I have enormous respect for Mary Reid, and she is the last person I would expect to have a disagreement with. But I believe Mary is on the wrong track with her post 25% and 11% it doesn't add up:
With support for Liberal Democrats running at 25% across the rest of the country, London stands out as an anomaly with only 11% for the party list. It seems that the heavy media interest in the Boris v Ken confrontation actually got in the way of good democracy.
Labour introduced the idea of having elected mayors, partly to bring some excitement back into politics, and it has certainly had that effect.
But higher turnouts are not the only measure of a healthy democracy. What is also necessary is a real understanding of the options, so that people make informed choices.
During the run-up to these elections I came across many electors who believed that they had to vote for Ken to keep Boris out, or vice versa. They didn't know about the second preference vote - at least not until I told them.
So, Mary, you talk to a small (compared to the 2 million plus votes cast) voters and reach the conclusion that, although there was a record turnout, this was somehow bad democracy because they didn't vote for us. The "wrong type of votes" in otherwise.
That is a staggeringly, dumfoundingly patronising attitude to the electorate.
They made their decision and made the effort to go to the polling station or post box. We should respect those decisions and learn from them ( and yes, if that means better informing them about the voting system, fair enough - but it is down to us to initiate this). We should not be patronising and imply that they didn't understand the complexities of the voting system. It's absurd.
Mary seems to be saying that we want high turnouts but only if the people vote for us (or at least if the handful of people we talk to are able to explain the voting system). And if they didn't vote for us, they didn't understand the choices and complexity. Naughty voters! It's all the media's fault!
I can well understand your shock and even grief in Kingston-upon-Thames, Mary, but in the cold light of day you might like to consider this:
If we had had Charles Kennedy as our candidate and he was on form, we wouldn't be having this conversation and we would have been the ones who had the media on our side (or at least a more equal share of the coverage). I am not saying that Charles should have been our candidate (far from it). I am just using him as an example of a LibDem who has always had the media wind behind his back.
We had a candidate who did not set the media and electorate alight, in comparison to the two other main candidates. It's as simple as that. We're not going to correct that in future by sending out more voting system explanatory pamplets to the voters.
Saturday, May 03, 2008
We can't complain when the voters vote for other parties
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15 comments:
Entirely agree, Paul; well done for bringing this up. Resenting the voters (or worse accusing them of being unaware pawns) appears to be a popular passtime of the Labour Party and something I'd hope would never seep into a liberal party.
On the contrary, it's entirely legitimate to speculate to what extent the result reflected (a) Paddick's lack of appeal and (b) unfamiliarity with the voting system. Nothing patronising about it.
Thank you for such perfectly symetrical comments, gentlemen!
Isn't it an element of both?! May be worth a little market research methinks. But number one priority has to be selecting the next candidate very early and giving them plenty of time to find their feet and their voice..
Paul Griffiths - completey agree with your point on us looking into the causes of our poor performance. My objection is to suggestions that we can judge what is 'good democracy', 'healthy democracy' or not - people vote, and if they don't vote for us then it's our fault. Let's not suggest it's their fault, nor that their decisions are bad for democracy. In fairness, I thought the article cited here is, overall, fairly balanced - but I have heard a couple of other unfortunate quotations from defeated LDs who, in my opinion, ungraciously criticise the decisions of the electorate.
"Mary, you talk to a small ... voters and reach the conclusion that, although there was a record turnout, this was somehow bad democracy because they didn't vote for us."
That's not what she said though Paul. And I actually agree with her—lots of feedback from friends canvassing across London said similar, people didn't know how the electoral system worked, the media weren't explaining it and it was in the interests of the 'big two' to downplay it in order to increase their chances.
Sure, Ken made a (rather poor) play for 2nd preferences, but overall the electorate werent informed—look at the number of self-identified Lib Dem supporters who weren't voting for Paddick—over 50% of them according to YouGov.
