FPTP even more biased in favour of Conservatives

New boundary changes mean the system for electing MPs is further skewed

First of all, what has happened. Watch the video clip below.

Suggested questions:

1. How has the map of constituencies in the UK changed since Boris Johnson won the election?

2. What is the significance of the redrawn constituency boundaries?

3. How would the estimated result of the 2019 election have changed under the redrawn boundaries?

4. What implications does the redrawn map have for the Tory party, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats?

5. What is the purpose of Sky News's swingometer tool?

6. What happens if the number of people voting Tory increases according to the swingometer?

7. What milestones need to be reached for Labour to gain a majority in the next election?

8. How does the swing needed for Labour to gain an overall majority compare to historical swings?

9. What is the swing needed for Labour to win an overall majority without any help?

10. How does the battle between Labour and the Conservatives in Scotland impact the outcome of the next election?

Correct answers:

1. The map of constituencies in the UK has been redrawn, with all but 77 seats being changed.

2. The redrawn constituency boundaries ensure that everyone's votes are more or less equal.

3. Under the redrawn boundaries, the Tories would have won an even bigger majority in the 2019 election.

4. The redrawn map has implications for the Tory party, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats in terms of their number of seats.

5. The swingometer tool is a fun way to understand what might happen in the UK elections, although it makes assumptions about voter behavior.

6. If the number of people voting Tory increases according to the swingometer, Richy Sunak's party gains more seats.

7. Milestones for Labour to gain a majority include swings in percentage points and winning specific seats.

8. The swing needed for Labour to gain an overall majority is larger than historical swings, such as the one in 1997.

9. A swing of 12.7 percentage points is needed for Labour to govern alone without any help.

10. The battle between Labour and the Conservatives in Scotland will impact the outcome of the next election and who becomes the next prime minister.

So how does this fit into the A Level course? One of the key areas of debate in the UK political system relates to reforming the system for Westminster elections. The arguments for and against normally pivot around repacking it with a system that provides a more proportional outcome. I won't repeat them here, for sake of brevity. But suffice it to say that a point I don't often see in student responses is how the system benefits the Conservatives more than Labour. And, other things being equal, these most recent adjustments tilt the balance even more in favour of the Conservatives. John Curtice, professor of Politics at Strathclyde, explains:

"The bias that existed in 2019 can be seen if we assume there was a 5.85% swing from Conservative to Labour in each and every constituency as compared with the outcome in 2019 (while leaving the shares of the vote won by other parties unchanged). Such a swing would mean that, with 38.9% of the vote each, the Conservatives and Labour would be tied in terms of their share of the vote across Great Britain as a whole. Yet under this scenario the Conservatives would, on the old boundaries, have won 290 seats, 23 more than Labour’s 267.

Now, rather than being reduced by the new boundaries, that disparity has increased to as much as 50 seats.

This inevitably has implications for the ease with which the Conservatives and Labour can win an overall majority. If the swing from Conservative to Labour were uniform, the Conservatives would on the old boundaries need a lead over Labour of 4.8 points to secure an overall majority. That figure that has now edged down to 3.4 points. Labour, in contrast, would need to be as much as 12.3 points ahead of the Conservatives just to secure an overall Commons majority. Now that figure has risen to as much as 13.7 points. This explains why, despite its large lead in the opinion polls, Labour’s task in winning an overall majority is potentially a formidable one.

So why might the electoral system still be heavily biased against Labour at the next election? The explanation lies in the fact that Labour’s vote is less efficiently distributed across constituencies. In particular, if the two parties have the same share of the vote nationally, Labour would win many more seats than the Conservatives by very large majorities. That disadvantage has not been affected by the boundary review, indeed if anything it has been increased somewhat."

So there you have it. You can see how a relatively arcane change to the geographical boundaries has quite a significant impact on how the UK is governed.

To find out more on your own constituency, you can type in your postcode into the following article here.