FAQ

Vote for a Change emerged as a coalition of groups and individuals from across the political divide at the height of the expenses crisis. We were united by the fact that the worst offenders could never be held to account thanks to a system that leaves most MPs with jobs for life in our safe seats. We saw that not even this political earthquake could shift these incumbents thanks to a system that left them earthquake proof.

Since we launched, nearly 50,000 people have got involved. The campaign is funded by the generosity of its supporters and assistance from the Electoral Reform Society. We've changed government policy, and got political reform higher up the agenda then it's been in decades. But today we need your support.

At this election the most popular option won't appear on any ballot paper. And that's because more voters want a hung parliament than any one party having all the power.

We started our campaign trying to deliver a referendum on voting reform on the date of the 2010 General Election, but the politicians were too slow to hear our call. We won the argument, but the big parties failed to get their act together to get the referendum passed in the last session of parliament.

Now we are faced with a General Election, and the prospect of yet another broken parliament. It's clear that none of the parties can deliver real changes themselves. They can't or they won't. So what we need is a reforming parliament. And that means a parliament where no one party can ride roughshod over the others. Where the whips aren't all powerful. Where real change has a chance.

We still need supporters to Vote for a Change. And in this election, that means a hung parliament.

Isn't a Hung Parliament a disaster waiting to happen?

Well, no.

The polls show voters want it. The experts have plenty to recommend about it. But most of all, when you look at the share of the vote, it's the kind of parliament we've voted for in every election since the war. Majority governments are only a majority because our system delivers them. Governments supported by barely a 1/3 of public have enjoyed unfettered power, but have yet to deliver the kind of changes we need.

There's nothing strange about hung parliaments. Most of Europe have them - they just call them 'coalition government'. We've had hung parliaments in Britain before. And you don't need to look back to dark days in the 1970s. In recent years in Wales and in Scotland parties have entered power sharing and delivered.

Businessmen, journalists and politicians are familiar with the crude certainties of majority government. We'll have to fight the clichés around hung parliament every step of the way.

Why should I use my vote?

Voting for a hung parliament requires our supporters to think tactically. When it comes to General Elections we wish voters weren't forced to vote with their heads rather than their hearts. But the logic of First-Past-the-Post often means we have to back a candidate with a realistic chance of winning to prevent a worse option.

We're asking supporters to forget about individual candidates or parties and think of the big picture. Our goal is a hung parliament, and for this to happen will require thousands of voters across the country to make our pledge and vote accordingly on May 6th. 

We know this means sacrifice, but if we can deliver a hung parliament we're sure this will be the last time we're forced to vote tactically. 

How did you make your choices in your Hang Parliament Tool?

Overview

Our Hang Parliament tool recommends a single candidate in each constituency (except those in Northern Ireland). We have based these choices on a number of different factors:

• Projected seat shares of each party

• Political dynamics of individual constituencies

• Views of candidates and parties

• Expected rate of participation by voters

Some of our choices are obvious. For example, in Brighton Pavilion we recommend the Green candidate Caroline Lucas. She is favourite to win the seat and a Green win there is guaranteed to contribute to a hung parliament. Other choices might look strange, but we have used the factors outlined above to make a considered judgment.

Projected Seat Shares of Each Party

The recent Lib Dem surge has made this election much harder to predict. There is talk at present of a hung parliament with Labour winning the most seats despite coming third in the vote. But these predictions are based on Uniform Swing projections. We feel that these are misleading. While the odds of a Conservative government have drifted, it is still the case that they have outperformed Labour in key marginal constituencies and their campaign spend has been focused in these areas.

We have judged that the Conservatives are still best placed to win the most seats. Labour, thanks to systemic bias, are well placed to come second. The Liberal Democrats, with fairly evenly dispersed support, are still most likely to come third in terms of seat share even if they retain their present poll boost.

Given that a hung parliament needs smaller parties to win more seats, we have recommended (ceteris paribus) in the order: minor party > Lib Dem > Labour > Conservative.

Political Dynamics of Individual Constituencies

In each constituency we have had to decide (a) whether it is “marginal” or “safe”; and (b) if it is marginal, which candidates have a strong chance of winning. This is based on latest opinion polling, demographics, constituency history, actual and notional results from 2005, and local, regional, and by-election results.

Sadly, this often reduces us to a choice between Labour and the Conservatives. In these cases we have plumped for the Labour candidate.

Views of Candidates and Parties

We have also taken candidate views into account. We believe that certain types of hung parliament are better than others. As we want a hung parliament for reasons of electoral reform, we need electoral reformers—of all parties—to have seats in parliament.

With this in mind, we have sometimes recommended a Labour incumbent over a Lib Dem challenger. For example, Mark Lazarowicz in Edinburgh North & Leith was chair of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform. He faces a strong Lib Dem challenge, but we have recommended him as we feel a hung parliament needs committed reformers on both sides of any likely coalition.

Because the Conservative Party is strongly opposed to a move away from First Past the Post, a system which rarely delivers balanced parliaments, we have avoided recommending their candidates. That does not mean we want a parliament without Conservative MPs!

