Dave Long: People can always "donkey vote" (not sure if it's a universal term, but fill out their ballot paper in a way that it's invalid) - but most Australians still seem to vote properly. I have sympathe for the civil liberty side, but I genuinely believe compulsory voting is the lesser of two evils

The reason I get absorbed with this stuff is that it can show some surprising differences to the popular narratives. A lot of the time, UK election results seem to be skewed more than you'd think by FPTP. Another 🧵 on some of the figures that jump out at me:

Because I am a sad politics nerd I've been keeping track of stats relating to recent UK elections. In case they are of interest to anyone, here's a 🧵 on popular vote + related details for recent GEs: 2024 (60% turnout) Labour – 9,650,254 (33.7%) Tory – 6,771,974 (23.7%) Difference = 2,878,280

Labour vote share ranked back to 1979: 1) 43.2% – 1997 2) 40.7% – 2001 3) 40.0% – 2017 4) 36.9% – 1979 5) 35.2% – 2005 6) 34.4% – 1992 7) 33.7% – 2024 8) 32.1% – 2019 9) 30.8% – 1987 10) 30.4% – 2015 11) 29.0% – 2010 12) 27.6% – 1983

The interesting thing about that one for me is that the historic Labour defeat of 2019 happened on a vote share that was 8th best out of the last 12 elections, and the historic Labour victory of 2024 was achieved on a vote share 7th best of 12 FPTP is a crazy system...

Winning margin going back to 1979: 1. 4,555,382 – 1983, Tory > Lab 2. 3,927,082 – 1997, Lab > Tory 3. 3,730,776 – 1987, Tory > Lab 4. 3,697,403 – 2019, Tory > Lab 5. 2,878,280 – 2024, Lab > Tory 6. 2,532,523 – 1992, Tory > Lab cont

7. 2,367,338 – 2001, Lab > Tory 8. 2,165,705 – 1979, Tory > Lab 9. 2,094,227 – 2010, Tory > Lab 10. 1,977,402 – 2015, Tory > Lab 11. 767,521 – 2005, Tory > Lab 12. 758,766 – 2017, Tory > Lab

Historic Labour defeat of 2019 - 4th ranked margin Historic Labour victory of 2024 - 5th ranked margin

Very interesting thread :) On the results, I reckon a lack of compulsory voting helps explain somethings (I'm a big fan of compulsory voting, imo it helps focus governments on everyone and not just the extremes who are more likely to vote if it wasn't compulsory).

That's interesting. I've generally seen it as a civil liberty issue and would defend people's right to dissent, but I suppose the large bloc of non voters (who in my experience don't vote because there's no-one they want to vote for) allows parties to simply ignore them

People can always "donkey vote" (not sure if it's a universal term, but fill out their ballot paper in a way that it's invalid) - but most Australians still seem to vote properly. I have sympathe for the civil liberty side, but I genuinely believe compulsory voting is the lesser of two evils

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