Ed Miliband’s AV myth-busting falls short
The claim
“Let me at this point deal with some of the anti-AV myths that have been spread by those opposed to change:
- That it leads to more coalitions…there is no evidence that AV results in more coalitions
- That AV is complicated
- That a yes vote will be seen as a vindication of Nick Clegg
Ed Miliband, Labour Leader, speech to the Labour Yes to AV campaign, March 16, 2011
Cathy Newman checks it out
The Yes to AV campaign has not been going well. While their rivals plaster the country with hard-hitting posters, the Yes brigade have been squabbling about who can bear to share a platform with Nick Clegg. And while the Conservatives are united against voting reform, Labour is hopelessly split over the issue, with leading Yes campaigners apparently undergoing a Damascene conversion to a cause they used to deride.
So Ed Miliband needed to launch a fightback. But has his attack hit home, or has it missed its target. The FactCheck team has been investigating.
The analysis by Emma Thelwell
Launching Labour’s Yes to AV campaign last night, Ed Miliband had the backing of less than half of his MPs. Of the 225 Labour MPs, only 84 think he’s right about AV and plan to vote yes in May.
It’s an issue splitting Labour down the middle – with around 40 still sitting on the fence. Labour’s No to AV camp took out a full page advert on The Guardian’s back page this week, while shadow health secretary John Healey branded the system “perverse”.
So Mr Miliband has his work cut out in coaxing the undecided off the fence.
While the Labour leader admitted in his speech, “AV is no panacea. It isn’t perfect”, he wants to dispel the myths. But how convincing is he?
Claim 1: ‘There is no evidence that AV results in more coalitions’
Using Australia as his case study, Mr Miliband says that the AV system Down Under has “led to fewer hung parliaments than we’ve had in the UK”.
For this argument to stand up, you’d have to consider the Australian National and Liberal Parties to have been a single party since 1922 – when actually they’ve been in a historic coalition together.
Take the two parties separately, and Australian elections didn’t see one party win an overall majority in 2010, 2001, 1998, 1980 or any of the elections between 1949 and 1972.
“In Australia, AV so clearly was going to result in hung Parliaments that the parties entered into permanent coalition in preparation for it,” political analyst Greg Callus told FactCheck.
As a result, the current opposition – the Nationals and the Liberals – is often referred to as “the coalition”.
Australia however, is the only viable comparison for Mr Miliband to use – it’s the only country to use AV elections to the lower legislative chamber except for Fiji, Iraq, Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
But comparisons with Australia are flawed further – you can’t compare Australia’s House of Representatives with the House of Commons – as the latter has more than four times the number of MPs, which has a massive impact on the ability to form a majority (fewer members mean larger and more diverse constituencies for one thing).
Plus, people vote differently under AV than they do under First Past the Post (FPTP)Â – so any projections on votes or hung parliaments aren’t scientific, they’re guesswork.
Labour’s Yes campaign conceded to FactCheck that the argument was an academic one, with huge caveats. “No one can predict how people might vote under AV,” the director of the Labour Yes told us.
Pollsters Ipsos-Mori go further. AV analysis requires “heroic assumptions”, they say, adding that “nobody knows exactly what the effect of introducing AV will be on election results”.
Sadly, there isn’t an example of a country that’s recently switched to AV from FPTP for us to examine a potential rise in hung Parliaments.
However, it is widely noted that under an AV system the number of Lib Dem MPs would be likely to rise – because they are the third biggest of three major parties and ideologically the centre party, which means they are the second preference of more voters than any other party.
While this would not render a majority government impossible, it would increase the likelihood of hung parliaments – or it could see the Lib Dems form pre-election coalitions as in Australia.
Oxford Professor Vernon Bogdanor said in the FT; “AV opens the door to a new political world in which coalitions become the norm, and single-party majority government a distant memory”.
Meanwhile, the Yes camp could suggest nothing to FactCheck that would prove bringing in AV would result in FEWER coalition governments.
Claim 2: ‘AV isn’t complicated’
Mr Miliband says it is a “patronising argument” to bill AV as a complex system. “Putting 1, 2, 3, in boxes in order of preference is not that complicated,” he added.
No one is suggesting that electorate is too stupid to handle AV as a voting system (though it does require four pages of explanation, versus half a page on FPTP).
The No to AV campaign argues that AV is complex because it is harder to calculate the result and leads to more spoiled ballots.
