When Ireland goes to the polls for its general election, on Friday 29 November, it will mark over 100 years of elections using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) form of proportional representation  for the Irish Parliament, the Dail Eireann.

The first contested election for the Dail, the lower house of Ireland’s parliament, took place in 1922. STV was used in that general election and has been used in every Irish general election since, despite two attempts in the twentieth century to switch to the First Past the Post (FPTP) system used for UK general elections. On both occasions, in 1959 and 1968 referendums, the Irish people voted to stick with STV.

STV is our preferred form of proportional representation. It places maximum power in the hands of voters by increasing the proportion of votes that make a difference. On the ballot paper, voters write a number by as many or as few candidates as they wish, in order of preference. If an elector’s first choice candidate doesn’t win enough votes to be elected or that candidate has already been elected with more votes than required, then the elector’s vote is transferred to their second preference candidate and so on.

Under STV, multiple representatives are elected to represent each constituency. In Ireland between 3 and 5 Teachta Dala (TDs) are elected per constituency, ensuring that the diversity of opinion in the area is properly represented. The vote transfer process described above takes place until all the positions in the constituency are filled.

Ireland’s historical big parties

Throughout the history of the Irish Republic, politics has been dominated by two centre-right parties – Finna Fáil (FF) and Fine Gael (FG) – which emerged from a split in Sinn Féin between supporters and rejectors of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which created the Irish Free State.

FF and FG (and their predecessor groups in the 1920s and early 1930s) were the two largest parties at every general election between 1922 and 2007. Their combined seat total was above 70% throughout most of this period and was above 80% at many general elections. Indeed Finna Fáil were able to form a number of single-party majority governments in the twentieth century, while Fine Gael’s terms in government tended to rely on coalitions with smaller parties, most notably the Irish Labour party. Irish Taoiseachs, or Prime Ministers, have only ever come from FF or FG (or FG’s predecessor from 1922-1932).

This shows that it is possible for a two-party or two and a half party system to operate under a proportional representation system, if those parties can attract the support of a large part of the population.

Realignment of the Irish party system

In the last two decades, however, the Irish electorate has started to realign. In 2011, FF suffered a massive slump in support, going from 47% of seats in 2007 to just 12%. This was by far their worst ever result and they were pushed into third place by the Labour party. The combined FG-FF seat share, at 58%, was the lowest in the history of Dail elections.

Although FF recovered somewhat at the 2016 election, recovering their second placed position behind FG, the combined FG-FF vote barely rose to 59%. At the last general election, in 2020, this realignment reached a new high when the combined FF-FG seat share fell below half for the first time, dropping to just 46%. This time it was FG that was pushed into third place, with 35 TDs, behind Sinn Féin with 37 TDs and FF with 38 TDs. For the first time ever, neither FG or FF were the party with the most first preference votes. This honour went to Sinn Féin. The government formed after the 2020 election was an unprecedented FF-FG coalition, with support from the Greens.

Ireland’s STV system of proportional representation has been able to cope with this realigning electorate and still accurately reflect how people have voted. This is a stark contrast to the First Past the Post system used for UK general elections. The 2024 UK general election was the most disproportional on record, with Labour winning about two-thirds of seats with just over one-third of votes. The combined Labour-Conservative vote share, at 57.4%, was the lowest in the era of universal suffrage. Yet these parties still have over 80% of seats in parliament.

When voters in Ireland wanted a two-party system, they got it. People are now voting for a much wider range of parties and candidates in both countries. Ireland’s electoral system can cope with this. The UK’s electoral system cannot.

According to opinion polls, this week’s election could see an even more fragmented outcome than last time, with FG, FF and Sinn Féin all at around 20% support, with independent candidates also polling close to 20%. Whatever the overall outcome, voters in Ireland can be sure that under STV their votes will be accurately translated into representation in the Dail.

We will be watching the vote counts and the vital vote transfers with interest, as they are conducted over the weekend.

Today, almost every election held on the island of Ireland uses the Single Transferable Vote (STV). Bar elections for the 18 Westminster seats from Northern Ireland – every other election, on both sides of the border, uses the system. In fact, the Republic of Ireland has successfully used STV for over 100 years. But how did Ireland leave behind First Past the Post?

The last UK general election in Ireland to use First Past the Post was in 1918. The poll was the first opportunity in eight years for the Irish people to make their voice known at the ballot box due to the First World War. The results marked a turning point in Irish politics due to the collapse in support for the moderate nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party, which had dominated the Irish political landscape since the 1880s, and a growth in support for the Sinn Féin party.

Under First Past the Post, Sinn Fein won a landslide – taking 73 out of 105 seats (69.5%) on just 47% of the vote.

The ‘question of Ireland’ was a contentious issue at the time and no UK prime minister wanted to be the one to ‘lose’ Ireland so, in an attempt to stem the influence of rising independence movement, the government passed the 1919 Local Government Act of Ireland. With First Past the Post benefitting Sinn Fein, this act would allow the use of proportional representation, specifically the Single Transferable Vote, in local elections. Rather than one person representing everyone in a ward, under STV, bigger wards elect a small team of representatives. This allows for results to more closely reflect the way the electorate voted.