Short of knocking on every door in London, there's not much our campaigners could've done about that—but the media and information campaign could've done. Having moved away, I've only really been watching, but the biggest individual issue was the squeeze due to misunderstanding of the system itself—look at Alix's post with the voter who apparently didn't know of the other elections for example.
You're right, we must learn and do better, but I don't read Mary's post as being patronising, it's an observation based on large amounts of empirical evidence—our campaign failed, and failed badly, and we need to make sure it doesn't do so again.
Ensuring voters, and indeed the media, understand the system better, has to be top of the list of priorities. And making sure we campaign across London and remember that intense targetting is the FPTP strategy and London elections aren't on FPTP is also important.
We also need to make sure our candidate is given a lot more media training next time, Brian was a good candidate, but he wasn't prepared and came across badly on the TV debates I watched, unfortunately.
Democracy needs an informed electorate—it's very apparent that a lot of London voters weren't as well informed as they could or should have been. That's partially our fault, we need to ensure it's not the case next time.
"Brian was a good candidate, but he wasn't prepared and came across badly on the TV"
So he polled less than 10%, got barely any policies across, made (ineffective) personal attacks on the other candidates, 'wasn't prepared', 'came across badly' and gave his second preference to George Galloway's rejects. How was he a good candidate?
I've been busy doing things that have nothing at all to do with politics for the last day or so, so have only just caught up with this post - sorry!
Yes, MatGB has captured my thoughts more accurately than Paul did. I was not saying anything so crude as that a poor showing for us in the election means that democracy has failed - of course not.
What bothered me was that people were poorly informed about the Assembly elections. That is where the bad democracy comes in.
I welcomed a higher turnout, and a greater interest shown by voters.
What I was trying to understand was why the Lib Dem vote in London was so at variance with the rest of the country. We need to do that analysis as we prepare for the GE in 2009 and for the London locals in 2010.
Can this anomaly be explained in the way I've suggested or does it represent a much deeper seated problem? I'm optimistically going for the former explanation, but I may be wrong.
Oh, and by the way, Paul, my whole article was about the 11% vote for the party list, not about the mayoral contest, which requires a totally different type of analysis.
I'm afraid you cut off the quote from my post just before I got to the meat of the argument.
Mary, I am sorry for not quoting the whole of your article (but I did link to it). I agree that it is right to speculate on what happened. However, what fired me off on this was the "got in the way of good democracy" phrase. That is what I found patronising. -And I am very sorry if that is not an apprpriate term for it. I echo what Julian said. If people turn out in record numbers, that is not bad democracy. It is democracy full stop. We need to deal with it.
Simon Hughes got 15% in 2004 against Brian's 10% and we got 18% in the LA elections on the same day Was that bad democracy as well ?
The argument that the electorate were not sufficiently informed about the electoral system (after three elections held in this way) could be interpreted as sour grapes. People understand what "first preference" and "second preference" means. They also understand what a dull-as-ditch water candidate looks like. And I know you were referring to the LA election mostly Mary, but I am afraid that when people decide on the most high profile election, their vote for subsidiary elections tends to copy/flow from that.
when people decide on the most high profile election, their vote for subsidiary elections tends to flow from that
Isn't that the point: that the system is defective if it encourages people to do that. The job of the London Assembly is to hold the Mayor of London to account, not to support the Mayor uncritically, so it is essential people think about the two elections separately.
Pip - you get to the point where you just need to trust the voters and accept their decision. If you wanted to separate the mayor from teh LA elections, you'd have to have them on a separate day - then you would end up having a much lower turnout (probably) for the LA elections - so you would probably be back to square one.
Yes, you probably would have to have them on a separate day. But you've accepted that voters are not voting in the most informed state in the Assembly election, but seem to put turnout ahead of the importance of ensuring that crosses on ballot papers are for the election the ballot paper has been printed for. Who's not respecting the voters' decisions now? Or is abstention not a valid decision?
votes for Boris and then "copies" that with a vote for the Tories in the LA, I am not going to question it. That is their right.
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