The Australian Electoral Commission said in its Informal Vote Survey 2009: “Australia traditionally has one of the highest rates of spoiled or informal ballots among established democracies”.
Plus, AV as a system isn’t complicated, but the complication comes where one election day involves lots of elections using different systems.
“If the referendum passes, we would have AV for the UK Parliament, Additional Member System (part FPTP, part PR) for Scottish/Welsh devolved legislatures, STV (Single Transferable Vote) for the Northern Ireland Assembly, PR (Proportional Representation) for the European Parliament, Supplementary Vote (a form of AV) for the Mayor of London, and a variety of FPTP/STV/multi-member systems for local government,” explains Mr Callus.
Expect bigger queues at the voting booth then.
Claim 3: ‘A yes vote will not be seen as a vindication of Nick Clegg’
It does seem futile to argue that a vote for the Yes camp wouldn’t vindicate Mr Clegg – it would be a victory for him and the Lib Dems.
“We can’t reduce the second UK wide referendum in our political history to a verdict on one man,” says Mr Miliband.
FactCheck agrees, but as Ipsos-Mori points out, the “one thing that is pretty certain is that AV won’t always help Labour, or always help the Tories, under all circumstances. But it will probably always help the LibDems”.
Cathy Newman’s verdict
In his attempt to shatter the myths about AV, Ed Miliband has himself spun a yarn. The evidence from Down Under doesn’t work in his favour, and AV does create complications – even if the British public are well up to the task of working it out.
And although Nick Clegg once called AV a “miserable little compromise”, overhauling the voting system remains the raison d’etre of any Lib Dem leader – and the British people know it.
So although Clegg’s name won’t be on the ballot paper on May 5, it might as well be. No wonder Mr Miliband’s colleagues fear privately they’ve lost the referendum before a single vote has been counted.
There are 31 comments on this post
Isn’t it compulsory to vote in Australa? If so,might this not lead to disgruntled voters spoiling their ballot papers as a means of abstaining. Hence, perhaps an increase in spoilt papers rather than it being caused by any complication in the voting system.
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“Australia traditionally has one of the highest rates of spoiled or informal ballots among established democraciesâ€
This isn’t a fair comparison to the likely outcome of AV in Britain – Australia has compulsory voting so many spoilt ballots will be deliberate rather than as a result of a “complicated” system.
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So you produce no evidence that there will be more collations, but claim that it “fiction”.
You state that it’s confusing as Australians spoil their ballot more than anyone else including countries like Ireland which uses STV, which most would say was harder to count. (Maybe compuslory voting might be a factor).
And finish with claim 3, “FactCheck agrees” and then label as “fiction” again.
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Glad someone else finally picked up on the “Australia has fewer coalitions” deception. Well done.
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One of the reasons for high numbers of spoiled ballots in Australia is compulsory voting: people spoil their ballots in protest or if they have no interest in selecting a candidate.
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I have never, ever read such biased claptrap from a supposedly impartial news organisation. This article is utterly disgusting.
It uses half arsed implications on one side in order to put down AV. On the issue of coalitions it rightly says that it is hard to know whether AV will lead to more – but only uses this to put down the Yes side rather than making the more obvious step that our current voting system also leads to coalitions. It avoids any other reasons that there might be for spoiled ballots – such as Australia’s compulsory voting system and on the status of Nick Clegg it passes off guess work and innuendo as accurate forecasting of the thoughts of the British people.
If the news organisations want to make this a referendum on Clegg then they know they can do – if they want to ignore the real issues at stake that that is their perverse perogative.
I could find A Level politics students with more astute political analysis and comparative facts than this article gives us.
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“it will probably always help the LibDems”
I’m not so sure. The LibDems have been a party of protest for many years as they were the only party in many places that were in a place to defeat Labour or Conservative. Whilst AV would make their life easier, it would also make the lives of the “fourth parties” like the Greens and UKIP significantly easier too. With other protest parties coming up, they may find it ends up being a net negative overall.
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The other reason for spoiled ballots in Australia is that it is compulsory to vote for every single candidate. Where even one candidate is left off this is a spoiled ballot. The proposed UK system will not ‘spoil’ ballots that choose not to rank all the candidates, so the bar for an acceptible vote is much, much lower.
As a ‘fact check’ the spoiled ballot paper in Oz can’t be used to show that the UK AV would lead to more spoiled papers.
