Will landslide elections be a thing of the past?
No - and experiences from Australia and Canada show that when they occur we can expect landslide elections to be even worse than under our current system, providing a colossal majority for a party on a minority vote.
The "landslide election" is probably the most unattractive feature of our current electoral system. Every 20 years or so a political party gets a thumping majority in the House of Commons as a reward for winning a minority of our votes. In these situations the Prime Minister becomes more like a "Supreme Leader", able to push through almost any legislation.
AV will not prevent landslide elections - it is not a proportional system. Worse, it has the potential to turn landslide elections into "AV earthquakes", in which one of the major parties receives a colossal majority while the other faces electoral meltdown. If the UK had introduced AV then we would have seen at least one electoral earthquake in the past 30 years, according to forecasts done by the Centre For Research Into Elections. Its prediction below is how an actual UK general election may have turned out using AV. We have disguised the parties identities, the "veil of ignorance" used by philosophers, so you cannot be swayed by your own party allegiance.
| Party | 1st Prefs (approx) | Seats |
|---|---|---|
| A | 42% | 445 |
| B | 30% | 70 |
| C | 18% | 115 |
Notice party B received 12% more first preferences than C but ends up with far fewer seats while A has a 12% lead over B but gets over six times the number of seats. This is not an election - this is a lottery that would have changed the political culture in Britain for decades. The argument that such elections would be rare misses the point: its effects would be so pernicious that even one election like this could radically impact our democracy.
In the UK preferences would have the potential to magnify significant voting trends. An unpopular party will slide down the preferences with voters who are shifting their allegiance; where a voter had previously ranked the party "1" it may now be "2" or even lower, where it was a "2" it may now be a "3". This across-the-board movement is the cause of the "electoral earthquake."
Have colossal majorities been racked up under AV? Yes. If we look at regional elections in Western Canada and Queensland we find extraordinary results. A few examples: in 1948 the Social Credit party in Alberta hit the jackpot when it scooped 97% of the seats by winning 53% of first preference votes (in the 47 constituencies that used AV); and in 2001 the ALP in Queensland grabbed 74% of the seats with 49% of first preferences, while in 2004 it secured 71% of the seats with 47% of first preferences.
AV may turn a "landslide election" into an "AV earthquake" where one major party gets a repressively large majority while the other suffers an electoral meltdown, radically impacting our democracy.
