All posts tagged Single Transferable Vote

Results of the Scottish Council Elections

The Council Elections were held last Thursday 4th May, and the results in terms of seats were announced on Friday. It was only today that the Elections Scotland have published the summary details, including the First Preference votes. I have complied three brief summaries. The 2012 data used for comparisons is from the Lincoln Report on Report on Scottish Council Elections 2012.

Figure 1 shows the SNP were way ahead in terms of total seats won, the Conservatives second and Labour in third. In terms of change from 2012, it is the Conservatives that performed best, increasing the number of seats by 161. Labour lost a third of their seats, and the Independents were collectively down by a sixth on the seats won in 2012.

Figure 2 shows the SNP getting again ahead in terms of First Preference Votes, and on the same share as five years ago. The Conservatives are second on 25.3% and Labour third on 20.2%. For comparison, the latest YouGov opinion poll for Scotland of Westminster voting intentions, (of 24-27 April) gave SNP 41, Conservative 28 & Labour 18. People often vote differently in local elections to General Elections, and in Scotland, Independents are quite strong. But the difference is striking, and may indicate where the vote is moving. Compared to the last opinion poll, SNP -9, Conservative -3 and Labour +2. On that basis the Local Elections were bad news for the SNP. The Labour Party appear to have bottomed out, and the Conservatives are doing extremely well.

Figure 3 is the most interesting in terms of indications of voting intentions going into the General Election. I have shown the percentage of first preference votes by Party in each of the 34 councils.

I have highlighted the Party that gained the highest shared of First Preference Votes in each Council. They are SNP 16, Con 10, Ind 5, Lab 1.

A quick comparison with the Electoral Calculus General Election seat predictions. The Westminster constituencies are not necessarily the same as the councils.

Labour was only ahead in East Lothian. Electoral Calculus only gives Labour a 14% chance of winning, as against 45% for the SNP and 40% for Conservatives.

At a quick glance the Conservatives are ahead in all their target constituencies.

In the Scottish Borders, the number one target they achieved nearly double the FPV of the SNP. Although there is a strong vote for Independents, the 76% chance of Conservatives winning seems more than justified.

The better news for the Conservatives is in the long shots. Stirling has a 43% chance of winning, against 49% for the SNP, yet were 2.4% ahead in the FPVs. Angus has a 36% chance of winning, against 63% for the SNP, yet were 1.7% ahead in the FPVs. Ayr Carrick and Cumnock has a 32% chance of winning, against 59% for the SNP, yet were 13.2% ahead in the FPVs.

Kevin Marshall

by manicbeancounter on 08/05/2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Conservative Party, General Election 2017, Labour in Opposition, Local Elections 2017, Scottish National Party
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 08/05/2017

https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/05/08/results-of-the-scottish-council-elections/

John Curtice on Scottish Local Elections

I have made some quite bold statements about the Scottish Local Elections. It might be worth comparing these with the comments made by Britain’s leading psephologist, Prof John Curtice who is behind the What Scotland Thinks website and was the BBCs leading expert on the 2015 General Election and on EU Referendum. Comments quote in a BBC article on 30th April.

Meanwhile, analysis by politics professor John Curtice has suggested that the SNP and the Conservatives are likely to make gains in the local council elections.

I agree, forecasting about 100 seat gains for the SNP, and 150 seats for the Conservatives.

He said Labour looks set to fall back heavily.

I agree, forecasting about 250 seat loses for Labour.

The Single Transferable Vote (STV) multi-member ward system means that parties try to avoid standing more candidates than they think can win as they can affect each other’s chances of securing a seat.

Labour is standing 44 fewer candidates in this election than it did in 2012.

Prof Curtice said: “The changes in the number of candidates being nominated by the parties give us a strong clue as to how they see their chances.

“The Greens above all are evidently hoping to make a significant breakthrough, while the Tories and the SNP would seem to anticipate doing better than they did five years ago.

