Australian state elections using the Alternative Vote hold the key lessons for how AV might operate in the UK. Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher have argued that they show many or most voters not using the opportunity to cast a second preference at all, but just ‘plumping’ for their top candidate alone. The leading Australian expert Antony Green explores whether they are right to draw this likely lesson for AV in the UK.
Last November Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher noted on this blog that some of the Australian experience with AV shows many voters choosing not to express second or subsequent preferences. Instead they cast only a first preference vote (also called ‘plumping’), just as they would under first-past-the-post elections. At each AV election in New South Wales and Queensland, the proportion of these incomplete or even single preferences has grown over time.
I argue that the effective plumping rate is not as great as Rallings and Thrasher state. The data they rely on is drawn from ballot paper research conducted by The Electoral Commission of Queensland (ECQ). This includes the winning and second placed candidates whose preferences were never examined as part of the formal distribution of preferences. This inflates the overall plumping rate when determining the winner depends on the plumping rate of the candidates whose preferences were distributed.
The table below is taken from the ECQ survey of ballot papers in a sample of 10 electorates at the 2009 state election.
Percentage of Ballot Papers with |
Party ‘1’ only vote Partial Preferences Full Preferences |
Labor Party 56.5 14.5 29.0 |
Liberal National Party 74.8 2.3 22.9 |
The Greens 45.6 6.1 48.4 |
Daylight Saving Party 32.2 10.3 57.5 |
Family First 48.2 4.6 47.2 |
Independents/Others 55.9 4.4 39.7 |
The Liberal National Party recommended a ‘1’ only vote in every constituency and had the highest rate of ‘plumping’. The Labor Party recommended a ‘1’, ‘2’ vote in some electorates, resulting in Labor’s vote having the highest proportion of partial preferences. Family First was the only party to recommend full preferences in every seat, while other parties had mixed preference recommendations.
Liberal National preferences were not distributed in any of the electorates, and Labor’s in only one. So the important plumping rate is that for the minor parties, not the overall rate including the undistributed major parties.
When AV was re-introduced in Queensland in 1992, Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition continued with their past practice of recommending full preferences. This was abandoned by Labor at the 2001 election after the rise of insurgent right-wing party One Nation. Labor’s slogan of ‘Just vote 1’ influenced One Nation voters not to direct any second preferences, damaging conservative prospects.
More recently the conservative parties have adopted the same tactic to cut preference flows to Labor from the Greens. At the most recent New South Wales election, the deep unpopularity of the Labor government saw the Greens adopt a ‘1’ only strategy, except for a few seats where support for the Greens and left-wing Labor candidates were roughly equal, and where Liberal candidates could have been delivered victory if left voters did not use all their preferences.
So the rise in ‘plumping’ recommendations by major parties is not relevant of itself, but is relevant as a tactic to influence the plumping rate of minor parties. The rise of plumping recommendations by Australian major parties is an attempt to reduce AV contests into first past the post races.
The ECQ research examined only the mechanics of ballot paper number sequences, not their political impact. After the 2007 New South Wales election, I undertook research looking more at the eventual destination of preferences and the impact of party recommendations on these flows. The research showed that third party recommendations have an impact, and also that major parties were likely to abandon plumping tactics in contests where their candidates were likely to be excluded.
The research did not use ballot papers, but used of indicative preference data collected on election night to assist the media in reporting the election count. It can be found here (pages 55-84).
In 43 electorates where the Greens recommended preferences for Labor, the average flow of preferences was 46% to Labor, 11% to the Liberal-National Coalition and 43% exhausted. When the Greens offered no recommendation for either Labor or the Coalition, the numbers were 33% to Labor, 14% to the Coalition and 53% exhausted. So preference recommendations by a significant third party can matter.
In contests where Labor was likely to have its candidate excluded and distributed as preferences, Labor departed from plumping and recommended preferences. In 13 contests where Labor preferences were distributed between Coalition and Independent candidates, Labor’s preferences flowed 8% to the Coalition, 44% to the Independent and 48% exhausted. These were in contests where Labor’s first preference vote was very low and many Labor supporters may not have been aware of any recommendation.