It was hoped that the Local Government Act would stop Sinn Fein’s gaining seats out of proportion of their actual votes. But far from opposing the move, Sinn Fein took up the challenge and adopted proportional representation as part of their wider commitment to empowering the Irish people. In fact, Arthur Griffith, who founded Sinn Féin, had welcomed the foundation of the Proportional Representation Society of Ireland in 1911 (initially as a branch of the ERS, then known as the Proportional Representation Society).

STV would be first used at the local level in Ireland during the 1919 Sligo by-election. The outcome of the election was celebrated and Irish Times wrote that it was “a thoroughly workable system” and it provided the “Magna Carta of political and municipal minorities”.

In 1920, it was used for local elections and enshrined in the Government of Ireland Act, although the House of Commons of Southern Ireland the act created was soon superseded by events in the War of Independence. STV was becoming an intrinsic part of Irish politics though.

Following independence, STV was adopted for Irish Free State elections in 1922 and its use was entrenched in the Irish Constitution, ratified by the people in a referendum on 1 July 1937.

Where there were challenges to the system, they were beaten. A referendum in 1958 was held in 1959 to switch the Republic of Ireland’s voting system back to the FPTP voting system. This proposal was narrowly rejected by 52% against to 48%. A second referendum was held on the same issue in 1968 which more decisively rejected the plans by 61% to 39%. The experience in the Republic of Ireland is one familiar the world over – once people become used to a proportional electoral system there is little appetite to switch back to First Past the Post.

Add your name to our call for proportional representation in the UK

Many countries use a bicameral political system – meaning that they have two chambers in their parliament. These parliaments are comprised of a lower house where the government is formed and day-to-day politics is carried out, like the House of Commons, and an upper house that scrutinises and revises legislation, like the House of Lords. Upper houses are sometimes referred to as second chambers or senates.

But while all lower houses in democracies share broadly similar functions and are elected with an equal as possible ratio of voters to representatives across the country, the same is not true of upper houses. Not only do they vary in terms of powers and functions, from the powerful Senates of Italy or the United States to the weak and overridable House of Lords or Austrian Federal Council, but the methods by which they are chosen differ enormously.

Some Upper Houses are directly elected

One way that an upper house is chosen is through direct popular election, though usually with a different method to that used for the lower house.

A common change in method is a different voting system. Australia, who use the majority-based Alternative Vote to elect their House of Representatives, use the proportional Single Transferable Vote to elect their Senate. While the Czech Republic, Poland, Spain and Switzerland all choose their upper houses with a non-proportional voting system in contrast to their proportionally elected lower house. There are also some, like Italy or Japan, that use the same voting system for both chambers, with some small adjustments.

Many directly elected second chambers, including Australia, Spain and Switzerland, have followed the US’s model of giving subnational units (states, provinces, etc.) equal representation regardless of population. This is designed to give less populous units a stronger voice and prevent their interests from being overridden by more populous areas. But ‘territorial representation’ can be done by other means. The Italian Senate is focused on regional representation, but it is done in proportion to population.

Elections to upper houses usually take place at the same time as elections to the lower house. Some do have longer terms, but it is by no means a universal feature. Many of those that do achieve longer terms by electing only a portion of the chamber at each election as in Australia, the US, the Czech Republic or Japan – though the latter two are elected on a different cycle to their respective lower houses.

The obvious reason for directly electing the upper house is to give it a greater level of democratic legitimacy, which enables it to better assert its own authority. It is thus not surprising that most of the more powerful upper houses are directly elected – especially those that are ‘incongruent’, i.e., have a substantively different partisan make-up to the lower house.

But the legitimacy gained through popular election is often lost through the method of election. Equal representation for subnational territories may give smaller areas parity to larger ones, but it can give a minority of the population a veto over a much larger majority – in the US Senate, small, largely rural states with one-sixth of America’s population have the same representation as the remaining five-sixths. Using a plurality or majority voting system over a proportional one also makes the chamber less representative and thus lessens its democratic legitimacy.

Upper houses that use indirect election

The other common method of choosing upper houses in Europe is through indirect election by subnational political units – often state or regional parliaments (e.g., Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands), but sometimes lower-level bodies like local councillors (France). The purpose of such chambers is often to directly represent and protect the interests of regional governments at the national level.

Although indirectly elected chambers lack the direct mandate of a popularly elected one, they are still chosen by directly elected politicians and, given the design and purpose of such political systems, it is best to think of their mandate as an extension to the one given to the regional parliaments. Most indirectly elected chambers are also appointed proportionally – both in party and population terms – avoiding some of questionable methods used to choose some directly elected upper houses.

Unlike directly elected chambers, which are often relatively powerful, there is little consensus on the strength of indirectly elected chambers. Austria’s Federal Council is very weak – other than on certain constitutional matters, it can only delay legislation as the lower house can simply override it with a simple majority vote. The Dutch Senate, on the other hand, has a full veto over the House of Representatives that cannot be bypassed.

Other Methods

Given the powers and purposes of upper houses vary so much, it is unsurprising that there are some election methods that don’t fit neatly into two categories. There are hybrids – such as the Spanish Senate, which combines direct and indirect election. The ‘unusuals’ – like the Irish Seanad, which is part indirectly elected ‘experts’, part Prime Ministerially appointed, part elected by graduates. Then there’s Germany’s Bundesrat which, although sometimes grouped with indirectly elected chambers, is appointed through state governments rather than state parliaments.

