Elections and Political Communications in Modern Britain PDF

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Elections and Political Communications in Modern BritainWeek 1Lecture 1 – The Oxford by-election of 1938 Until 1930s by-elections were used (rather ineffectively) to gauge public opinion between general elections, before opinion-polls were invented.  The Oxford 1938 by-election was the last of thi...

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Elections and Political Communications in Modern Britain Week 1 Lecture 1 – The Oxford by-election of 1938   

Until 1930s by-elections were used (rather ineffectively) to gauge public opinion between general elections, before opinion-polls were invented. The Oxford 1938 by-election was the last of this type of election, and the first with an opinion poll. Historically, elections were corrupt & expensive until gradual reform in the 19th century (introduction of secret ballot, less bribery, increased franchise etc).

The Political Scene in the 1930s 

Widespread unemployment & poverty after WSC (1929 - Labour minority government). Jarrow Crusade – protest against the issue which marched from Jarrow to London. o o

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By 1931 Labour gov. couldn’t afford to keep paying unemployment benefit. The party was split and the government fell. Rest of 1930s – Conservative dominant coalition government with a Labour PM some of the time, pushing austerity.

Issue of the right-wing dictators in the rest of Europe (Hitler, Mussolini etc) – should Britain re-arm or not? o

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There was the question of whether Britain should go to war (and accept the economic strain of doing so) or attempt to maintain peace. Both Conservative & Labour favoured the passivism of the latter option, but were concerned about public opinion. Newspapers such as the Daily Express (owned by Lord Beaverbook) & Daily Mail (owned by Lord Rothermere, who was a fascist) provided a gauge of public opinion. Oxford Union Debate – 9th February 1933.  

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The ‘Peace Ballot’ – 1934-5.   

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Voted ‘That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country’. These students did not represent national opinion, but this was overlooked.

Asked people to fill out & send back a primitive opinion poll. Over 11 million responses. The poll was not balanced, but led people to answer in favour of continued disarmament.

East Fullham by-election – 25th October 1933  

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Labour won the seat quite dramatically. This was considered a sign that the public didn’t want rearmament, and the Conservatives thus continued their commitment to this policy of no rearmament. In reality, the Labour victory was due to candidates & economics.

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Most of the British press back Chamberlin and his policy of appeasement in September 1938 when he comes to power.   

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The Munich Agreement – 30th September 1938 – gave Germany the part of Czechoslovakia it wanted to avoid war. The British press I largely ecstatic about this. Although the Conservatives were still pro-appeasement, the Labour party now switched, having gradually changed courses from the mid 1930s due to events such as the Spanish Civil War 1936. The only way to gauge public opinion on the issue now is by a by-election, which the Oxford by-election provided.

The Oxford by-election – 27th October 1938  

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The world & its leaders focussed on the by-election as an indication of public opinion on appeasement. Labour & Liberals agreed to stand their candidates down and put forward a sole candidate against government policy – A. D. Lindsay – an Independent Progressive Candidate backed by anyone (Labour, liberals & conservative rebels alike) who opposed appeasement. Election fought vigorously and almost entirely on foreign policy. Hogg still wins in the conservative safe-seat (15,797 vs. 12,363). In hindsight, looking at the swing (Conservatives down 6.7%), we see that the result was actually not very good for the Conservatives.

The Invention of Opinion Polls  

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1935 – George Gallup creates his polling company – gives rise to the Gallup Poll. Literary Digest had sent postcards to conduct a similar poll, but had a biased sample due to the way they got their address lists from product customer lists and therefore from people exclusively with money. 1936 Presidential Election – Gallup predicted the Literary Digest prediction as well as the election result. Gallup was closer to being correct & Literary Digest went out of business almost immediately (even though Roper/Fortune gave a more accurate poll, Gallup was a better publicist). From 1938, British Subsidiary (set up by Gallup in 1936) regularly publishes in News Chronicle. 1945 – first general election polls are a dramatic triumph. 1950s – parties begin to use polls to plan their campaigns. 1960s – academics begin to use broad surveys to understand politics. Telephone polls develop in 198s, and internet polling emerges in 2001.

