Partisan bias in British general elections

Blau, Adrian

doi:10.1080/13689880108413053

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…If the counterfactual situation involves changes in party vote shares, one then needs to translate those changes into district-level vote swings. Again, even in the simplest case of a two-party system, the swing patterns are quite complex (Blau 2001). While none of those difficulties are insurmountable, solving them is complicated and time-consuming.…”

Section: Advantages Of the Formula For Modeling Political Counterfactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pot and ladle: a formula for estimating the distribution of seats under the Jefferson–D’Hondt method

2019

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We propose a simple yet new formula for estimating national seat shares and quantifying seat biases in elections employing the Jefferson-D'Hondt (JDH) method for seat allocation. It is based solely on the national vote shares and fixed parameters of the given electoral system. The proposed formula clarifies the relationship between seat bias on the one hand, and the number of parties and the number of districts on the other. We demonstrate that the formula provides a good estimate of seat allocations in real-life elections even in the case of minor violations of the underlying assumptions. With that aim in mind, we have tested it for all nine EU countries that employ the JDH method in parliamentary elections. Moreover, we discuss the applications of the formula for modeling the effects of vote swings, coalition formation and breakup, spoiler effects, electoral engineering, artificial thresholds and political gerrymandering. By not requiring district-level vote shares, our formula simplifies electoral simulations using the JDH method.

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Section: Advantages Of the Formula For Modeling Political Counterfactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pot and ladle: a formula for estimating the distribution of seats under the Jefferson–D’Hondt method

2019

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“…In addition to this 'equal shares' approach Brookes also allowed for a procedure that involved reversing the shares of the two main parties which gave similar, though not identical, bias estimates. 7 Blau (2001; has presented a reasoned critique of this approach and proposed an alternative method, which reaches very similar conclusions about the size, direction and components of the observed bias. 8 The interaction term may also encompass some 'random noise' -bias towards or against the particular party that is not identified with one of the main components.…”

Section: About the Authorsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Unequal and Unequally Distributed Votes: The Sources of Electoral Bias at Recent British General Elections

Johnston

Borisyuk²,

Thrasher³

et al. 2012

Political Studies

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Using a method for decomposing electoral bias in a three‐party competitive system we contend that discussion surrounding electoral reform for the House of Commons is largely based on misconceptions about bias sources at recent British general elections (Northern Ireland is excluded from the analysis). Labour is the principal beneficiary across these seven elections while the third party, the Liberal Democrats, consistently suffers from a negative bias. There is no clear pattern for the Conservative party, however; it experienced a positive net bias at two of the elections but was disadvantaged for the remaining five. For three bias components – electorate, abstentions and minor party – Labour consistently has a positive advantage and the Conservatives are always disadvantaged. Abstentions contribute relatively strongly to Labour's advantage but differences in electorate size are not a major contributor to overall bias. Despite this, legislation changing the independent boundary review process is predicated on the assumption that new rules should remove much of the pro‐Labour bias. The analysis finds instead that most bias stems from the geography component: differences in the distributions of each party's votes and the translation of votes into seats. Vote distribution is clearly the largest component explaining the Liberal Democrats' disadvantage but it is also the largest component for both Conservative and Labour parties in five of the last seven general elections. Although future boundary reviews will remove the effects of unequal electorates, this process is not designed to address either the impact of turnout/abstention or vote distributions on overall electoral bias.

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“…Consider three parties, A, B and C ranked in order of their finishing electoral T for assembling the superposition then considers all six possible configurations for these parties the actual finishing position (ABC) together with five further notional elections, viz., ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB and CBA (Borisyuk et al 2010, pp 738-739 but see Blau 2001 for criticisms of the application of swing in simulated elections of this type). For each of these configurations the vote share of the largest, second and third parties are fixed at the level of the actual election.…”

Section: Decomposing Three-party Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral bias at the 2015 general election: reducing Labour’s electoral advantage

Thrasher

Borisyuk

Rallings

et al. 2016

Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties

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Partisan bias in British general elections

Cited by 13 publications

References 19 publications

Pot and ladle: a formula for estimating the distribution of seats under the Jefferson–D’Hondt method

Pot and ladle: a formula for estimating the distribution of seats under the Jefferson–D’Hondt method

Unequal and Unequally Distributed Votes: The Sources of Electoral Bias at Recent British General Elections

Electoral bias at the 2015 general election: reducing Labour’s electoral advantage

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