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Claim 2 lists all the different types of voting the UK will have as evidence that AV is more complicated than FPTP. Why? Presumably whether we keep FPTP or get AV all the other methods will still be there. So no change really except that voters can, if they so choose, add second or third (more?) preferences. Simples.
Claim 3 states its about victory for Clegg. What rubbish – party leaders come and go (and Clegg has sealed his own fate by betraying his party faithful and those who voted for him anyway) but AV will be a victory for the country for generations to come.
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An interesting and quite disingenious piece of analysis. The issue of compulsory voting in Australia has already been addressed as the primary reason for spoiled ballots. As for the coalition argument, the two parties have campaigned jointly for years and rarely campaign against each other in a seat. They have shown less difference in policy and voting patterns than within the Tory party in the U.K. over my memory of voting in Australia since the late 1970′s. They are effectively one party.
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Don’t get too hung up on the spoiled ballots issue, guys. They shouldn’t even have mentioned it. Ther rest was more-or-less bang on the money!
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Vernon Bognador is hardly unbiased, he’s opposed to AV and very pro-PR from what I’ve read.#
And what does it have to do with anything whether or not AV will lead to FEWER coalitions – no one is suggesting it would.
I love the Factcheck blog but this article seems a tad biased and poorly researched. Perhaps run an update?
For instance – you can’t compare spoilt ballots unless you look at PR, as that is recognised to be the most complex voting system.
What is the spoil rate in Ireland and Germany and France/
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May’s referendum on our voting system gives us a chance to vote on a constitutional change which has the potential to endure for far longer than the career of any here-today, gone-tomorrow politician like Nick Clegg. It would be the height of short-sightedness to pass over this chance for the sake of expressing what will no doubt prove to be a superfluous protest vote “against Nick”. He will be gone sooner rather than later in any case.
AV will not help the LibDems – most of their MPs were elected with <50% of the vote and with the current groundswell against them they will be blown away in the next election – if we all vote for AV!
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I really don’t care if AV results in more or less coalitions.
The point is is it fairer or not, it is clearly fairer and gives more power to the Independent Elector.
Now a week is a long time in politics, but I doubt that the Independent Electors will have a short memory of The Great Betrayal of 2010. So no, a YES vote is hardly endorsing Ramsey McClegg. Many of the Fib-Dem votes of 2010 were tactical votes and because people wanted change.
A NO vote is a Vote for the Tax Payers Alliance/Daily Mail/party droids
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Liberal and National parties often don’t have candidates in the same constituencies, and have actually merged to become one party. National is traditionally a regional party, but they’re both fairly similar parties in terms of their politics. Not at all like the current UK coalition. Seems none of these facts were checked at all
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It’s this sort of loose thinking & inability to impose leadership on his party which will make Ed Milliband a liability as Labour leader. Though the Coalition are doing heaps to lose the next election (whether under FPTP or AV), Ed M is going to miss the open goal.
(And when they get their act together – like Libya no-fly zone, abandoning their foolish NHS proposals – the current poll ratings for Labour will slump)
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“it will probably always help the LibDemsâ€
Will it? Can we predict how people will vote in 4 – or 40 – years time?
AV will only benefit the Lib Dems if people vote for them. Judging from the opinion polls at the moment, that doesn’t look like it’ll be the case.
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Does nobody read the comments before posting? I was going to come on and say that Australia probably has more spoiled papers because voting is compulsory, but I don’t need to because six people have done that already
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think its because getting past moderation takes so long
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Michael
You have to ask yourself WHY the coalition has become, as you say, “effectively one party”. Isn’t it supposed to be FPTP that reduces diversity in politics?
In the Australian case, AV has achieved the same end. Plain fact of the matter is AV will lead to more coalitions. Every shred of evidence that the Yes campaign has put forward to claim it wont is completed worthless.
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Compulsory voting doesn’t cause the discrepancy in spoiled ballots between Australia and the UK — according to the Australian Election Commsion, only 25% of all spoiled ballots were deliberately spoiled (i.e., caused by compulsory voting) while the rest look like they were accidental. See the ‘Informal Vote Survey’ they conduct every few years.
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If you want to compare spoilt ballots you have to – surely – compare with PR countries also.
Whats the spoil rate in Ireland, Germany and France?
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In response to the comment about the high proportion of spoilt ballots in Australia I would like to suggest that the reson for this is not the voting system but the fact that Australian citizens get fined if they don’t vote in a ham fisted attempt to increase participation. That quote is misguided and misleading and should be struck from this argument.
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The Factchecker makes three factual errors in this piece.