The opposite tactic was taken by the Liberal Party in contests between Labor and Green candidates, recommending no preferences with 73% of Liberal ballot papers exhausting.
These rates of exhausted preferences were recorded in a state where voters must still provide full lists of preferences at Federal elections, and where preference recommendations form part of the active campaigning that occurs outside polling stations.
If the proportion of Australian voters giving preferences has declined over time under AV, sceptics might ask what hope is there that large numbers of UK voters would start numbering preferences on their ballot when they have never done so before?
The Australian research would indicate that even with extensive education, British voters will not spontaneously start giving preferences on the ballot paper. Party recommendations will be critical in determining how voters use the new system.
The behaviour of Australia’s largest parties indicates that it is in their interests to minimise the influence of preferences, to encourage plumping to keep the contest a first past the post race. This is especially the case with any party likely to lead on first preferences.
Rather than UK parties trying to attract preferences from third parties, it is more likely the largest parties in each contest will continue with tactical voting campaigns aimed at driving down support for third parties in each contest. The difference is that under AV voters will have another option, to still turn up and vote for their preferred party, but then also to direct preferences.
Education may help voters choose to exercise their preference option, but more likely it will be the tactics of the parties that will have more impact on how AV would work at UK elections.
For more on the Australian experience of AV, please see Antony Green’s blog article from last week.
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Haven’t Australians been paying attention to the various Barons and Baronnesses who’ve been patiently explaining that, if you number (say) six candidates, you “get SIX VOTES!!!” and thus six times as much voting power as the poor, picked-upon major party supporters whose first preference candidate survives elimination and makes it to the final throwdown?
Surely these colonials can’t think they know more about how their country’s voting system works than do a succession of Tory Party Treasurers who’ve gotten themselves elected massive popular pluralities to the House of Lords itself.
The reason that ‘Optional Preferential’ was introduced was because the big parties wanted it, and had the numbers to introduce it. Australian ‘voter education’ is done by grants to the parties in proportional to their vote- a rort and recipe for conservative politics if ever there was one. The single member electorates give a huge gerrymander to the big parties, who get a much higher percentage of the seats than they do of the votes. This suits the big end of town, because they can go to a Minister’s office and make a deal, which will go through Parliament.
The media tends to look at politics in terms of who will win. It is more an upmarket horse race than a serious discussion of the new ideas that might help the country, or an electoral system that might be more democratic. If you are considered unlikely to get in, then there is no point in the media mentioning your policies, this would be gratuitously helping a small party. There is a little fudge called the ‘two-party preferred’ which rolls up the small party and independents’ preferences to the two major parties, and is much quoted.
Some of us in small parties think that there should be major electoral reform to increase democracy, but the electoral changes recently have been the other way. ‘Optional Preferential’ tends to become a ‘first past the post’ system. This is helped by voter apathy, lack of voter education by the Electoral Commission, and ‘how to vote’ leaflets from the major parties which advocate just a vote for them. Indeed, because of the lack of preferences, major parties sometimes invent minor ones with catchy titles to siphon off a few votes from the others, though proving this is hard. Stooge independents in lower house seats to split the non-major party vote is another favourite technique.
But politics is about power, and that is what Antony Green talks about.
Hi Arthur,
I agree with much of what you say. And I definitely agree that the AEC should do more to inform citizens how the system works. However, I think the combination of AV and giving grants to the parties on the basis of their share of the vote has something to recommend it.
If the same grant system was used with FPTP the outcome would be terrible. Legitimate support for a minor party is often turned into a tactical vote for a major under FPTP, in this case the grants given to a minor would be unfairly reduced.
AV at least allows a minor party to build support over time, with increased funding as they increase their vote. With an increased portion of the vote comes an increased media interest too.
I don’t see how minor parties have anywhere near the same opportunity under FPTP.
Antony, I can’t get my head round this.
Are Australians not angered by these transparent invitations to disenfranchise themselves in the event their ‘1’ candidate gets excluded.
Most voters are usually prepared to accept the recommendation of their preferred party, both in terms of candidate selection and in preference recommendation.
The sorts of voters who are likely to be angry are the ones who are likely to know about preferences and likely to make up their own mind. The point is that parties can only influence what voters do, not control preferences.