There is also the Canadian Senate, which, being entirely appointed by the Prime Minister, is probably one of the most similar to Westminster’s House of Lords. It does, however, have a fixed size of 105 and a mandatory retirement age of 75, meaning a new Senator can only be appointed when a vacancy arises. New appointments must also be made on a regional basis – with each state holding a fixed number of seats. Though there are still calls for reform, the Canadian Senate is at least not ever-expanding in size and is not dominated by certain parts of the country like the House of Lords.

And there are, of course, some countries that simply choose not to have an upper house, instead opting for a single legislative chamber. This is called ‘unicameralism’, in contrast to bicameralism, and is typically the case in smaller countries, such as New Zealand, where there are no strong subnational identities or powerful regional governments.

All 82 Free Democracies

Parline classification of principal method of delegation of upper house in the 82 countries classed by Freedom House as Free Democracies.

A Democratic Second Chamber for the UK

Around the world, countries have found different solutions to balancing democratic legitimacy and the powers of their second chambers. While the exact way the upper house is filled varies quite significantly from country to country, the one commonality between nearly all Western second chambers is that they are designed in some way to represent subnational units, be they states, provinces or regions, at the national level.

Britain remains the odd-one-out. It lacks the democratic legitimacy afforded by elections, whether direct or indirect, virtually nullifying the extent to which it can successfully exercise its scrutinising and revising functions. And it completely fails to represent the UK in all its diversity, overrepresenting some territorial units (especially London and the South East) to the detriment of the other nations, regions and localities.

Instead of a house of powerful regional representatives, we have an antiquated chamber whose membership is chosen partly by aristocrats, partly by the Church of England and largely by Prime Ministers rewarding donors and allies. We need to reform our upper house so that it can have the democratic legitimacy to do its job properly.

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With pressure mounting on Boris Johnson, it’s looking increasingly possible that Britain could well soon have a new Prime Minister. Who it would be, would be a decision for Conservative MPs and, possibly, Conservative party members. But this isn’t how things would go in every country. So, let’s take a look at how other countries choose a new Prime Minister.

Parties Choose Their Candidates

First, a political party needs a candidate. In Britain, if there are multiple candidates, both main parties choose their leader by a ballot of their party members, though they both have preliminary rounds where potential candidates are whittled down by MPs. But membership elections elsewhere are fairly rare – Canada being one of the few countries where all major party leaders are selected this way. Though this is changing, with membership elections becoming more and more common.

Across Europe, there is significant variation in how a party leader is chosen – both between countries and between parties within them. But the most common method of selection is some form of election by party delegates. While members may have some input, the final decision often rests with party officials and/or elected representatives. However, this is only the case if a vote is needed. In many European countries, it is the norm for there to only be a single candidate – with consensus being reached by party elites without need for an election.

There is also the German model where the position of Chancellor candidate is distinct from that of the party leader. The position is usually chosen by party delegates in the run-up to a federal election and, while it does normally go to the party leader, it gives parties the opportunity to recognise that different skills are required to govern than to lead a party. This has been the case with current Chancellor Olaf Scholz. He is not the leader of the SPD, rather somebody with a history of governing successfully and popularly at the state and federal level.

Positive vs Negative Parliamentarism

But, in many countries, being elected party leader is just the first step, you can’t automatically become Prime Minister just because your party is in power. Unlike in countries like the United Kingdom that operate a policy of ‘negative parliamentarism’, whereby parliamentary support for the incoming government is often assumed, many European countries opt for ‘positive parliamentarism’.

Under positive parliamentarism, a new potential government needs to explicitly prove that it is supported by parliament before it can be formed. This ‘proof’ takes the form of an investiture vote – whereby MPs vote on either the nomination of one Prime Ministerial candidate or between several. Exact rules vary from country to country, but you can’t form a government without winning it. Positive parliamentarism can be found in Germany, Ireland and Belgium, as well as the devolved parliaments of Scotland and Wales.

In Germany, positive parliamentarism is strengthened by the rule of constructive votes of no confidence. There, governments can only be defeated in a vote of no confidence if there is a majority in support of an alternative government. If parliament cannot find an alternative, the incumbent government remains in place. This system has since been adopted by other countries, including Spain, Italy and Poland.

However, some ‘negative’ countries do also have investiture votes, just with different rules to positive countries. This is the case in Sweden where a majority of all MPs have to vote against a proposed government for it to be defeated. Last November, Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson (who was unanimously chosen as party leader) was elected PM despite more MPs voting against her than for her. However, as only 49.6% of MPs voted ‘No’, and crucially 21.5% abstained, there was not a majority against her election.

Effectively, under positive parliamentarism a government can only be formed if a majority of MPs have explicitly endorsed it, while under negative parliamentarism a government will be formed unless a majority of MPs explicitly reject it.

2022 is a big year for presidential elections in Europe – with the Italian (24^th January), German (13^th February) and French presidencies (10^th April) all open over the next few months. Of course, these are very different roles – the French President has significant executive powers, while the Italian and German Heads of State are largely ceremonial, performing a similar role to our Queen. But, regardless of their constitutional functions, let’s look at how these presidents will be elected.

How are Heads of State chosen around Europe?

* Not classed as a fully free democracy by Freedom House.