First, the claim that Australia has experienced hung parliaments for most of the past century is simply wrong. The Liberal-National Coalition acts effectively as one party, caucusing together, issuing joint policy and (mostly) running single candidates for office. For this reason, nearly all Australian analysts treat the Coalition as one party.
Another strange claim in this piece was that Iraq also uses AV. Not sure what is going on there …
Finally, as others have noted, most analysts see Australia’s relatively high invalid voting rate as a direct result of compulsory voting, not AV.
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Lots of people are going to vote against something, Cleggy probebly, students, anti war, Keysenians, … etc. no point in worrying about electoral theory, the only qwuery is will the message be clear enough?
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The bias and inaccuracies in this article are shocking. I would expect to read something like this in the Daily Mail, not the normally reputable and independent Channel 4. The wild predictions about the effect on the Lib Dems was particularly disappointing. Who knows what would happen to the Lib Dems under AV; maybe people will just stop voting for them and they will do worse than ever! Shameful analysis.
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No system is perfect, but FPTP works (sort of). AndI don’t fancy more LibClegg coalitions… do you?
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I wonder what the result of the last election would have been if AV had been the methodology of election?Presumably more seats for the Lib. Dems. This would not be popular at this time.
I think that the Lib Dems would be the party of second choice for those who usually vote for one of the two main political parties. Does this mean that Liberal policies would be more popular? In the current situation this does not appear likely. Or does it merely mean that AV will be the vehicle for more Liberal power? Even though it would appear that Liberal policy is unpopular.
I believe that I am correct in saying that many political bounderies were changed during the last Government’s stay in office. They certainly were where I lived in London.[to Labour's advantage]
So we have a Conservative/Liberal Coalition Government with Liberal support at an all time low.What conclusions can we draw? Perhaps as well as/or instead of AV we should have more referendums on major policy.
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I am appalled by this poorly very poor rubbish. I felt that until now this column has been very fair.
You score a liar lair pants on fire from me.
1. To call the Liberal Country Party a genuine coalition is utterly stupid. It certainly is not treated like that by the australians. It is a bit like taking the Co-operative Labour MPs as a seperate party.. Now see how many coalition governments we have had! This shows a gross ignorance of Australian politics.
2. More spoilt papers in Australia occur because voting is compulsory. You have to vote or get fined. A lot of people hate that so they spoil their papers.
3. I do not understand why the journalistic standards of channel 4 in this column now seem to be as poor as fox news.
For fox sake get your act together!
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Claim 1
Whilst there clearly is some evidence that AV will lead to more coalitions, there is also evidence that argues against this. So whilst technically “There is no evidence that AV results in more coalitions” is false, this doesn’t mean that No2AV are correct.
Also note that No2AV’s claim isn’t that there’ll be a non-zero chance of more coalitions, it’s that coalitions are “much more likely” (quoting from a No2AV leaflet). Where is the evidence for this?
“Meanwhile, the Yes camp could suggest nothing to FactCheck that would prove bringing in AV would result in FEWER coalition governments.”
Oh that’s easy. Whilst the Lib Dems are often painted as a “centre” between Tory and Labour, there are plenty of people who dislike the Lib Dems more than either of the two main parties. So conceivably you could have a constituency where a Lib Dem wins under FPTP, but loses under AV, because the anti-Lib Dem votes of Tory and Labour voters push one of the two main candidates ahead.
Sure, there’s not much evidence, but you’ve provided no evidence that people would vote in a way that would benefit the Lib Dems.
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Claim 2
“No one is suggesting that electorate is too stupid to handle AV as a voting system”
No2AV are – they show people as idiots in their ads, unable to understand it.
“(though it does require four pages of explanation, versus half a page on FPTP).”
Well that’s just showing the bias of the column straight away. No, it doesn’t. It’s not quite as simple as FPTP, but it’s still easy. They even teach it a Primary School: http://i.ctt-news.org/CmpDoc/2009/7964/40879_av-lesson.pdf?dm_i=658,ER8C,RCXH3,16O3V,1
A spoiled ballot doesn’t mean they don’t understand it, it can be done because someone wants to register that they don’t want to vote for anything. And as pointed out, Australia has compulsory voting.
“Plus, AV as a system isn’t complicated, but the complication comes where one election day involves lots of elections using different systems.”
This makes no sense. Even if we stick with FPTP, it’s still true that the UK has many different systems (something that No2AV want to ignore).
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