In what ways might reform of the voting system bring electoral advantage to the conservative party?

At first glance this proposition might sound quite ridiculous. Not only has first-past-the-post served the Conservative party extremely well for most of the 20th century, but the Conservative’s have always been the most outspoken opponents of electoral reform. Thanks entirely to first-past-the-post, the Conservative Party have been in power for two-thirds of the last century. However, the 1997 general election has brought dramatic change to the political landscape.

It is generally accepted that first-past-the-post over-represents the two main parties at the expense of the other parties. In four consecutive elections from 1979 to 1992, 42% of the popular vote was enough to give the Conservatives a significant majority of seats in the House of Commons. In each of these cases Labour, the second party was also over-rewarded in seats. This was particularly noticeable in 1983 when Labour won only 28% of the vote, but still managed a significant proportion of seats.

It was therefore very unusual in 1997 when the Conservatives, the second party, were under-represented in parliament. The extremes of this were seen in Scotland, Wales and most of the big cities outside of London, where the Conservatives received absolutely no representation. It is under these unusual circumstances that the idea that electoral reform might help the Conservatives becomes realistic. The Conservatives have discovered the problem perpetually faced by the Liberal Democrats. They have a significant proportion of the vote, spread thinly across the country, resulting in few seats. The Liberal Democrats went some way to addressing this problem at ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Shortly after the general election a study was ran to ‘replay’ the general election under different electoral systems. It concluded that the Conservative Party would receive electoral advantage if the 1997 election had been carried out under a List System (pure proportionality) or the Additional Member System, present in Germany. AV (preferred by Labour), STV (preferred by the Liberal Democrats) and SV would all have proved disadvantageous for the Conservatives. AV would have created an even less proportional result in 1997 than first-past-the-post did.

These results are all very interesting, but largely irrelevant when considering electoral reform. Any small realistic chance that electoral reform has will most likely come from the recommendations of the Jenkins report. The system which the report finally advocated is AV Plus. This would comprise of basic AV supplemented by an approximate 15-20% of MPs elected through a proportional list system. These extra MPs would act as a proportional corrective mechanism, awarding extra MPs to those parties under-represented. This system is a combination of AV (disadvantageous to the Conservatives) and a list system (advantageous to the Conservatives).. Its closest relative is the German AMS system, which would have helped the Conservatives. However rather than a 50:50 split, a 75:25 split of MPs might not be as beneficial to the Conservatives, especially with the inclusion of AV rather than first-past-the-post as a basis. It is therefore difficult to predict whether AV Plus would be beneficial or not to the Conservative Party.

The situation becomes a lot more interesting when looking at other recent elections. The Conservative Party was strongly against the principle of Welsh and Scottish devolution, but it is thanks to devolution that the Conservatives have any representation in Wales and Scotland. Furthermore, it was only thanks to the AMS system used for the elections that the Conservatives had any significant representation. Two-thirds of MPs were elected through first-past-the-post, and one third from a ‘top-up’ list system. The Conservatives won all 18 of their MSPs and 8 of their 9 AMs through the proportional ‘top-up’ system.