lizards chart

[abigailbrady]

This shows the combined voting share of Labour/Conservatives, in the general elections and European elections since 1979 (when direct European elections started). Blue is general, Red is Europeans.

There is a notable tend, in that while the Lab/Con share for European elections starts higher than generals, it ends up much lower. For European elections from 1979-1994, large single-member constituencies were used, making the system even less proportional than the system used for general elections.

There's a consistent downward trend for the European elections, but it starts seriously dipping below the general election figures in 1999, the first time PR is introduced. The next time round in the Europeans the combined vote share of Labour and Conservative drops below 50%, and falls even further in 2009. Doesn't it look like voter behaviour is aware of the electoral system and changes accordingly (if with a little lag)? Yet the media appears to treat these vote shares as comparable.

Comments

[katsmeat.livejournal.com]

This is something of an aside... but I was struck by how this plot

http://stats.grok.se/en/201004/Nick%20Clegg

Seems to exactly mirror 'Cleggmania'. Though possibly with a slight lag.

[thatmakesmemad.livejournal.com]

ITS A MEDIA CONSPIRACY DAMMIT !!!
The media tends to ignore voter turnout figures in elections in the same way as the parties do ("The electorate have spoken !!!" yeah sure less than 50% usually) so you have to dig them out.
Likewise they like to talk about swings all the time even in situations such as the European elections recently where the BNP won a couple of seats due to a collapse in turnout of voters for the other party and no change in votes for the BNP.
It's a sign of poor journalism.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

It's quite clear that voter behaviour changes significantly depending on the system and the purpose of the vote being cast; I agree with you that projecting FPTP votes to show what they would look like under alternate systems is essentially meaningless.

[jisha78.livejournal.com]

Very interesting stuff.