Direct Election

The French President may be unusual in western Europe in being a Head of State with substantive influence over day-to-day government policy, but the presidency does stick to the norm of a popularly-elected president – it is chosen using the Two-Round System. There are a few variations to the rules of the Two-Round System, but the one used for the French President is what you might call the ‘classic’ version: If a candidate wins more than half of votes in the first round, they are elected. If not, the two candidates with the most votes proceed to a second round where the winner will take both a majority of votes and be elected.

Nearly all of Europe’s other directly elected presidents are also chosen using the Two-Round System. Ireland is one of the few to buck the trend – opting instead for the Alternative Vote, still a majority-based voting system, but one that saves them the expense of a second round of election and is in keeping with their tradition of preference voting. Other exceptions are the President of Iceland and Bosnia-Herzegovina’s three Presidents who are all elected by First Past the Post.

You might also like Four ways of electing a president – ranked from worst to best

Indirect Election

However, not all of Europe’s presidencies are directly elected. Some, including Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Latvia, are instead chosen by legislators in special sessions. Rules vary from country to country, but generally, the winning candidate requires the support of at least the majority of national legislators – though higher thresholds and representatives of subnational parliaments, governments or councils are often involved.

The Italian President is elected by a joint session of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate, as well as 58 representatives chosen by Italy’s regional councils (each get three representatives, except the tiny Aosta Valley who only get one). Unlike most elections, there are no explicit candidacies – electors are free to choose any eligible citizen, though parties will often have a preferred candidate. For the first three rounds of voting, a candidate requires two-thirds of votes to be elected, with this being reduced to a simple 50% threshold from the fourth round. Italy’s fractured party system has meant the vote has sometimes gone on for days, with the 1971 election taking 23 rounds of voting before a winner emerged.

Germany’s President is chosen by a specially convened Federal Convention comprising all members of the Bundestag and an equal number of delegates elected by the state parliaments. The election has a maximum of three rounds. In the first two, support from a majority of delegates is required, but this is reduced to a simple plurality for the third. Candidates often receive the formal support of more than one major party – for instance, parties in coalition together usually field a joint candidate. Some, such as the incumbent Frank-Walter Steinmeier of the centre-left SPD in 2017, have even been supported by all four major parties.

The Italian Presidential election will start on the 24^th of January; the incumbent Sergio Mattarella declined to seek re-election, although he was eligible to do so. The German Federal Convention meets on the 13^th of February; Frank-Walter Steinmeier is seeking re-election. The first round of the French presidential election is on the 10^th of April, with the likely second-round pencilled in for the 24^th; incumbent Emmanuel Macron is also seeking re-election.

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While in the UK the government has recently threatened our independent elections watchdog with abolition if it cannot be ‘radically overhauled’, across the sea, the Irish government has recently set out plans for establishing an Electoral Commission for the first time.

Currently, despite long-standing calls (including by the Irish Convention on the Constitution), Ireland does not have an independent electoral commission to oversee elections and referendums, with these responsibilities being undertaken by a network of assorted commissions, government departments, and parts of the Oireachtas (the Irish parliament). Following the 2020 election, the coalition’s Programme for Government included a commitment to establish an electoral commission by the end of 2021.

Last week, ministers published the General Scheme of the Electoral Reform Bill. This includes, among other things, the establishment of a statutory, independent Electoral Commission, the modernisation of electoral registration, and the regulation of online political advertising. The scheme will be submitted to an Oireachtas Joint Committee for pre-legislative scrutiny, after which a bill will be drafted.

What will the Irish Electoral Commission do?

The proposed Commission will be independent of government and report directly to the Oireachtas. It will be composed of between seven and nine members, including a chairperson. The Commission will have a broad range of responsibilities. It will absorb the functions currently carried out by the Referendum Commissions (temporary bodies, created in advance of a referendum, which have existed since 1995 to provide impartial information on Irish constitutional referendums), the Constituency Commissions (which are similar to the UK’s Boundary Commissions and advise on redrawing constituency boundaries), and Local Electoral Area Boundary Committees. It will also oversee the electoral register and register political parties.

The Commission will have new public information, research and advisory functions in relation to electoral matters, which will see the Commission responsible for voter education, encouraging voters to turn out, and for advising the government and parliament about reform of electoral law.

Most interestingly, the Irish Electoral Commission will be responsible for regulating online political advertising during election periods, with paid-for political ads being required to be clearly labelled as such. The general scheme of the bill sets out that online political adverts must include a clearly visible ‘button, icon, tab, or hyperlink with the text “Political Advert”’, linking to a page clearly displaying a ‘transparency notice’ of key information.

The notice must make clear who paid for the ad; whether it was micro-targeted and, if so, which criteria were used; whether a lookalike target audience was used; the total cost of the ad (including content creation and online placement, display and promotion); the number of days the ad ran; and the number of impressions the ad is intended to reach and the number of engagements by user. The information in the transparency notice is to be displayed in real time by the platform and, upon expiration of the ad, shall be transferred to an online archive or library, which is to be maintained for at least seven years to as a resource for ‘academia, the media, political parties and other interested parties between electoral periods.’