Week 2 Lecture 2 – The general election of 1945 (and the invention psephology) 

Background of 1945 election: o o

1945 election gave the Labour Party their first overall majority, having formed its first minority governments in 1924 & 1929. War breaks out in 1939, and soon afterwards (1940) a coalition government forms under Winston Churchill with a truce, and Clement Attlee as deputy Prime Minister.

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The Labour Party had formed at the start of the 20th century, and grew to represent the working class and rival the liberals. War destroyed 4 million homes, and caused Britain to lose 2/3 of its foreign trades. The country had also built up immense foreign debt. It was a big challenge for any party taking over. Though a good wartime leader, Churchill was a poor party leader and was uninterested in party politics. Due to his focus on winning the war and lack of interest in partisan politics, Churchill appointed wartime positions based on suitability, regardless of political implications. This meant that some Labour politicians (eg. Ernest Bevin, Herbert Morrison) were placed in high profile positions, allowing them to gain public support individually and for their party. “Under the counter” (Philip Zec) – political cartoon attacking the Conservatives for not delivering what the British public deserved (NHS, jobs, better houses etc.) having “paid twice for” in 1914 and 1939 (the wars).

The General Election 1945 o

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Very few election posters & leaflets due to post-war scarcity of paper & other materials. Most of the election was fought over the radio, which had become a big part of people’s lives during the war. Little preparation in comparison to regular elections. Churchill and the Conservatives continued to brand themselves as the ‘national’ party. The party pushed Churchill as their one big argument – ‘Help him finish the job’. In contrast, Labour was using the slogan ‘Help them finish their job!’ (in reference to the soldiers). Manipulating voters’ perceptions of the past is often an important tool during elections. Labour’s Campaign:  

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Labour plan to nationalise substantial parts of the economy and bring in huge schemes such as the NHS. Labour plans to build houses very quickly – this was one of the issues which was thought most important by voters, according to polls. Urgent problem due to the level of destruction caused by the war.

Churchill’s Campaign:  

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8th May 1945 – Germany surrenders. 18th May 1945 – Labour conference rejects Churchill’s of continuing the coalition until Japan is defeated. 23rd May 1945 – Labour ministers leave government, Churchill forms “caretaker” Conservative government with election to be held as soon as possible. 5th July 1945 – General Election day. 26th July 1945 – postal votes counted and results announced (gap to allow troops to return from around the world in time to vote).

Strong focus on foreign policy – pushing nationalism and appealing to traditional Conservative voters. “No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo” – Churchill said this in a radio speech, and it perturbed many voters – even loyal Conservatives.

1945 Election Gallup Poll:

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Results:   

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Labour won (48% to 40% Conservatives). Gallup poll was very accurate. Labour got 393 seats – total control of governmental power. Conservatives had 213 seats. Clement Attlee formed his Labour government.

Implications of the result of the election:     

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Final poll (British Institute of Public Opinion) said Labour would win the election 47% (41% to the Conservatives). News Chronicle – said that even if they could predict the result of the proportion of votes won by the respective parties, they could not predict the share of the seats which would be won.

Labour liked to believe that this result was something of a ‘revolution’. Mortimore does not believe that this result was a revolution, or even the big turning point that many socialists thought or hoped it would be. A lot of the Labour votes were from a disillusioned middle class who, whilst really Tory voters, were willing to vote Labour this once. In reality, Labour had already been a relatively big and successful party prior to the disaster of the 1930s – the event of 1945 was not as much of a big swing as it seemed. A vote for Labour seemed less extreme in 1945 than it had done prior to the war, because the wartime government had already been enacting the policies which Labour sought (eg. powerful economic management).

The invention of ‘psephology’ o

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1945 was the first election in which people started to properly study and understand the workings of the electoral system, and the implications of using the FPTP system on British politics. David Butler emerged as the prominent academic expert on British elections. Butler discovers the ‘cube law’ (if the ratio of votes was A:B, then the ratio of seats would be A-cubed:B-cubed). This was accurate at the time, but is no longer applicable or true. Butler also came up with the concept of ‘swing’ at elections.