Expected Rate of Participation by Voters

The expected uptake of our tool was another consideration. If we thought 100% of voters would use it, we would have the power to completely design the make-up of Parliament. In reality, though, we expect it can only seriously influence the result in a minority of key marginal constituencies, where tens or hundreds of votes either way can swing the result.

For this reason, it is important not to pay too much attention to our choices in “safe” seats. Moreover, we expect a certain proportion of Lab-Con marginals to be relatively secure wins for the Conservatives. This means that although we seem to have recommended a disproportionately high number of Labour candidates, we estimate that the Labour Party will win fewer than 290 seats.

We believe that (in marginals) our Liberal Democrat recommendations are more effective; so despite picking fewer Lib Dem candidates, more of them ought to be returned as winners. We expect the Liberal Democrats to win at least 110 seats, which would be a remarkable return given the systemic bias against them.

The campaign remains committed to seeing a referendum on voting reform. We believe a hung parliament is now the most likely way we'll see it.

Just as with expenses, MPs have been too long able to resist changing the rules from which many benefit so handsomely. Labour promised in its manifesto of 1997 that it would hold a referendum to allow the British people their say on changing the system. But thirteen years and nothing has changed – because the public have been denied the opportunity. This must be the last General Election held under the FPTP system which only allows the electorate to pitch out Tweedledum only to hand power to Tweedledee.

This election shouldn’t just be the same old choice between nearly identical parties - the public must be given a say on changing the system altogether.

We’ve made the argument, and the government have listened. An amendment to the Constitutional Renewal Bill was passed by both Houses of Commons, but fell in the last minute horse trading session the 'Wash-Up' when the Conservatives threatened to veto the entire bill.

There must be a clear demand for a referendum not only from within Westminster but also from without. The public is not apathetic – people still expect and demand better from their politicians. Westminster needs to be made conscious of the desire for political change that exists across active civil society.  To build a coalition for change, organisations such as the environmental and poverty lobbies, women’s and youth organisations will be critical.

We want a referendum because the decision on how MPs are elected should be taken not by those who benefit directly from the present system but by the voters.   We believe that change is needed because the system that allows the present situation, in which one party forms the government when it was only supported by around one in five eligible voters at the ballot box, clearly fails the test of basic fairness. This would be true whatever the political colours of the party that benefits. This is a cross-party campaign which is about delivering a system that is fair to the electorate as a whole.

It is not a properly democratic political culture that allows the BNP to thrive, it is the lack of one.

The growth in BNP support that was registered in the European elections needs to be seen against the backdrop of tremendous anger and disillusionment with the political establishment in Westminster. In helping to rebuild trust in democracy, a fairer voting system would help to close down the space for extreme political ideologies.  

The current voting system creates deserts of political representation, and it is this sense of being neglected and taken for granted by formal politics produces fertile ground for far right extremists to pick up support. A fairer voting system, far from being the problem, is a key element of the solution in the longer term. It would give the mainstream parties an incentive to campaign in every area, and re-engage with their “core” vote. It would therefore help to produce a system where politicians had to be much more responsive to the needs of people across all communities.

This is, of course, entirely possible – but it is difficult to see how they could do so without also conveying contempt for the views of the electorate as democratically expressed at the ballot box. The greater the turnout and the wider the margin of victory, the more difficult it will be for the next government to simply dismiss.

So’s Morris Dancing. But no one suggests that should form the foundation for our politics.

Our parliament is not a museum. There has always been evolution in our politics, and change is required to bring a Victorian institution up to date.  This British tradition was exported wholesale to countries across the world, yet in the Commonwealth and beyond reform has been a one way street – away from First-Past-the-Post and towards more responsive, more modern systems.

This assumes the English must be the most stupid nation in Europe.  The Scots, the Welsh, the Northern Irish and most Europeans use other systems without problems.  The X on the ballot paper is a relic of a pre-literate, pre-industrial age. We’ve moved on, so why hasn’t voting?

This ability is seriously overstated.

Time and again we suffer governments elected on a small minority of the vote that are wholly resistant to mainstream public opinion. You can kick the bastards out when politics is actually competitive.

We want more power for voters, not less – and you can ask voters in the majority of safe seats for a reference on this.

Politicians like to talk a great deal about the constituency link. And a lot of them seem to enjoy the link a lot more than voters.

Many of MPs currently have a pretty dodgy connection to their voters, when most preferred other candidates. Not one of course can speak for the majority of their electorate if you look at results at the last election.

You strengthen this link by giving people the people they voted for.  There are plenty of alternative systems that retain a link. We don’t seek to disconnect politicians from the people. We want a politics that forces complacent, aloof MPs to take heed of the interests of their constituents because their jobs depend on it.

Clearly defeat at a referendum would be a bitter blow for supporters of reform. But at the same time, it is difficult to imagine a more conducive climate for a ‘yes’ vote than at a time when there is widespread recognition that the political system has to be subject to fundamental change, and that it presently lacks respect and legitimacy.