British Elections: Why Labour and Tories Are Declining, and 9 Other Trends

If you followed the press coverage of this month's general elections in the United Kingdom, you're likely to come away with the sense that we just witnessed a watershed moment in this country's political history.

But were these elections really historic? And if so, why?

There's no question that there was a lot of drama packed into the brief, four-week election period that ended on May 6. It saw the first-ever televised political debates between the three main party leaders. Nick Clegg became a household name. And in the end, because no one party secured a majority, two political parties long at odds with each other -- the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats -- formed the first coalition government in 70 years.

But beneath all of the obvious changes afoot, a lot of other things also were going on in this election that may not be as visible to the naked eye, but which may ultimately prove more important in shaping this country's political future.

To suss out some of these underlying trends, I went in search of two political scientists who've spent a great deal of time thinking about British elections. I spoke with Simon Hix, a professor of European and comparative politics at the London School of Economics. I also spoke with Brian Gaines, a political scientist at the Institute for Government and Policy Affairs at the University of Illinois.

Here are 10 surprising insights I gleaned from them about the British elections:

1. The hung Parliament was by no means revolutionary. Despite all the hype around the prospect (and then reality) of a hung Parliament, this outcome was by no means revolutionary. Rather, as Simon Hix points out, the results were the continuation of a long-term decline in support for the two largest political parties in the United Kingdom -- Labour and the Conservatives. The two parties yielded a combined vote share of only 65 percent, the lowest since 1918. At the same time, there is also a growing partisan fragmentation of the electorate. Smaller political parties -- whether regional (like the Scottish National Party) or issue-based (like the Greens) -- have been steadily gaining steam over the past decade, garnering approximately 12 percent of the overall vote this time around, as opposed to 10 percent in 2005. In light of both trends -- not to mention the 23 percent of the vote that went to Britain's third-largest party, the Liberal Democrats -- it's no surprise that the election yielded no clear majority.

2. The expenses scandal mattered less than we thought. Many pundits have interpreted the hung Parliament result as a direct byproduct of last summer's parliamentary expenses scandal. That scandal revealed that Members of Parliament (MPs) from all three major parties were systematically abusing perks like second-home allowances on the taxpayers' dime. But while the expenses scandal certainly tarnished the image of the country's political class, it does not appear to have been the decisive nail in the coffin that many predicted ex ante. A post-election poll conducted by the consulting firm Greenberg/Quinlan/Rosner shows that corruption was a factor for only 16 percent of those who voted for the Conservative Party, 17 percent of those voting Lib Dem, and it didn't even make the top 10 list for those voting Labour. Brian Gaines doesn't find this surprising in the least. Much like the 1992 House banking scandal that roiled the U.S. House of Representatives -- the worst check-bouncers chose to retire rather than to run and lose. As a result, those MP's who would have suffered big swings because of the scandal were already gone, so there was no need to punish them at the polls.

3. Local effects dominated national political trends. One of the more fascinating aspects of this election was that there was no uniform "swing" across the nation as a whole (defined as the average percentage point fall in one party's share of the vote and the percentage point rise in another's). Instead, the swing across parties varied tremendously by district. So, for example, in Sutton, about 30 minutes southwest of London by train, there was a big swing from the Tories to the Lib Dems. But just up the road in Richmond, where the party was running a highly iconoclastic "Green Conservative" candidate, the swing went from Lib Dem to Conservative. Meanwhile, in the North London neighborhood where I live, longtime Labour incumbent Glenda Jackson squeaked by with just 42 votes over the Tories in a seat many had assumed would go Lib Dem. This kind of local variation is highly unusual in a parliamentary system like Great Britain's, where it is the party -- not the candidate -- that tends to matter in elections and where the focus of campaigns is national. Hix suspects that the lack of uniform swing is emblematic of the long-term decline of political parties in the United Kingdom noted above. As this takes root, voters are learning how to vote strategically in local elections depending on which party is in second place (e.g., left-leaning voters going for Jackson over the Lib Dem candidate in Hampstead because they feared a Conservative victory.) Voters are also beginning to pay more attention to the qualities of the individual candidates in local elections, something more typical of a candidate-centered election like we have in the United States.

4. Why "Cleggmania" didn't ultimately pan out. One byproduct of some of the strategic voting that may have taken place locally is that the man who appeared to change the face of British politics during the political debates, Nick Clegg, didn't end up performing as well on election day as expected. His party -- the Lib Dems -- took in only 57 seats, considerably less than the 100 or more that many were predicting only weeks earlier and five fewer seats than they held in the previous Parliament. Many commentators, Clegg included, have attributed this loss to the fact that British voters ultimately stuck with the parties they knew best. But Hix and Gaines suspect that other factors might also have been at work. Hix wonders if Clegg was hurt by young voters in the 18-24 bracket failing to turn out to the extent predicted, possibly because they hadn't registered in time. Gaines, for his part, always suspected that Clegg's popularity -- like Ross Perot's in the 1992 American presidential race -- would vanish as election day drew near. But he thinks that it's quite possible that were it not for Clegg's personal appeal, the Lib Dems might have fared even worse. If true, we'd be looking at a minority Conservative government right now, rather than a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition.