Lessons from Ireland

The new Electoral Commission for Ireland, and the general scheme of the Electoral Reform Bill, represent an ambitious proposal to modernise, simplify and consolidate electoral law in the country – something we’ve long called for in the UK as well. In addition to the creation of an independent elections watchdog, the general scheme also contains other important areas of modernisation. The registration process will be simplified, with an online registration option and a rolling (continuously updated) register. The general scheme also proposes to move to a single, national electoral register and to introduce provisional registration for 16- and 17-year olds. It also includes amendments to electoral law to facilitate holding electoral events if restrictions need to be put in place because of covid-19.

Though it is still very early days, the functions currently granted to the Commission in the general scheme of the bill, which are just a starting point and likely to be expanded in the future, represent an acknowledgement of the opportunities and challenges facing many democracies – including the rise of completely unregulated, year-round online political campaigning and the importance of ensuring there is high-quality information available to voters on elections and referendums. The Irish Referendum Commissions have been a major step forward in improving the quality of (impartial) information in constitutional referendums, though they have at times been criticised for interpreting their remit too narrowly and providing information in an overly dry or legalistic manner (which, of course, is in part due to the need to provide impartial and accurate information during a campaign) – the new Electoral Commission should ensure that it is bold and engaging in how it approaches voter information, raises awareness and promotes turnout.

Not only will the Irish Electoral Commission be tasked from the outset with regulating online political ads (something which the UK government has yet to take concrete action on), but it will perform an important educational, research and advisory role for government, parliament and the public – this, in particular, is an aspect which remains underappreciated in the UK context (the Electoral Commission’s initial and more explicit educational role was scrapped a decade ago), with the Commission’s post-election research and public opinion surveys providing valuable information on how our democracy is functioning and is perceived.

And there’s even more the UK could adopt from the recent Irish proposals – not least the importance of ensuring that so-called ‘attainers’ (16- and 17-year olds for elections with franchise at 18) are registered to vote. At the end of last year, we saw how a Lords amendment to the Parliamentary Constituencies Bill 2019-2020, which would’ve made some mild improvements in improving registration rates among attainers, was overturned by the government.

Though it has taken Ireland many years to set out concrete proposals for an Electoral Commission, the general scheme of the bill is a major step forward for Irish democracy – the UK should take note.

Image: Flickr, William Murphy CC

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America’s presidential election is the most famous presidential election in the world. The antiquated American system of choosing a president via an electoral college is also one of the worst methods for choosing a national leader. Since 1788, many other methods have been tried – so I’ve put some of them in order from what I think are worst, to best.

Worst. System. Ever – Electoral College

Americans don’t actually vote for the president, they are voting on what to tell a group of ‘electors’. Each state has a set number of electors based on their representation in the US Congress, the votes cast by Americans tell these electors who to vote for when the electoral college elects the president.

Like much of the US constitution, this bizarre system came out of the compromises needed at the time to create a nation out of 13 disparate colonies. Southern states, with massive enslaved populations, didn’t want to be dominated by northern voters. The numbers of electors each state has was also a compromise between the states. Each state gets one elector for each member of the House of Representatives they have, plus one for each senator. As every state has two Senators, irrespective of their population, voters in smaller states have more power to decide the president than voters in larger states.

We’ve ranked the electoral college as the worst way to elect a president as…

• While everyone has one vote they aren’t equal, votes cast in Wyoming carry 3.6 times more influence than those from California. A basic element of fair elections is one person one vote and every vote being of equal value.
• While voters in Wyoming have the equivalent of 3.6 votes each. Neither candidate has even visited the state. That’s because most states give all their electors to the winner of that state. Wyoming has voted republican since the 1960s, with large margins in recent years. The 20% of Wyomingite’s who voted for Hilary in 2016 saw their votes go nowhere. Millions of votes are wasted this way.
• Sometimes the loser goes on to win the election. All first past the post elections have a risk that the team that get the most votes don’t win the election, it happens in America, the UK and New Zealand (before they ditched the system in favour of MMP).

Less terrible. First Past the Post

There is a campaign in America to scrap the electoral college and give the presidency to the popular vote winner. But while that may seem a simple solution, the experience of countries that have a straight first past the post contest for president has been mixed. As we know when using first past the post to elect MPs in the UK, while the loser won’t win, the winner doesn’t need a majority of the vote to win either. In fact, the majority of voters may be opposed to the president.

In the Philippines, their, shall we say, controversial president, Rodrigo Duterte only won 39% of the vote in 2016. In May 1992 Fidel Ramos was elected to be president of the Philippines with only 24 per cent of the popular vote. We’ve ranked first past the post as the second-worst system as…

• Democracies should generally move in the direction the majority want. A minority of voters shouldn’t be able to steer the country off course.
• Election results under first past the post are often more to do with electoral politics than voters’ preferences. Rather than trying to win voters round, candidates can try to split opposition voters between multiple candidates.

Presidential elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, the Comoros Islands, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, Honduras, Iceland, Kiribati, South Korea, Malawi, Mexico, Palestine, Panama, Paraguay, the Philippines, Rwanda, Singapore, Taiwan, Tunisia, Venezuela, and Zambia are all conducted via first past the post.

Getting Better. Two Round System

An easy way to stop candidates winning on less than half the vote is to have a second round of voting with just the top two candidates. France is the most famous country to use a two-round system. The first round of voting is similar to voting in the UK: electors vote for their preferred candidate.