Seminar 2 – The operation of the British Electoral system – votes & seats.

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How did it come about that for several elections up to 2010 Labour got more seats in the House of Commons per thousand votes than the Conservatives did? 

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Nature & disproportionality of the FPTP system – eg. 2005: Lib Dems won 62 seats with 5,985,454 votes whilst Labour won 355 seats with 9,552,436 votes. This means that each Lib Dem candidate effectively required 96,500 votes to be elected, whilst each Labour candidate required effectively just 26,900 votes. Therefore, a vote for the Labour party was worth four times as much as a vote for the Lib Dems.

How does the “First Past the Post” electoral system influence the form and structure of politics in Britain? (Think about effects that go beyond who wins and who loses)

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Affects the way people vote – the knowledge that one’s preferred candidate has very little chance of winning (eg. In a safe-seat constituency under FPTP) may encourage tactical voting. Results most commonly in single-party governments (rather than coalitions), which tend to be able to more easily enact policy change than coalitions. The policy changes enacted will also be less likely to represent the views of the whole nation and more likely to represent the views and interests of the governing party’s supporters. (Ideas drawn from Hix, Johnston and McLean).

How might British general elections be different if we used a proportional representation system? 

Parties would become more ‘catch-all’ in style; they would need to appeal to more voters, not just specific groups in society, meaning they would need to adopt more ‘umbrella policies’.

Seminar Readings Dick Leonard and Roger Mortimore, Elections in Britain: A Voter’s Guide, 5th ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, ch. 4 (‘Constituencies and the Electoral System, pp. 22-38). 

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Until the 1832 Reform Act, there was no effort to make the number of representatives proportional to constituency size – “By 1832 the largest Parliamentary constituency had several thousand times as many electors as the smallest” P22. By 1954 many people felt that seat redistribution and constituency boundary alterations had become far too frequent and extreme. P23 1958 – general reviews period extended to 10-15 years. P25 Boundary Commissions Act 1992 – changed this period to 8-12 years. P25 Deciding on constituency boundaries must involve the consideration of the ‘electoral quota’, geographical constraints, local authority constraints etc. pp. 26-7 “larger seats tend to experience a disproportionate population growth, while the smaller seats tend to become progressively depopulated” p29 “the overall outcome of each periodic distribution has been to benefit the

Conservative Party” p30 (see table above). 1983; “if the Conservative and Labour vote had been exactly equal the Conservatives would have won 19 more seats.” However in 1992 “Labour would have been no less than 38 seats ahead in the event of an equality of votes”, then 1994 – 20 seat advantage to Tories and 79 advantage to Labour in 1997 p30.

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A party can win a general election with the minority of the public vote eg. Conservative victory in 1951 and Labour victory 1974. P31 University representation in the Commons abolished by Labour 1945-51. P31 Historically seats were either uncontested or (from the early 1950s) contested between two candidates, but as time passed seats became contested by more and more candidates. P35 “Up to 1997, fewer than 100 seats had switched sides at each of the post-war elections since 1945” p36 Seats are either safe, hopeless or marginal. P36 David Butler came up with the concept of ‘swing’ at elections. P36

Galina Borisyuk, Colin Rallings, Michael Thrasher, and Ron Johnston, ‘Parliamentary Constituency Boundary Reviews and Electoral Bias: How Important Are Variations in Constituency Size?’, Parliamentary Affairs 63, no. 1 (1 January 2010): 4–21. doi:10.1093/pa/gsp016.     