“Labour, in contrast, would appear to be expecting a setback.

“As a result of the sharp reduction in the number of candidates it is fielding, the party can only retain control of Glasgow, West Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire if every single one of the party’s candidates there secures election.

“And that will only happen if the party actually manages to outperform expectations.“

I agree on the points, but Prof Curtice being somewhat circumspect and polite to all sides. The Greens are not looking to make a major breakthrough, they are just fielding more candidates. The Tories have underplayed their hand, having a few extra candidates, but are not fully reflecting their recent surge in the opinion polls. If they had done, they would have fielded two or more candidates in more than 41 wards they have done.  But even with the surge evident early in the year. they probably thought better to play safe, than guess where the vote surge would be concentrated and come unstuck. At least then Ruth Davidson can now give an apology for underestimating support, and use that as a springboard for greater success at the General Election.

However, it is the Labour Party that have failed to game the system the most. They have pared back the number of candidates, making it certain that they will lose most of the majorities on the councils which they currently hold. But 44 less candidates is still far too many to maximize the seats won considering that their share of first preference votes is likely to be around half what it was in 2012. Figure 1 shows that in 145 wards Labour have more than one candidate. Most of these candidates will end up competing against each other, maybe resulting in no Labour councillors in many wards where they are traditionally strongest, where one candidate could have got elected. There is a very good reason for this strategy, figure 3 (from this post) shows why.

The candidates generally match the number of current Councillors. However, I make it seven councils that Labour can retain control of if every candidate is elected, not three. The official candidate list from Elections Scotland is here.

Prof John Curtice makes the more general comments, whilst I make specific predictions. I can be more easily wrong, but in making the basis of the forecasts known, then comparing my forecasts to actual outturn can give a greater understanding of the changes from 2012 than more coded comments. But then my more partial statements would never be allowed on the BBC.

Kevin Marshall

 

by manicbeancounter on 02/05/2017  •  Permalink
Posted in General Election 2017, Labour in Opposition, Local Elections 2017, Scottish National Party
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 02/05/2017

https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/05/02/john-curtice-on-scottish-local-elections/

Revised Scottish Local Elections 2017 Forecast

A previous forecast for the Scottish Local Elections was made before the General Election announcement on April 18th. Upon reviewing the forecast, I found that I had not allowed in the forecast of changes in numbers of council seats, for the impact of different average population per council seat. Allowing for this factor roughly offsets the movement in opinion since that announcement. In particular the fact that a Labour Councillor represents on average a large population than a councillor from other parties offsets the impact of a small increase in support for Labour since the General Election announcement. I see no reason to revise significantly my previous forecast of Labour to lose 250 seats, with the Conservatives to gain 150 and the SNP 100.

After the General Election was announced at least two Scottish opinion polls of Westminster voting intentions have been produced – one by Panelbase for The Sunday Times, the other by Survation for the Sunday Post. Both polls show the SNP down and both the Conservatives and Labour up slightly. One problem with using this opinion data is that people might vote differently in the local elections. For instance, in Scotland as a whole, Independent candidates in 2012 received 12% of the First-Preference votes and won 16% of the seats. I would expect that that the SNP would lose out the most to Independents, followed by maybe the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. This hypothesis can be validated against the data. The University of Strathclyde’s “WhatScotlandThinks.org” has the opinion poll data going back to 2007. For 2007 and 2012 I compare to percentage shares of seats votes with the opinion polls nearest to the local elections in Figure 1.