If a candidate gets over half the votes, they are elected. If no candidate receives an overall majority, the second round of voting takes place two weeks later with the top two candidates from the first round.

Here’s why we only ranked the two-round system as the second-best method…

• The first round has all the vote-splitting problems of first past the post. In 2017, Macron and Marine Le Pen got though to the runoff, which Macron won easily. Le Pen only made it through because the centre right was split between multiple candidates. Ifop-Fiducial polled a hypothetical second round where Macron was up against Fillon (who was 1.3% points behind Le Pen). Macron still won, but only beat Fillon by 52% to 48%. It seems a more popular candidate was excluded, and an extremist let through.
• There is no guarantee that both candidates to go through will be from different sides of the political spectrum. In 2002 French voters had the choice between right-wing incumbent Jacques Chirac and the far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen. The slogan “Vote for the crook not the fascist” became popular on the left…

Two-round systems are widely used around the world. 

Simply the Best. Preferential Vote

The problems with having two separate elections can be fixed with some clever ballot paper designs and counting methods.

Rather than asking people to vote, then come back and vote for a reduced set of candidates, with a preferential vote, voters are asked to complete a ballot paper with numbers next to each candidate. The numbers explain who they would vote for first with a 1, then who they would vote for if their favourite candidate didn’t get though with a 2, who they would vote for if neither got through with a 3 and so on.

When they count the ballots, anyone who has 50% of the first votes wins. If nobody gets 50% the person who came last is excluded and the ballots are recounted in a ‘virtual’ second round. If your favourite candidate is still in the race, you still vote for them. If your favourite has been excluded your vote goes to your second choice. This process continues until one candidate gets half the vote.

We think this is the best way to elect a president as…

• You can’t split the vote. In 2011, seven people ran for president of Ireland – after four rounds of counting we know that, poet, politician and noted dog owner, Michael D Higgins was the candidate the majority of voters preferred. In 2018 he went on to win on the first round on a landslide.
• As extremist candidates are unlikely to get second choices, the system tends to work against candidates who are polarising and help those who are broadly liked.
• Candidates are also incentivised to run less divisive campaigns, as candidates will want to become their opponent’s voters second favourite candidate.

Badly designed electoral systems shape candidates, campaigns and countries. When extreme candidates can win on minorities of the vote under First Past the Post style systems, there is little incentive to appeal to a broader electorate. Instead, elections just become about snatching slim victories and playing the system. It’s not enough to just vote for better people, we need to stop the systems that let unpopular candidates win.

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The New Zealand Labour party are celebrating a landslide win, with 49 percent of the vote and enough MPs to form a single-party government on their own. This is the first time since New Zealand upgraded their electoral system to Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) – also known as the Additional Member System (AMS) in the UK – that one party has gained enough MPs to form a government on its own, but it’s a timely reminder that proportional systems don’t automatically lead to coalitions – proportional representation just supplies the parliament people vote for.

Despite achieving a majority of the vote New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern chose to sign a formal ‘cooperation’ agreement with the Green party, showing how embedded the culture of cooperation and working together endemic in proportional systems has become in New Zealand’s politics.

New Zealand isn’t the only parliament that use a form of proportional representation to have a single-party government recently. The SNP formed a government on their own in Scotland in 2011 and were only a few seats away in 2016.

No system is perfectly proportional – New Zealand has a threshold of 5% to stop tiny parties winning seats, so while New Zealand Labour nearly got a majority of the vote overall (49%), they got a majority of the votes that elected people to parliament (53% ) (These are the preliminary results, so may slightly change).

To put the proportionality of the voting system in context, with MMP the New Zealand Labour Party won 53% of the seats on 49% of the vote in 2020, while with First Past the Post the UK Labour Party won 55.1% of the seats on 35.2% of the vote in 2005. More recently the Conservatives 2019 election result where they secured 43.6% saw that translated into over 55% of the seats due to the warping effects of First Past the Post.

Across the twentieth century countries with proportional systems have had single-party governments when voters want them to. In 1957, Germany was governed by a single parliamentary group and in Ireland Fianna Fáil governed on their own with a majority in 1938, 1944, 1957, 1965 and 1977. Similarly, Malta, a country that uses Single Transferable Vote to elect its house of representatives, has not had a coalition since the 1950’s.

Unlike First Past the Post which has a bias against smaller parties whose supporters are not geographically concentrated in specific constituencies, proportional voting systems simply reflect how people vote. If people want a single-party majority, they get one; if no party is popular enough to rule alone then they have to find coalition partners.

The idea that proportional systems are designed to stop majorities is rooted in the normalisation of First Past the Post in the UK. A system where you need an advanced degree in statistics to build a Multilevel Regression and Post-Stratification model if you want to know how many seats a party on 45% in the polls will get is labelled as simple, while one where the answer is ‘about 45%’ is ‘confusing and complicated’.

Unlike First Past the Post, proportional voting systems don’t change the results of elections, warping the parliaments out of recognition from how people voted. They simply try their best to reflect how the nation votes – if you want a single party government under a proportional system you need to get out there and actually convince people to vote for you – rather than relying on the system doing the hard work for you.

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Luke Field is an Irish political scientist specialising in campaigns, elections, and democracy. He recently completed a Ph.D. in Political Science at University College Dublin and lectures in Politics at University College Cork. He tweets here.

