May 2011 vote for AV in UK

Reuters reports:

Britain will hold a referendum in May on its biggest electoral reform in decades in a vote that will test its coalition administration, a source said.

Voting reform was one of the biggest stumbling blocks in creating Britain's first coalition government in 65 years after an inconclusive election in May ended 13 years of Labour rule.

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron had long opposed any reform, but said after the election he would compromise to form a stable government, despite opposition within his party.

The concession was one of the key factors behind the formation of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats that saw its leader Nick Clegg named Deputy Prime Minister.

In the referendum, voters will have their say on switching from the current “first-past-the-post” system to an “alternative vote” (AV) model, similar to that used in Australia.

I think the UK will vote for AV, and it is a better system than . It will be interesting to see what effect it has on the Lib Dems.

In theory the Lib Dems should pick up more seats under AV. In a seat where Labour or the comes third, their votes will be redistributed and I expect most of those votes will go to the Lib Dems as second preference rather than the traditional opponent party. So that may help them win an extra 20 seats or so.

The more common scenario is that the Lib Dems will come third, and whomever their voters name as next preference will determine who wins the seat (if no one gets over 50%). While each Lib Dem voter will decide for themself, the experience of Australia is that most tend to follow the advice of their parties in terms of ranking the candidates. The “how to rank” cards given out by party activists are very important.

Broadly speaking whichever party gets endorsed by the Lib Dems as being their second preference could do very well under AV. Now normally I would expect to be Labour, but if the Conservative/LD Government stays together and is successful, a preferences deal could shut Labour out of office for some time.

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