By John Pickard
Now that the voting for Labour’s NEC is about to begin in earnest – ballot dispatch begins on 19th – there is a lot of discussion on social media about the new Single Transferable Vote (STV) system and whether it will split the left vote. The short answer is, yes; where there are slates of candidates in a large field, it can split the vote.
It is worth looking at the background to the introduction of the new system. We must ask, first, why did the right wing on Labour’s NEC support the new system, whereas the left on the NEC opposed it? Are the right-wing NEC members so stupid that they thought it would confer some advantage to the left? Or as seems more likely, are they taking full advantage of the splits in the left to win more seats than they really deserve?
Their awareness of the new possibilities of STV may have been given some impetus by the victory of the right wing in the NEC by-elections in early 2020. Although only getting 31 per cent of the vote, the right wing won both available seats. The left, with 46 per cent of the votes, got none. How did this happen? Because the two right wing candidates got marginally more votes each than the five left candidates got each, when the votes were divided between them…and that was under the old system.
“the gold standard of proportional representation”
In their article on Labour’s new STV system on June 30, the Electoral Reform Society commented that “STV is the gold standard of proportional representation…”
“This is a major step forward for member democracy and fair results,” said the Chief Executive – who had been campaigning for the change – “and we were proud to back the campaign. Labour has now firmly rejected the Westminster-style winner-takes-all system for its internal elections”. STV, it is clear, is intended to reflect proportionality and that is what it will show.
The Single Transferable Vote system might be similar to the Alternative Vote (AV) system, as used by Labour to elect its Leader. But there is a crucial difference. In the leadership contest, there was only one winner, and the votes of each bottom candidate were redistributed as they dropped out, until someone won over 50% of the vote. STV, however, is now being used to elect multiple candidates, and in this case nine, from a huge field of over forty.
It is important to make the simple point that, unlike in previous NEC elections, Labour members do not have nine votes. They have one vote, but that one vote is ‘transferrable’, so voters list their one choice in order of preference, right down to the last on the list, if so desired.
Votes redistributed – from the top and the bottom
In the Electoral Reform Society description of STV, they refer to it as a single vote. However, by a voter listing candidates in order of ‘favourite’ first, then second choice, and so on, these numbers, “tell the people counting to move your vote if your favourite candidate has enough votes already or stands no chance of winning.” Votes, therefore, are not just passed ‘up’ as it were, from losing candidates, but also ‘down’, from those who might win ‘too easily’.
The system is made to work by designating a ‘quota’ – which is the number of votes that a candidate must win to secure his or her NEC spot. This is the total number of votes cast, divided by nine plus one. So, for example, if 180,000 members vote in the NEC elections, the minimum number of votes needed to reach the quota and be elected would be 180,000 divided by 9+1, that is 18,000. This equates to 10 per cent of the vote. This quota is worked out before any individual counting takes place.
Statistics for lefties
“Each voter has one vote”, the ERS, explains, “Once the counting has finished, any candidate who has more number ones than the quota is elected. But rather than ignore extra votes a candidate received after the amount they need to win, these votes move to each voter’s second favourite candidate.”
“If no one reaches the quota, then the people counting the vote remove the least popular candidate. People who voted for them have their votes moved to their second favourite candidate. This process continues until every vacancy is filled.”
Once the quota is established in the Labour contest, the tellers will then look at who got what. If nine candidates by some miracle all received the quota – 18,000 in the example above – then all nine will be elected.
The best article with an explanation of how the new system works in the context of the Labour NEC, appeared in July on the website Stats for lefties. This article explained how the complexities of STV – and it is complex, (deliberately so) – can affect a multi-candidate election.
A catastrophic mistake
If there are not nine immediate outright winners, the article says, “then voters’ preferences are redistributed until 9 people win the necessary number of votes. This is done through redistributing the votes of candidates who came last in each round of counting, and also through redistributing the votes of candidates who have already won – though votes for candidates who have already won are weighted at a smaller value to ensure that their vote does not count twice.”
The author of the article explains that a lot on the left of the Party are very relaxed about the new system, believing that a lot of left candidates can stand and that it “doesn’t matter”, because losers will have their votes redistributed. “But this”, the article explains, “would be an absolutely catastrophic mistake…Contrary to popular belief, STV does not prevent vote splitting – it simply makes it more complicated”.
