Will Change UK and the Brexit Party shake up the EU elections? D'hondt be so sure

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With the news that the Conservative Party has begun selecting candidates for the European elections, it’s now looking like a certainty that the UK will indeed be holding elections to the European Parliament. Many Conservatives are dreading the prospect, with Tory Minister Nadhim Zahawi calling the elections an “existential threat” to the Tories. Backbench Tory MP Mark Francois, meanwhile, believes that Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party are “licking their lips” at the prospect of fighting European elections. On the other side of the Brexit debate, Change UK – the party that is being established by members of the Independent Group of MPs – is hoping to win votes from Remainers. 

With the elections conducted under a voting system that ensures parties broadly receive the same share of seats as their share of the vote, Change UK's confidence would seem to be well-placed. However, the United Kingdom’s voting system for the European Parliament is not fully proportional, and the new minor parties may find themselves struggling to gain even a handful of seats. 

The UK’s voting system 

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), who co-write EU laws and appoint the President of the European Commission, are elected in the UK using a system of proportional representation (PR) known as “Party List PR”. Rather than nominating 1 candidate in a relatively small area, political parties nominate a long list of candidates in super-sized constituencies that elect 3-10 MEPs dependent upon population. Voters can then vote for the party they want, and the seats in that constituency are allocated to each party in proportion to their share of the vote, using a calculation known as the "d'hondt" equation.

The effect on minor parties 

All uses of proportional representation in Britain have tended, over time, to produce better results for smaller parties. The EU elections themselves are a good example of this. Before 1999, European elections in Britain used first-past-the-post, just like elections to the House of Commons; the chart below shows the % vote share in EU elections for minor parties (i.e. other than Labour, the Conservatives and Lib Dems) from 1979-2014. Because Northern Ireland has a different party system, the figures below are for Great Britain only.

The increasing prominence of minor parties in EU elections becomes even clearer when you look at the % of seats won by minor parties; this reached an all-time high in 2014, when parties other than Labour, the Conservatives and Lib Dems won 43% of MEPs. That’s the percentage equivalent of minor parties winning over 280 seats in Parliament.

One thing that you may have noticed, however, is that until 2014 minor parties tended to receive a lot less seats than their aggregate vote share would suggest, even after the introduction of proportional representation. In 2009, for example, 42.9% of voters cast a ballot for a minor party – but minor parties only won 27.5% of the seats. In 2014, this trend was brought to a sudden end, and the proportion of votes cast for minor parties (43.8%) very closely matched the share of seats that they received (42.9%).

The reason for this was simple: prior to 2014, most votes for minor parties were scattered across dozens of different small parties (in 2009, a total of 8 small parties received more than 1% of the popular vote). In 2014, however, most of the votes cast for minor parties were cast for 1 minor party in particular: UKIP.

This phenomenon, whereby minor parties do relatively badly in European elections despite the use of a proportional voting system, is what I’ll explore below.

Proportional, yet not proportional 

Ironically, the proportional voting system used for the European Parliament has often disadvantaged minor parties (relative to their vote share). This has happened because the voting system is not strictly “proportional”. If it was, the Lib Dems’ vote share of 7% would have led to them winning 5 MEPs (7%) in 2014. Instead, they won just 1 MEP. This was because their vote share was so low in every constituency that they didn’t have enough votes to elect an MEP outside of South East England, which has the most MEPs available.

The Green Party of England and Wales frequently faces the same problem: despite winning 8% of the popular vote in 2009 (their highest since 1989), and gaining 274,000 votes (+2.4pts) their total seats (2 MEPs) did not change. This was because, outside of London and South East England, there simply were not enough seats available in the other regions for the party to win.

In the East of England, for example, the party won a reasonably high 8.8% of the vote; in the South East (10 seats), this would have been enough to elect 1 MEP. However, the East of England only had 7 MEPs available, so the Greens fell short. This story was repeated across the country, and for other parties. In the North East of England in 2014, for example, the Conservative Party received 17.7% of the vote; that would have guaranteed it at least 1 seat in London (8 MEPs) or the South East (10 MEPs). But the North East only had 3 MEPs, so the Tories got no seats at all.