5. The Conservative Party has a harder time turning votes Into seats. The Conservative Party, and David Cameron in particular, have come in for a lot of criticism for running what some perceive to have been a lackluster campaign. But Gaines argues that even if the Conservative Party weren't suffering a long-term decline in support, it is much less efficient at turning votes into seats. This is primarily true for three reasons. First, both Wales -- and to a lesser extent Scotland as of 2005 -- have more seats per population than does England. And because both of these regions tend to split their votes between Labour and regional parties, the Conservatives are disadvantaged by this malapportionment. Second, the Tories also tend to win seats in districts in England where the population is growing, whereas Labour wins seats in districts where it is shrinking. Finally, there is also higher turnout in Tory-friendly areas than Labour-friendly districts, again causing the party to "waste" votes. For all three reasons, the Conservative Party will always face an uphill battle winning an outright majority.

6. The coalition government is a very representative one. As Hix points out, this is the first time in more than half a century that the United Kingdom has a government that represents 60 percent of its voters (if you pool the votes of the two coalition partners). But it is not, Hix argues, just representative in terms of vote share. This government is also representative in terms of what political scientists like to call the "median voter" (that voter who is located in the exact middle of a ranking of voters along some issue dimension, e.g., from left to right). If you look again at the array of political parties competing in this election and put the Lib Dems in the center (to the right of Labour), you see that 42 percent of voters voted to the right of the Lib Dems and 37 percent voted to the left of the Conservatives. This means that the average voter is somewhere between the average Conservative and the average Lib Dem. And that's a very centrist voter.

7. A Lib-Labour "Progressive Majority" could not have claimed legitimacy. For a few days following the election, when it was still unclear what the new government would look like, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown put forward the possibility of forming a "progressive majority," through a coalition of the Labour and Liberal Democratic parties. The logic was that the vote share of the two parties combined (53 percent) was greater than that of the Conservatives (37 percent). But did this really translate into a progressive majority? Perhaps not. Hix points out that while the British public can countenance a coalition of two parties, more than two (which is what would have been needed to form a proper working majority on the Left) doesn't look doable. Moreover, although the Conservatives didn't ultimately secure a majority in votes or seat share, they were the biggest party in either category by a wide margin, contributing to the sense that they "deserved" to be in the new government (something born out in the polls). Gaines agrees, noting that a coalition of losers would have seemed a "poisoned chalice to drink" for many voters. Moreover, lumping political parties together under the rubric of a Center-Left cartel -- as you have in a country like Italy -- is simply not how voters think in the United Kingdom. Political parties are considered as distinct entities, not ideological groupings.

8. Immigration didn't matter. Throughout the election, there was a lot of talk about how immigration was going to be *the* issue in this campaign. A CNN poll released the day before the election showed that 77 percent of British voters thought that fewer foreigners should be allowed to move to the country. Gaines agrees that immigration is one issue where the British electorate appears to be even more conservative than the American one. But it does not appear to be an issue that drives voting. If British voters really did vote on immigration, Gaines argues, then the Tories would have won big not only now, but in 2005 when they had an even tougher anti-immigrant stance under then-Leader Michael Howard. Nor did the Greenberg/Quinlan/Rosner post-election survey reveal this to be a determinant issue in 2010, even for Conservative voters.

9. Reforms to the House of Lords may prove revolutionary. Much of the focus in the past few weeks has been on the referendum on electoral reform, to some form of Alternative Voting, which the Lib Dems won as a concession from the Tories in their coalition negotiations. Changing the basis on which the House of Commons is elected looks like it's popular with voters and may ultimately win the day. As of yet, however, there's been no timetable for that reform and the Tories, along with any Labour MPs who wish to -- are free to campaign against it. What's potentially more transformative in the short run -- according to Hix, are the proposed reforms to the House of Lords. While it is as yet unclear how this reform will shake out, the coalition blueprint calls for a "mainly elected upper chamber" by December of this year. (Right now, the members are all appointed.) If this chamber is, in turn, elected on a proportional basis, and its members given lengthy terms, Hix thinks that this reform has the potential to make the House of Lords an even stronger check on the House of Commons than it already is. It will also be able to claim the mantle of legitimacy because its members will arguably be a truer expression of the country's diversity (by virtue of proportional representation.)

10. Fixed-term Parliaments may be less revolutionary. The other big electoral reform on the docket is that of creating fixed-term (five-year) Parliaments, which can only be dissolved if 55 percent of the chamber votes to do so. The logic here is to separate out the act of dissolving a Parliament from the act of forming a new government. Under these rules, if a government collapses, political parties would be encouraged to try to hammer out a new deal -- or form a caretaker government -- rather than resorting to elections. Fixed-term Parliaments are also touted as a way to make the legislature more independent from the executive branch because the prime minister's party can no longer try to ride waves of popularity by calling an early election. But Gaines is skeptical about the merit of this reform. For starters, it's not clear that prime ministers are all that good at knowing when to call an election (look at Gordon Brown, who should arguably have called an election right after he took office in 2007.) Nor is it clear that a five-year limit is really all that "bold" given that British electoral rules already stipulate that an election must be held every five years anyway. (Other countries with this sort of rule have three- or four-year fixed terms.) And the risk of institutional stalemate is higher.

In the end, it feels like the new British government is moving at one and the same time toward a more American political system (with greater checks and balances and more person-centered campaigns), as well as toward a more European one (with proportional representation voting). But when I put this question to Simon Hix, he answered: "Britain is finally becoming a modern democracy. It's been stuck in the 19th century for far too long."

Indeed.

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