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2005 Election; Labour & Conservative separated by 3 percentage points, but Labour won 25% more HoC seats than the Conservatives. P4 “A Periodic Review of Parliamentary constituencies is undertaken by the four Boundary Commissions […] every 8-12 years.” P5 “disproportionality is not synonymous with electoral bias” p7 “Bias occurs when the parties are treated unequally in the process of allocating seats” p7. “’The electorate of any constituency shall be as near the electoral quota as is practicable’, although ‘a Boundary Commission may depart from the strict application of [this] rule… if it appears to them that a departure is desirable” to fulfill other criteria. P. 8 “Constituencies will never have equal electorates under the current rules and procedures” p11 (application of different criteria differently, population changes etc). Ralph Brookes developed a tool to measure electoral bias (specifically for 2-party systems), providing a ‘norm of comparison’ p11 Geography, malapportionment, abstention and the minor party effect all contribute to electoral bias. P12 Boundary reviews do “not remove electoral bias” p19. “These reviews are first and foremost concerned with equalizing electorates and therefore address only one of the elements that may contribute towards bias.” P19 “By comparing the composition of bias at the actual election with that for the estimated result we have shown the impact of boundary reviews upon bias.” P19

Alan Renwick, The Alternative Vote: A Briefing Paper. London: Political Studies Association, 2011.   

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AV is a single-member, majoritarian system. P4 “AV is used for national parliamentary elections in three countries: Australia, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea.” P4 AV increases voter choice by allowing them to express their support for more than one candidate, and allowing them to express varying degrees of support for candidates in different parties. P6 AV eliminates one form of tactical voting (voting for a large party to avoid ‘wasting’ your vote) but introduces another type (voting for candidates in terms of how easy they will be to defeat for your preferred candidate). PP.. 6-7 AV does not have a significant effect on turnout or the number of spoilt ballots P7

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AV does not require voters to rank all candidates, so the system does not completely eliminate minority winners as some votes become ‘exhausted’. P9 “The claim that AV gives some voters extra votes is a fallacy” p10 “AV is more likely than FPTP to elect the candidate with broadest support.” P10 “AV would have produced a different result in the 2010 election in 43 seats – fewer than 7 per cent of the total.” (calculated by the BES team) p. 12 Non-monotonicity is extremely rare. P12 Overall, AV does not increase proportionality in comparison to the current system. P14 “it is possible that, under AV, voters would think about the parties differently and that the overall menu of parties would change.” P14 AV results in “bipolar multipartism” – two blocs of multiple parties. However, such fragmentation has not occurred as one might expect in the Australian party system. P14 AV makes small parties more likely to win votes and less likely to win seats, and also gives them bargaining power over larger parties in order to secure the support of smaller parties in instructing their voters how to order their consecutive preferences. P15 AV does not increase adequate representation of women & minorities. P17 AV would only slightly decrease the number of safe seats. P17 AV would require MPs to work harder to gain the support of more constituents, but this could distract them from maintaining a national perspective on policy issues. Pp 18-19.

Simon Hix, Ron Johnston, and Iain McLean, ‘Choosing An Electoral System’. British Academy, March 2010. https://www.britac.ac.uk/publications/choosing-electoral-system. 

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In contemporary British politics the “main trends are declining support for the two main parties and divergent voting patterns in different regions of the country.” Making FPTP difficult to sustain if these trends continue. P10 The last decade or 2 has seen the UK become a ‘laboratory’ for electoral change. P107 “the greater the constituency magnitude the greater the probability that an election result will approximate proportional representation” p108 However, larger constituencies are less homogeneous and so it is harder to identify a ‘local’ view for representatives. P108 “evidence suggests that MPs elected in multi-member districts with a system of preferential voting (STV or Open-List PR) are just as likely to develop close connections with their local constituents as MPs elected under FPTP.” P109 Single-party governments can more easily enact policy change. Coalitions tend to enact more gradual policy change which reflects the national interest as a collective. Coalition governments would also have more policy issues on their agenda. P112 “a PR electoral system would encourage the main parties to propose policies with broad public appeal rather than to target small groups of voters” p113 – does this counteract the previous point?

Week 3 Lecture 3 – The general elections of 1950/1951 (and the introduction of one-person-onevote) 

Between 1945 and 1950, Labour lost the slither of middle class support which they had gained in 1945. The optimistic belief that 1945 had made Labour the dominant governing party was proved wrong.

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The central issue in both elections was the re...