Electing an Enlarged Welsh Assembly

Simon King
University College, London WC1H 9EZ

 

Electoral systems are many and each can yield a different outcome in seats from the same distribution of votes. The result may often be surprising. There are few constitutional arenas in which the law of unexpected consequences seems more certain to operate. In the polling booth voters react in surprising ways to new arrangements and parties learn to modify their campaign tactics. As Walter Bagehot wrote 134 years ago about an earlier change in election law:

The National Assembly for Wales came into being in June 1999 along with the Scottish Parliament. It is elected by the Additional Member System (AMS) and consists of 60 members, 40 constituency AMs and 20 list AMs representing 5 electoral regions. The 40 constituency AMs are elected by simple majority in constituencies with the same boundaries as Westminster constituencies. The 20 regional AMs are elected from closed party lists, where each party is allocated seats in proportion to votes received in each region using the d’Hondt system. There is no mandatory threshold of votes that a party must obtain in order to secure representation.

So far two elections have been held using this system, the initial election in 1999 and a second election in May 2003. Both elections produced different results. In 1999 voters predominately opted for the established parties of Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Plaid Cymru with Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, benefiting in many areas from the optimism surrounding devolution. In 2003 voters continued to opt for the main parties, but gave a far higher vote to small parties on the regional ballot. In addition, more voters in 2003 ‘split their ticket,’ by voting for a different party in the regional contest than in 1999. The difference in the regional vote for small parties in 2003 compared with 1999 was +6.7%. Both the electoral system and the nature of the particular election can affect voting behaviour (Cox, 1997; Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000) The 2001 Westminster election, held under FPTP, led to different results for the political parties from the two Assembly elections. Labour, the party in government, had a much bigger vote in the constituencies in 2001 while Plaid Cymru had a much smaller vote. The greater willingness on the part of voters to vote for smaller parties and independents is a common feature of elections to political bodies that are thought to be less important. The outcome of the 1999 election was that Labour, with 28 seats, governed as a minority before forming a coalition in 2000 with the Liberal Democrats. In 2003 Labour won 30 seats and opted to form a single party government.

The Additional Member System, by combining single-member with multi-member seats was originally devised as a solution to the problems of electing a stable legislature for the former West Germany after WWII. As well as in the UK, it has been introduced in New Zealand (where it is called Mixed Member Proportionality, MMP) in Bolivia and in Venezuela. No two electoral systems are exactly the same and AMS systems differ on several dimensions. Differences can comprise the relative number of list-PR and constituency seats, whether the list PR element is organized at a regional or national level, the threshold vote share, if any, that is required before a party is awarded seats and whether the list ballots are ‘open’ or closed.

For instance, the proportion of seats allocated from single member constituencies and from party lists varies cross-nationally. In Germany it is 50:50, in New Zealand it is 49:51, in Scotland it is 57:43, in London (where it is used to elect the Greater London Assembly) it is 56:44 and in Wales it is 67:33.

The ratio of constituency to list seats affects proportionality. Under AMS, proportionality is enhanced by having a sufficient number of list seats to overcome the disproportionality generated by the single member constituency seats. Wales has a lower ratio of list to constituency seats than Scotland, New Zealand or Germany and elections to the National Assembly result in less proportional outcomes than in the other countries. Proportionality is also affected by district magnitude (Lijphart, 1994; Cox, 1997) The lower the district magnitude the more votes a party needs to secure representation. District magnitude can be used to calculate an effective threshold for those countries, like Wales and Scotland, which do not impose an official threshold of representation. In Scotland the effective threshold is calculated as 5.6% and in Wales as 7.1%.

The formula used to translate regional votes into seats also affects proportionality. The National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish Parliament both use the d’Hondt highest averages formula. This requires the number of votes for each party to be divided by a series of divisors, in this case 1,2,3,4… Seats are allocated to parties that secure the highest resulting quotient, up to the total number of seats available. Ranking PR formulas has been approached both theoretically and empirically yet agreement is not universal. It is widely accepted that the Hare largest remainder (LR) method and the Sainte-Lägue highest-average (HA) method are the most proportional followed by d’Hondt HA (Loosmore and Hanby, 1971; Gallagher, 1991; Benoit, 2000). The d’Hondt divisor has the effect of awarding large parties more than their proportional share of seats.