Here he launches new research for the Electoral Reform Society on the UK’s December general election and Ireland’s election this February. 

In February, the Irish electorate went to the polls to elect a new set of parliamentary representatives to Dáil Éireann (the Irish lower chamber of parliament).

While turnout was less than in the most recent UK general election of December 2019 (62.9% to 67.3%), comparing the distribution of votes at constituency level among those elected suggests that the Irish electorate – or at least those parts of it who turned out to vote – may have given greater ‘assent’ to their new parliamentarians than was the case in the UK.

When I speak about voters giving ‘assent’, I mean that voters have indicated that they will be satisfied by the election of a given candidate, through including that candidate in their voting choice on their ballot.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that the candidate was the voter’s preferred choice, or even that the voter agrees with or supports all aspects of the candidate’s policy platform; only that the voter has indicated that they would be content for that candidate to hold political office. This might also be termed ‘voter accordance’.

In the UK context, this is a meaningless distinction. The First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system only allows for assent to be granted to one candidate. There is no option for voters to, say, indicate assent to the election of any other candidate who shares their view on issues such as Brexit: they can only pick one candidate, and that candidate is either elected or not elected.

Consequently, in the single-seat UK constituencies, a single successful candidate provides 100% of the representation with the assent of potentially far less than 100% of the voters. Indeed, as successful candidates need only a plurality of votes (your nearest opponent’s vote share plus 1) to be elected, newly-minted representatives may have been denied the assent of a majority of their voting constituents, as recent ERS analysis on the UK general election showed.

Ireland’s PR-STV electoral system offers a radically different set of outcomes in terms of assent, and we can understand this through the abbreviations on either side of the hyphen.

First, representation is not solely vested in a single representative, but instead distributed (somewhat) proportionately amongst multiple representatives (proportional representation, PR).

Second, voters are offered the opportunity to state their voting preferences sequentially through the single transferable vote (STV). Through the use of the Droop quota, and because the total level of representation includes the assent granted to several candidates, the percentage of voters in a given constituency that has granted assent to at least one of its representatives is all but guaranteed to be a large majority.

Assent in the UK’s December election

Calculating the level of assent granted to the representative of each UK constituency is very straightforward, as we need only look at the percentage of the vote received by each successful candidate. The range of these values is pretty extensive: at the top of the pile, the greatest level of assent expressed in the UK was for the Labour candidate in Liverpool Walton (84.68%). At the other end of the scale is the Sinn Féin candidate in South Down, who received the assent of only 32.4% of voters. The mean level of assent granted across the 650 UK constituencies was 54.35%, while the median value was 53.74%.

A considerable number of UK MPs received assent from less than 50% of voters in their constituency; 229 in total, or 35.2%.

Assent in Ireland’s General Election 2020

The range of assent – support for the winning candidates – expressed in each of the constituencies has Dublin Rathdown at the lower end (69.34% assent) and Dublin South-West at the upper end (90.24%). The mean of these assent estimations was 81.7% and the median was 82.3% [1]: in other words, 82% of voters have at least one representative for whom they voted, a stark contrast to the UK figures.

Comparing Assent in the Elections

 Even at first glance, it seems quite obvious that the Irish constituencies invested much greater assent in their representatives than was the case for the UK constituencies: the average level of assent was 25.35 percentage points greater for Ireland, while the median level was 28.56 percentage points greater. The highest level of assent expressed in Ireland was 5.56 percentage points greater than the UK equivalent, while the lowest level of assent expressed in Ireland was 36.91 percentage points greater than the UK equivalent. 

More than one in three UK constituencies gave less than 50% assent to their representative; in Ireland, only one constituency invested less than 70% assent in its representatives. In total, 618 UK constituencies (95.08%) expressed less assent in their representatives than was the case in Ireland’s least-assenting constituency. By contrast, 12 of the Irish constituencies (30.77%) expressed greater levels of assent in their representatives than was the case in the UK’s most-assenting constituency.

More than one in three UK constituencies gave less than 50% assent to their representative; in Ireland, only one constituency invested less than 70% assent in its representatives. Click To Tweet

Conclusions

In every Irish constituency, a significant majority the electorate ‘assented’ to the election of at least one of their representatives. In the UK, a majority of voters in one out of every three constituencies did not assent to their representative’s election. This is a pretty significant gap in assent on the part of Irish and UK voters. It should be borne in mind that, where error in these findings exist, it mostly comes from the underestimation of assent in the Irish case; in other words, if these findings are incorrect, it is only because the gap is even greater. 

The higher levels of assent in the Irish context are facilitated by both the proportional representation and the preferential ballots offered by the PR-STV system. Neither of these is offered by the UK’s FPTP system. If UK electors are dissatisfied with their parliamentary representation, they may wish to consider whether their electoral system is a factor.

[1] Calculating the assent in Ireland’s general elections is slightly more complicated by comparison to the UK. The reason for this is largely due to the issue of the ‘surpluses’ of successful candidates (the number of votes by which a successful candidate exceeds the quota, which can be transferred to other candidates), which can either over- or under-estimate the level of assent when transferred. There is also the issue of votes accumulated by the final candidate deemed not elected in each election, as there is no way to verify whether any of these ballot papers held a preference for any of the successful candidates (thus leading to a further underestimation of assent). However, it is possible to at least approximate this level of assent.