There is a result that I did expect. That is the Conservatives did comparatively worse in terms of seat percentage to opinion poll percentage. This was worse in 2012 than in 2007, as their share of First Preference votes fell in many wards below the threshold required to win seats. What I did not expect was that the SNP’s seat share was about the same as the opinion poll percentage in 2007 and slightly above that level in 2012, despite Independents winning 16% of the seats. Most unexpected is the Labour Party, which has the biggest deficit between opinion polls and seat share. There are three vague factors, that might be valid. That is different voting behaviour in local elections and general elections; lower voter turnout in Labour-voting wards and inaccuracies in the opinion polls. In the first it could be that some people were voting SNP in the local elections and voting Labour in General Elections. But this does not gel with what happened in the 2011 Scottish Assembly elections and the 2015 General Election. There is another factor. Local Councils represent different populations, which only partly reflected in the size of the council chamber. The most populous is Glasgow, with an estimated mid-2015 population of 606,300 and 79 Council seats.  The least populous is Orkney Islands, with an estimated mid-2015 population of 21,500 and 21 Council seats. So a Councillor in Glasgow will represent nearly nine times the number of people as in Orkney. There are good reasons for this differential. If the Councillors per head of population were made roughly equal (4390), then Glasgow council chamber would increase to 138, and Orkney would reduce to 5. But this does impact overall. Using the 2012 seats and within each council, dividing the population by the seats, gives figure 2.

About half of  the difference between the Labour Party’s differential between First-Preference vote share and seat share can be explained by the fact that their support is concentrated in the larger council areas where the average seat population is larger. The SNP were also impacted by larger than average seat population , but not by nearly as much.

This does not matter for seats won on councils, but it does impact on the net change in council seats. In particular, like others, I believe that the SNP will make large gains from Labour in the cities and larger towns, with Glasgow being the key area. But I also believe that the SNP will lose council seats to the Conservatives and the Independents. For this reason, I estimate that the average SNP seat population will increase by about 5%. With it they should gain control of 5 to 10 councils. However, if the drop in General Election support is from around 47% to 41% the net seat gain could be around 50, instead of the 100 previously predicted.

Labour are hit with three combined impacts of the likely fall in the first prefence votes. First is the failure to reach the threshold first preference votes to win seats. Second is that this threshold will be a higher percentage of the vote than for the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats, as Labour have fielded more than one candidate in nearly 150 wards.  With such a low share of the vote, under the STV system Labour Party candidates will be competing against each other for votes. Third is that Labour have larger than average population per seat, so the percentage of the seats won will be lower than the opinion polls suggest. For these three reasons combined, even if the General Election show a slight recovery from 15% to 18% of the popular vote, their share of the Scottish council seats won, could be still be less than 13% of the total, the point where total number of seat losses exceeds 250.

Kevin Marshall

by manicbeancounter on 01/05/2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Conservative Party, Labour in Opposition, Local Elections 2017, Scottish National Party
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 01/05/2017

https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/05/01/revised-scottish-local-elections-2017-forecast/

Will Ruth Davidson be Apologizing to Voters After the Scottish Local Elections on May 4th?

The Conservatives in Scotland are likely to show large gains in the Scottish local elections next Thursday.  So why should Ruth Davidson end up have to make an apology?

Consider the reasons that are likely to be large gains next week.

First, is that in 2012 the Conservatives did rather badly. They lost 28 seats to 115 seats, less than 10% of the total. In first preference vote share they went down over 2% to 13.3%.

Second is that since the 2015 General Election, when they received 14.9% of the vote – worse than the 2012 local elections with no Independents – the opinion polls have shown a consistent rise in support. By May 2016, the Conservatives achieved 22% of the vote at the constituency level in the Scottish Assembly Elections. By early this year opinion polls are indicating around 25% support.

Third is that support has, if anything, risen further in the last couple of months. Polls conducted since the General election was announced show GE support at 28% (Survation/Sunday Post) and 33% (Panelbase/Sunday Times). Below is a summary from Martin Baxter’s Electoral Calculus Website

On that basis local election vote could be above the 21% of First Preference Votes I used to predict gains of 150 seats. The potential embarrassment lies in the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. Under STV – a basic alternative to proportional representation – very large council wards have three or four Councillors. If a Party wishes to maximize its seats, it must optimize the number of candidates. In a previous post, I looked at the the candidates per ward.

