The British general election of 2010 under different voting rules

Abramson, P. R., Aldrich, J. H., Diskin, A., Houck, A. M., Levine, R. and Scotto, T. J. (2013) The British general election of 2010 under different voting rules. Electoral Studies, 32(1), pp. 134-139. (doi: 10.1016/j.electstud.2012.10.002)

Abstract

The 2010 British election resulted in what the British refer to as a “hung Parliament” for the first time in over a generation. This result further heightened the debate over the fairness and utility of the nation’s centuries-old first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. Survey data are used to simulate the election outcome under four different electoral systems beyond FPTP: round-robin pair-wise comparisons, the Borda count, the alternative vote, and Coombs' method. Results suggest that in 2010, the Liberal-Democrats were Condorcet preferred to all other parties and would have won a national election under every tested method except the alternative vote, the method supported by the Liberal-Democrats during the referendum in May 2011 and, of course, FPTP as actually used.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Scotto, Professor Thomas
• Authors: Abramson, P. R., Aldrich, J. H., Diskin, A., Houck, A. M., Levine, R., and Scotto, T. J.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences
• Journal Name: Electoral Studies
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 0261-3794
• ISSN (Online): 1873-6890
• Published Online: 22 October 2012