In order to provide this approximation, I created an upper and lower limit on assent for each of Ireland’s 39 parliamentary constituencies by modelling the surplus issue in different ways. In order to create the estimator of assent that is most comparable with the UK data, I simply take the midpoint between these two limits. While this value does contain some error for the reasons stated above, and probably under-estimates the level of assent in each Irish constituency, it does provide sufficient accuracy to draw some tentative comparisons between the two elections.

As part of a series on the experiences of voters in the Irish 2020 election, we wanted to speak with people who have voted with Ireland’s STV system and under Westminster’s First Past the Post system.

Nessa Johnston is a lecturer in Media at Edge Hill University. We spoke to her about how it felt to vote and be represented under the different systems – the Single Transferable Vote in Ireland and First Past the Post in the UK.

In all the constituencies I’ve lived in the UK, I’ve never felt my vote has truly mattered.

When I first voted in the UK I lived in Bournemouth in what was, and still is, a safe Conservative seat, and I knew that my vote wouldn’t change that. Right now, I live in Liverpool, in one of the safest Labour seats in the country.

So my experience of voting in the UK has always been feeling that my individual vote wouldn’t make much difference. I often used my vote as a sort of protest, or voted on principle rather than thinking that my candidate had any real chance of getting into Parliament. I definitely feel the system affects how I engage with the whole electoral process.

In Ireland, it’s different.

When I voted back in Dublin, my first preference was for the Green Party. They’re a minor party, getting just 2.7% of the vote in the 2016 election. That rose to 7% at this election and they now have twelve TDs [members of Ireland’s legislative assembly]. Had this been here in England it would have been seen as a wasted vote.

But now there’s a Green TD in my old constituency in Dublin, and when I voted for the Greens in Dublin I knew even if they didn’t win that my vote wouldn’t be wasted and that my other preferences would count. However I cast my vote, if my first preference doesn’t get in, the transfers have consequences.

The whole electoral system in Ireland makes me feel my vote is a positive one rather than a negative one. In the UK I feel like I’m thinking about how to keep the party I don’t like out. But in Ireland I feel it’s about who’s best for the job. And I think more carefully about who is second or third best – an option I’d never get voting for MPs in Westminster.

Irish Voter: In the UK I feel like I’m thinking about how to keep the party I don’t like out. But in Ireland, I feel it’s about who’s best for the job. Click To Tweet

Because it’s proportional, STV tends towards coalition governments. In Ireland, we’re used to that. I see that as a positive thing – that different parties and individuals should have to work together. It’s not just the majority dominating as happens in Westminster. You do get your frustrations – when there’s a coalition it’s often the junior partner who gets punished. But overall, I’m a fan of coalition government because I think the compromise it creates can be a good thing.

Compare that to First Past the Post, a system that has fostered so much more division in politics. The voting system is not the only reason people are so divided, but that winner-takes-all mentality has become so ingrained in Britain.

Labour and the Conservatives have always been the main parties in opposition or in government. I think when you see yourself as one of those two things it creates little space to even consider working together with others whichever side of the chamber they’re on. It creates a situation where everyone is very tribal. You can see this with the Brexit process. It’s always felt like it was about choosing sides rather than working together towards the best outcome.

Another interesting difference in Ireland is how the media covers the elections. Here it’s treated as a spectator sport. The story is the campaign and how the parties are competing. In Ireland it feels much more about the issues and what’s affecting people. Visiting Ireland recently, I was really refreshed by RTE’s [the Irish public broadcaster] coverage of the elections compared to British media coverage of the UK election – there was much more focus on issues and much less on personalities.

Because the whole process of government formation takes longer in Ireland there feels much less of a rush to make judgement. In the UK there’s a huge sense of triumphalism and failure right from the moment the exit poll is announced. The whole evening becomes about who lost and who won. There’s mass hysteria in the press, and on the other side indifference from the majority of voters who feel like they’re unrepresented in the result.

I realise that to some extent the media reflects the views of the public as well as shapes them – but in Ireland I feel there’s a more nuanced discussion in the press and I see that as a positive thing. It’s more than just a person from Labour versus a person from the Conservatives arguing things out.

In Ireland, having more than one TD for each constituency helps with this too. There’s not just one person speaking for you in the Dáil. My old constituency in Dublin has a range of parties representing it – Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Fein and the Greens – there’s a range of voices speaking on behalf of the people who live there.

In Liverpool I only have one MP. She’s lovely, but it makes politics seem like single parties have a monopoly on an area – that one party is the identity of that area. This influences how people and governments see different bits of the country. Liverpool is seen as such a staunchly Labour area and it feels marginalised by successive Tory governments for that reason.

You don’t get that so much in Ireland; places aren’t seen as the territory of just one party. Parties know they can’t just ignore an area or take others for granted – because the whole constituency’s preferences matter.

Having had experience with both political systems, proportional representation and voting with STV is infinitely preferable to Westminster’s system. ‘Winner takes all’ politics is just so frustrating, and its problems go far beyond the ballot box.

I hope one day we’ll see a proportional system here in the UK so all voters will feel like their voices count and that they’re being represented. If it can happen in Ireland, I don’t see why the UK can’t do it too.

Photo: Creative Commons Attribution Licence, William Murphy, Flickr

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