By the numbers
Short one, food for thought. Given a 61% turnout in the 2005 general election, with Labour winning 35% of votes cast, Tony Blair has a mandate from 22% of the electorate.
In other countries, President Bush has a mandate from 21% of voters. The Iraqi parliament from 27% of voters, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a staggering 36% of voters.
What gives?
I once calculated that there were more swing votes in Pop Idol than in the average British election.
That cheered me up.
Isn’t the Iraqi parliament a coalition? In which case, the ‘winner-take-all’ maths which applies to Blair and Bush would not apply to Jawad al-Maliki?
Well, if we’re comparing like with like, I’m bringing up numbers from when Iran and the US had runoff elections for a presidency, whereas I am quoting parliamentary election figures for Iraq and the UK, and therefore shouldn’t really have said it was Blair’s mandate at all…
Also, I wrote this in twenty seconds before the workday began and therefore didn’t bother to look up the proper spelling or whether he was Nouri or Jawad these days.
What gives?
Diminishing marginal returns to the variable factor?
Just shows that if you want a big mandate it helps to ban the opposition from standing, and get it’s leader to call a boycott.
I have thought for a long time that we should (a) make voting compulsory (b) include a “none of the above” option(c) declare the numbers of votes received by all candidates and “none of the above” and (d) have a fresh election with fresh candidates in all seats where “none of the above” wins on a first past the post basis.
This may help reinvigorate representative democracy. There may of course be those who are worried by what the effect may be of having to win the votes of those who don’t vote: dumbing down, more votes for populist candidates etc.
But what we have at the moment is a situation in which there are more abstainers in the electorate than people who voted for most elected governments.