate and consultation could occur. It's like they asked the question to get a no.

There were too many serious issues riding on this election. It left a lot of people struggling to pick one issue.

But why does a minority get to override a majority? I get that the FPTP system is designed to do that, but why do we support this concept that a minority get to override a majority?

I suppose the general answer is that in many cases, simple majority rule is not really representative or fair, or it comes out with bad results. Would you say, for example, that it would be fair for the most populated countries in the EU to be able to always simply override the votes of the very small ones, in a direct way?

Most countries of any size tend to have a number of groups within them who may have somewhat competing interests, or quite different experiences. An important one today is rural vs urban, with the former being quite outnumbered in many western nations, their votes could be easily lost. And yet rural concerns are important, and important to city dwellers as well since rural areas support them materially, but the city dwellers aren't likely to be well versed in rural life and needs.

It's notable that what FPTP (if it works as it ought), and a lot of the other intricacies of dividing up constituencies, does is work to create some balance in terms of geographic interest and power. There is a sense in which geography, more than almost any other material condition, is what determines our experience and interests. And we form the most natural community with those directly around us, we depend on the same roads, shops and services, we work and live interdependently. The idea of one representative who is supposed to know, live with, and advocate for all of that geographic community makes a lot of sense, and it should tend to emphasis their sense of community. As opposed to a proportional party representation which tends to emphasis differences within that community.

If we ignore the Leave/Remain angle entirely, it still begs the question of why the Conservatives have such a large number of seats and are hailed as the party with a mandate to lead the country when the vast majority do not want them or their policies?

Because they got the largest share of the vote.

The 52% who did not vote Tory were split between several other parties, each of which had different policies, not only from the Tories, but from each other.

Thus the Tories are the majority party.

If we had PR, as some other countries have, we would always have a coalition, it would be difficult to form a government, and hard to get anything done - just look at the recent fiascos with minority govts at Westminster.

Examples - Belgium, which has PR still cannot form a govt, 200days post election. Germany always has a hiatus - sometimes long; Israel is always in a mess post election.

For example, a lot of Labour voters would have voted leave.

I don't have any evidence to back it up at the moment, but I did read somewhere that this turned out not to be true. Most Labour voters were remain?