Tag: Electoral Systems
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How might the 2021 Senedd election have looked under the proposed new system?
My blog for Make Votes Matter on the proposed Senedd electoral system. Yesterday, Mark Drakeford and Adam Price published a “joint position statement” on Senedd reform. The agreement proposed the use of a closed list D’Hondt PR system to elect 96 Members of the Senedd (MSs). The system would have 16 constituencies, each electing 6…
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Joint opposition lists help un-skew the Hungarian electoral system, but they’ll still need a 3% lead to win
Five months from the 2022 Parliamentary elections, Hungary’s opposition is just about holding together the coalition needed to mount a credible campaign against Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz government. Last month, they chose their candidate for Prime Minister: Péter Márki-Zay, mayor of Hódmezővásárhely. Márki-Zay, a conservative politician with no national experience and practically no party of his…
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Five Lessons from the Metro Mayor Elections
Back in April, I tried to consider what our expectations of the 8 combined authority (metro) mayoral elections should be. As I said at the time, these weren’t meant to be predictions, but an attempt to think about what a “baseline” result would look like, based solely on national polls and general election results. On…
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Labour stands to gain in the metro mayor elections
As May 21st’s ‘Super Thursday’ elections come into view, all eyes are on whether Nicola Sturgeon will secure her majority for independence, and whether Labour will cling on in Hartlepool. But Super Tuesday also features 8 of England’s biggest electoral tests, in the form of combined authority mayoral elections. These elections will give individual politicians…
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What can mapping a Hungarian by-election tell us about authoritarianism?
In October, voters in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén’s 6th district voted in an interim election to replace Fidesz MP Ferenc Koncz, who had died in a motorcycle accident in July. With Fidesz’s two-thirds majority at stake, the by-election became an important test for the opposition’s ability to turn out voters. In 2018, Fidesz did not win a majority…
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Thesis: Moving the Goalposts: Orbán’s Fidesz, Strategies of Party Competition and Electoral Authoritarianism
My undergraduate thesis: Moving the Goalposts: Orbán’s Fidesz, Strategies of Party Competition and Electoral Authoritarianism
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Proportional Representation: a Catalyst for Sustainable Policies?
My contribution to the Young Fabians Environment Network pamphlet ‘Ways to Save the World’ the full pamphlet can be found here. Until recently, interest in electoral reform was reserved for political anoraks. Around election time, some party activists grumbled about the unfairness of the system, but there were few serious attempts to change it. In…
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Peterloo led eventually to electoral democracy – but there’s one big bit of unfinished business
New evidence shows that it’s the Right that tend to benefit from the UK’s unequal electoral system. The Left is gradually embracing Proportional Representation, but it needs to move faster. This was originally posted as an article for OpenDemocracy: Peterloo led eventually to electoral democracy – but there’s one big bit of unfinished business Today marks…
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What if UK European Elections were held under the 1994 FPTP system?
The European Elections are the only nationwide UK elections held under a form of Proportional Representation. Admittedly, due to the D’Hondt counting system and small regions, the system isn’t perfectly proportional, but it is a vast improvement on the previous FPTP system, used until 1999. The last European Election to be held under First Past…
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Tactical voting on the basis of the 2014 European Elections
Disclaimer: I am a Labour Party member and will be voting for Labour in May’s European Elections. This blog is not intended to encourage tactical voting but to explore from an academic perspective whether various parties’ claims to be “the main Remain party” in the upcoming European Elections stand up to scrutiny. One of the biggest…
Owen Winter 