The RN led by Marine Le Pen almost doubled its number of votes (37%) in the French legislative elections. However, it only obtained 20% of the seats. Something that had happened before. In 2017, the party, before changing its name, collected 13.3% (1st round) and 8.5% (2nd round) of the votes and only 1.3% (8 out of 577) of the seats.
In the last British election, the Reform Party was the third most voted party (14.3% of the vote), but only won five seats (0.7% of the total). In 2015, it was even worse: with 12.6% of the vote, it only won 0.15% of the seats (that’s right, one seat in 650).
The best way to understand the paradox is to examine the effect of different rules on the same electorate.
The Brexit Party (the former name of Reform), whose representation was poor under the district vote in the British Parliament, had the largest group in the European Parliament, which adopts proportional representation (39% of the MEPs in the British representation, having obtained 31% of the votes). In France the same was true: the RN had 31% of the votes and its group of 30 MEPs is also the largest in the European Parliament. This election took place 20 days before the legislative election, inflating expectations for the party. The incentives, abstention, etc. are different in the two elections; but the contrast is colossal.
The moral of the story is that under district voting, small (radical right) parties are punished while large ones are rewarded. The average bonus for the largest party in majoritarian democracies has been estimated at 1.4. But in the recent British election, the Labour Party had the largest bonus in history (1.8), winning 80% more seats than it managed to obtain in votes. That’s 63% of the seats, but only 33.7% of the votes—less than in the last election (40%), in 2017.
How to explain the paradox?
Part of this is due to the geography of the vote: Labour lost proportionally more votes in constituencies where it had no chance of winning and gained votes where it was competitive, thus winning the most votes. But there are two other factors involved. Voters voted strategically: Labour voted for the Lib Dems in constituencies where their party was third in the polls.
There is also the party strategy. In France, the withdrawal of less competitive candidates by the NFP and Macronists to defeat Le Pen worked. There is nothing new here. Nor are there strong ideological factors involved. In 2019, it was the radical right (Brexit Party) in the United Kingdom that withdrew candidates where the Conservatives were competitive. Now they have put up candidates and divided the right. It was not, therefore, the moderate Keir Starmer replacing the radical Jeremy Corbyn that led to victory.
LINK PRESENT: Did you like this text? Subscribers can access any link seven times a day for free. Just click on the blue F below.