The table below shows the average minimum % of the vote required in 1999-2014 to elect an MEP in each region and nation of the UK.

As you can see, the average minimum winning percentage ranges from 7.9% in South East England (10 MEPs) to 23% in North East England (3 MEPs). The fewer MEPs a constituency has, the harder it is for a minor party to win seats. And unfortunately for minor parties, most of the UK’s constituencies don’t have many MEPs.

The consequence is that, despite European elections using proportional representation, major political parties end up winning a share of seats that is often far higher than their share of the vote. In 2009, for example, the Conservatives won 28% of the popular vote in Great Britain, but won 25 of 69 seats (38%).

So what does this mean for Change UK and the Brexit Party?

Effect on Change UK and the Brexit Party

As we have seen above, unless a political party wins 10-15% of the vote in multiple regions, it is unlikely to win more than 1-2 seats across the UK. This is enough of a challenge for the Greens, who as a centre-left, environmentalist, pro-EU party at least have a unique selling point in elections. But for single-issue anti/pro-Brexit parties like Change UK and The Brexit Party, reaching this threshold is going to be hard. There are already other parties (the Lib Dems and UKIP) who appeal to the same voters, and if all of them stand in the same region, none of them could reach the threshold needed to win a seat. Indeed, in Wales and Scotland there will be 4 anti-Brexit parties competing against each other! 

This isn’t just speculation on my part. So far, four voting intention polls for the European Elections have been published. An average of the four produces the following results:

 As we saw earlier, the European elections electoral system can produce a result for the major parties that isn’t as proportional as one might expect.

In this instance, Labour would win 27 seats out of 70 (39%) on a vote share of just 28%. The pro-Remain parties, meanwhile (the Lib Dems, SNP, Green Party, Change UK and Plaid Cymru) would win a combined 26% of the popular vote, but only win 8 seats out of 70 (11%).

The pro-Brexit parties would do much better, winning a combined 27% of the vote and a near-proportional 29% of the seats. But even they could do much better as a united bloc; the joint Brexit Party/UKIP vote would be enough to deliver 34% of seats if their vote wasn't split.

So how does this happen? Once again, it’s all about the constituencies. Take this example from the Yorkshire and the Humber constituency:

In this instance, Labour would win 3 of the 6 seats in Yorkshire and the Humber (50%), despite only winning 32% of the vote in the region. This is largely because the anti-Brexit vote would be split 3 ways; thus, despite winning a collective 20% of the vote in that region (enough for 1 seat) none of the anti-Brexit parties would win anything.

The West Midlands is another good example. Despite being projected to win only 29.3% of the vote, Labour would win 3 out of 7 seats (42.9%). The anti-Brexit parties would collectively win 17% of the vote (enough for 1 MEP) but because they would split the vote three ways, they would win nothing. The pro-Brexit parties, meanwhile, would win a joint 31% of the vote, enough to deliver them 3 seats - but because the pro-Brexit vote would be split, they would only end up with 2 MEPs.

Conclusion 

The Brexit Party and Change UK will likely poll well in the European elections. Polls suggest that the Brexit Party is averaging around 16%, a very strong showing for a party created just a few months ago. Change UK, meanwhile, is doing worse, averaging around 5%.

There is no doubt that the two parties will affect the results of the European elections. But if no electoral pacts are formed, then the number of seats won by these two parties could be surprisingly low, simply because they will be splitting the vote of other parties with nearly-identical positions on Brexit.

All of this could change, of course. The parties could well form electoral pacts, or their popularity could increase as we get closer to the elections. But what this data shows is that the voting system for European elections has its own obstacles, just like first-past-the-post – and it would be wrong to assume that the new minor parties will find the European elections very easy just because they use proportional representation. Politics is never that simple!