In only 41 wards do the Conservatives have more than one candidate. In optimizing the number of candidates they have assumed that in only a very limited number of wards will they receive more than a third of first preference votes. Much below that and two candidates would end up competing against each other for votes. This is the strategy of a party, with uneven support, who still expects to get less than 20% of the vote. The problem is that is so long since the Conservatives had this level of support they do not know where that support lies. So, retrospectively, the Conservatives will realize that in many wards they could have fielded an extra candidate. This could mean that they fail to become the largest party on a number of councils, due to the prudent approach. Given that the SNP is the strongest party with the most candidates, it is they who will gain from this prudence. Hence the reason that Ruth Davidson could end up apologizing.

If this happens, and the Labour party loses out from fielding too many candidates (through matching the number of seats held in most areas), it could lead to a campaign to abandon the STV system. The SNP will likely stoutly defend a system that seems progressive and benefits them.

Kevin Marshall

by manicbeancounter on 27/04/2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Conservative Party, Local Elections 2017, Scottish National Party
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 27/04/2017

https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/04/27/will-ruth-davidson-be-apologizing-to-voters-after-the-scottish-local-elections-on-may-4th/

Local Elections Forecast for Scotland May 2017 (Pre-GE Announcement)

My forecast for the Scottish Local Elections in terms of change in share of the First Preference Votes from 2012 is SNP +9%, Labour -16%,  Conservatives +8%, Lib Dems -1% and Independents NC. In terms of change in seats, out of 1223 being contested, I forecast SNP +100, Labour -250,  Conservatives +150, Lib Dems -20 and Independents NC. The reasons are given below. This was compiled prior to Theresa May announcing a snap General Election to be held on June 8th. However, given that my forecast was largely based upon movements in Scottish GE opinion polls, the fact that the local elections will be held during a GE campaign might reinforce the influence on the local vote,

 

There are a number of factors that make forecasting the the outcome of the local elections just three weeks from now quite difficult.

  • In 2007 was the first election change to the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system, along with ward numbers being reduced, with three or four councillors per ward.
  • In 2007 the Labour Party did badly in the share of the of First Preference votes due to unpopularity of the Westminster Labour Government and also lost out due to STV. Compared to 2003, Labour’s share of the vote dropped 4.5% to 28.1%, but their share of council seats dropped 13.2% to 28.5%. The SNP were the big winners. From 2003 the SNP’s share of the vote rose 3.8% to 27.9% and their share of council seats rose 14.9% to 29.7% (source : tables 6 & 7 of Scottish Council Elections 2007 Results and Statistics).
  • In 2012 the Westminster Labour Party in Opposition were riding high in the polls. But in the Scottish Local Elections only improved their vote share on 2007 by 3.3% to 31.4% and their seat share by 3.7% to 32.2%. The SNP also improved on their 2007 results. The SNP vote share increased 4.4% to 32.3% and their seat share 5.1% to 34.7%. The Lib Dems suffered the biggest setback, with vote share almost halving to 6.6% and seat share reducing 7.8% to 5.8%  (source : tables 6 & 7 of  Lincoln Report on Report on Scottish Council Elections 2012).
  • Following the Independence Referendum of October 2014, the SNP, despite losing the referendum, increased their share of the Scottish Westminster voting intention opinion polls from around 30% to 47-48%.
  • Since the General Election (with SNP winning 50% of the vote and 56 of 59 seats) the SNP’s share of the Westminster voting intention has remained near 50%. The Conservatives have improved from 15% to around 25%, whilst Labour have declined from 24% to 15%. See Figure 1 below, lifted from the Electoral Calculus website.

