Who would be our AV MP

Today is the last day before the referendum on electoral reform, and although it looks like we’re stuck with the old ways (according to the pollsters), I did wonder how the politics in our constituency would now look if we’d voted using AV in the previous ballot.

I took the votes from the 2010 general election, and then began a process of wild speculation as to second preferences, based entirely on vague notions of the political spectrum: I assumed that right wing second preferences would gradually come in from the extremes towards the Tories (IND→ED→BNP→UKIP→CON); Green Party supporters would do likewise for Labour, and Lib-Dem second preferences would split 50-50 each way for the biggest two parties. Although this is mostly pie-in-the-sky thinking, the Green Party’s Shooters Hill candidate for the council election got more votes than their Parliamentary candidate; and since both elections happened on the same day, this suggests that Shooters Hill voters went for Green in the locals and possibly Labour in the nationals.

2010 General Election Results
Name Party Votes % +/-
Clive Efford Labour 17,416 41.5 -0.7
David Gold Conservative 15,753 37.5 +2.9
Steven Toole Liberal Democrat 5,299 12.6 -4.7
Roberta Woods British National Party 1,745 4.2 +1.6
Ray Adams UK Independence Party 1,011 2.4 -0.4
Arthur Hayles Green 419 1.0 +1.0
Mike Tibby English Democrats 217 0.5 +0.5
Andrew Graham Independent 104 0.2 +0.2
Majority 1,663 4.0
Turnout 41,964 67.0 +8.6

Well, based on rather crude apportioning of second preferences on a spectrum, and considering that Clive Efford didn’t get more than 50% of the overall vote in the first count, Andrew Graham (IND) dropped out of the competition at the end of round one. Part of his manifesto included bringing back capital punishment, so his second-preference votes got thrown in with the far right, and they went to Roberta Woods in round two, mainly as I’m not entirely sure what the English Democrats were campaigning for, only realising that they existed when I got to the voting booth. This reallocation didn’t make any difference to the overall picture, so Mike Tibby (ED) dropped out, and as before (according to an arbitrary political spectrum), his votes went to Roberta Woods, although she still wasn’t getting anywhere nearer to a 50% share of the vote. In round three the Green party votes went to Clive Efford (LAB), taking him up to a 42.4% share… again not enough for a win. And so to round four, at which point UKIP fell out of the running, and their votes went to David Gold (CON), taking him up by 2.5% to 40%. On to round five… here all the right wingers’ votes went to David Gold, and he nudged ahead of Clive Efford by just over two percent, but still not by enough to become our MP. At this point the Lib-Dems dropped out of the competition, leaving only two parties in the final round. I gave LAB and CON half each of the Lib-Dem votes, and because the CONs had previously benefited from more second hand support from right-wing voting, David Gold ended up as the 2010 (AV) general election winner!

Overall then, this (imaginary) vote count went right to final round, and was incredibly close in the end – I’m not sure that splitting Lib-Dem second preferences down the middle was a very realistic move. Equally, BNP support often comes from disgruntled Labour supporters having a protest, so giving their secondary support to the Tories may also have been a bad idea…

Since this whole trifle has been based on wild speculation about voting behaviours in Eltham, it would be a mistake to really make anything of it really. However, this being a marginal seat, it could be the case that voters who don’t initially support Labour or Tory candidates might get more of a say.

Experiment IV

Having recently been enjoying the video of local singer Kate Bush’s Deeper Understanding[1. Courtesy of arthur pewty, a rather wonderful weekly Erith blog], it felt quite serendipitous to stumble across a recent forum discussion regarding the filming location of her music video for the song Experiment IV, from 1986.

The film was recorded at the Royal Herbert Hospital before it was partitioned and turned into flats. At around 2 minutes into the video there is a clear view of one of the old wards (with Kate Bush flying around as some kind of Banshee), and there are a couple of scenes filmed in the corridors.

Kate Bush herself grew up in East Wickham I believe, and is currently returning to the spotlight to publicise some new material – she’s going to be on Radio 4’s front row show tomorrow, although I suspect that her childhood home will not be one of the subjects of discussion, as she’s famously reluctant to give confessional press coverage.

Experiment IV, including scenes filmed at the old Royal Herbert Hospital.