The author of the article looks at a scenario where 40 candidates are standing. That is about right, because over forty would-be NEC members passed the minimum threshold of five nominations. The other assumption in the article – which again turns out to be correct – is that the right wing will field a slate of only six candidates. (Leaving aside the fact that many unaligned candidates are also on the right).
Forty candidates for nine places
Based upon the right-wing’s six candidates getting 30 per cent of the total first preferences (as in the by-elections earlier this year), that would mean each of them would win around 5 per cent of first preference votes each, because their first preferences would be split only six ways. They are already halfway to the magic 10 per cent.
Now, suppose on the other hand, that the left candidates – we will count here only the six LLA and the six GV candidates, twelve in total – get 50 per cent of the first preference votes between them; it means they get an average of just over 4 per cent each. However, this does not even consider the fact that other so-called ‘independent’ candidates will draw a lot of first preferences, including some from ‘left’ Labour Party members.
Outside the bubble of Facebook
Outside the bubble of Facebook, most of the party membership is not ‘disciplined’ and will not be voting for a candidate of a slate, as much as we would like them to. Ann Black, let us recall, came second in the overall nominations tally and must be one of the favourites to win a place. And then there are over twenty ‘independent’ candidates, some of whom claim to be on the left, as do the three ‘Tribune’ candidates.
The nominations process shows that the Labour left is far from being ‘dead’ as some sectarians have said. But that is only considering CLP nominations. What happens when members vote? While the persistence of the left can be seen in Rebecca Long-Bailey’s 135,000 votes in the leadership election, we cannot run away from the fact that 56 per cent of party members voted for Keir Starmer as party leader earlier this year. And Starmer’s votes would have included, more than likely, a large number of wrong-headed but genuine workers in the party, including some who think themselves ‘lefts’. Their votes in the NEC elections are likely to be spread far and wide and over a variety of slates.
Altogether, it means the first preference votes for the twelve LLA/GV left candidates are likely to be very widely distributed, producing, on average, a lower percentage each than for those on the right-wing slate half the size.
Much comment is ill-informed
Going back to the article in Stats for Lefties, it goes, on, “Why does this matter?…After all, won’t most of the left-wing members have given their second preference to other leftists?”
“Well, maybe. But even if they did, the sheer number of left-wing [and pseudo-left] candidates splitting the vote would mean that most (if not all) would poll fewer first preferences than the dozens of independents, soft left candidates and other candidates that we can expect to stand.”
“As a result, those left-wing candidates would be among the first to be eliminated when preferences from more unpopular candidates start to be redistributed. And so, they won’t benefit from any second or third preferences later on – because they’ll already have lost”. Once a candidate is eliminated, in other words, he or she cannot then benefit from transferred votes.
There has been a plethora of articles and information on social media about the new system. The left vote “cannot be split”, some have argued, saying, “the clue is in the name: single, transferrable, vote”. But much of the comment is ill-informed and does not consider the complexity of the system, the nature of the ‘electorate’, the size of the field of candidates, and, not least, the outcome it was designed to bring about – proportionality. Perhaps some of these ‘experts’ might like to explain why the ERS describes STV as “the gold standard of proportional representation”.
The ERS, by the way, also says that electors don’t have to worry about “splitting the vote”, but that precisely because a proportional outcome is expected. In any case, the examples they give refer to the Republic of Ireland, where there is not one single constituency with nine seats contested by forty candidates.
The article on Stats for Lefties, sums up Labour’s system in two bullet points:
*STV does not mean that vote splitting no longer matters
*STV does not mean that everyone will just transfer their vote to other left candidates
We should not be naïve about a system that was designed and set up to stymie the left. Labour’s right wing are not stupid and that is why they have a list of only six candidates. The only way to get the best result for the left is to stick to a unified and numbered list of preferences, in the most disciplined possible manner, and as far as possible staying with it.
The link for the article in Stats for Lefties is in the text above, but here it is again. It describes in more detail than we can carry here, how the STV system has operated in the Irish Republic. It is well worth reading, but in the final analysis, we will see the truth of the matter when the results are announced on November 13th.
October 16, 2020