  • The is a big gap in the polls between September 2015 and September 2016. But in May 2016 there was the Elections to the Scottish Parliament, with the constituency (and regional) vote shares of Con 22.0% (22.9%) , Lab 22.6% (19.1%), Lib Dem 7.8% (5.2%), UKIP 2.0%, Green 0.6% (6.6%) and SNP 46.5% (41.9%).  This bridges the gap in quite nicely, and is consistent with the polls.
  • In June 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union by 51.9% to 48.1%. But in Scotland the vote was 38.0% to 62.0%. The SNP maintains a paradoxical position of wanting Independence from the UK, but to remain a part of the more opaque European Union. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was hoping that Brexit would cause those Scots who voted to remain in both the UK and the European Union would come over to the Scottish Independence side. According to a large YouGov poll conducted last year and published in January, this switch has happened. But it has made no impact on the polls as there has also been a switch between those who voted for Independence from both the UK and the EU to support for remaining a part of the UK.
  • The STV system forces parties, if they wish to maximize the number of candidates elected, to optimize the number of candidates. My previous post was a long digression, based on the published candidate lists, on how of the three main parties, SNP and Conservatives appear to have adopted these optimization strategies. Conversely the Labour Party appears to have fielded candidates in line with the number of council seats held, failing to recognize that their support has about halved. As a result I would expect the Labour Party to experience a greater fall in share of seats than in share of the vote.

Forecast for Scottish Local Elections (pre-GE announcement)

Based on the above, I offer up quite a radical forecast for the Local Elections.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) look to have peaked in terms in popularity. Their vote share in the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections was slightly below the Westminster Elections of 2015. Estimation of the vote share in the Local Elections is a matter of allowing for how much the Independents will eat into the SNP share of the Scottish Vote. I think that a 41% share is a reasonable estimate. Share of seats I expect to rise by slightly less than vote share, which gives a rise of 100 seats. Note that with only 627 candidates, such a rise in seat numbers implies less than 1 in 6 of the SNP candidates would fail to get elected.

For the Labour Party, 2012 was an improvement on the 2007 result, but increase in the share of the vote was much smaller than the improvement in England or in Wales. That was due to the SNP taking up much of the fall in vote share of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. Labour have been reducing in the opinion polls since the 2015 General Election and further since the Scottish Parliament election of last year. Given that Labour in the UK has been falling in the opinion polls to below 25% (see new lows with You Gov this last weekend), the share could be lower than 15% that I have assumed. Another factor is that due to the Independents, the vote share could also be lower. the forecast loss of 150 seats I believe to be quite cautious for two reasons. First, is that once a Party with wide spread coverage goes beyond a certain level of support, they fail to win as many seats as vote share, even with a proportional system like STV. The second reason is that Labour have too many candidates. There is an outside chance of seat share falling below 10%.

The Conservative Party are have increased their share in the Scottish opinion polls since last year. That resurgence is partly as a result of Brexit, with the party being the clear choice who support an Independent United Kingdom. But they are overcoming decades of increasing unpopularity. Whilst the opinion polls show the Conservatives at 25% or more, I believe that 21% is a more reasonable forecast. However, in terms of seats, that increase of 8% in first preference votes will be sufficient to mean a much larger increase in seats numbers. So this this time the share of seats will be similar to the share of the vote, whilst in 2012 there was a four point gap.

The Liberal Democrats, if anything, I believe will see another slight decline in their vote share. The Independents are the big unknown. But most of the seats held are in a small number of Councils. 125 out of 200 current Independent Councillors are in 7 out of 32 Council areas. In Orkney and Shetland all the council seats are held by Independents; in  Na h‐Eileanan an (Outer Hebrides) it is 21 out of 31; and in Highland 35 out of 80. I think the vote share will be fairly stable in May as well.

 

 

 

 

by manicbeancounter on 18/04/2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Conservative Party, General Election 2017, Labour in Opposition, Local Elections 2017, Scottish National Party
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 18/04/2017

https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/04/18/local-elections-forecast-for-scotland-may-2017-pre-ge-announcement/