Latest newsletter from County councillor James Doyle and Worthing Green Party: currently being delivered in Worthing Pier division, but still of interest to people elsewhere in the town, so please read and share!
Category Archives: politics
Our Green Worthing: January Newsletter for Worthing Pier
For those who haven’t received one (and we’ve delivered 5000 over the past two weeks), here’s a PDF copy of our January newsletter.
We Only Hurt the Ones We Love?
Anyone who has attended more than the occasional election count will undoubtedly have heard someone say that their party has lost a seat because of another party splitting ‘their’ vote; it might be a Conservative accusing UKIP, or a LibDem pointing a finger at Labour, or vice versa, but whether on the left or the right, partisans tend to assume that the vote on their side of the political spectrum belongs to their party, and to no one else.
It’s particularly apposite to think about this at the moment, given Michael Fabricant’s discussion paper on the hypothetical benefits from a Con-UKIP pact, and the revived myth (as definitively rubbished by Anthony Wells, http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/4444 ) that at the 2010 General Election, UKIP cost the Tories 20-40 seats.
I had already been thinking of looking at this, as I’d been assembling a large data set of local election results, for council elections in the South East England region, for the most recent election cycle (2009-2012). Whereas the General Election had a maximum of 650 data points – constituencies – to examine for evidence of potential vote-splitting, not all of which will have multiple parties from the same political wing, local elections offer several times the number of data points to analyse.
Does the data bear out the belief that vote-splitting hurts, and that it is parties who should be our best friends – or at least as friendly as that bloke from work we sometimes play five-a-side with and have a drink afterwards – who are splitting our votes?
Parameters of the Analysis
For the purpose of this analysis, I’m counting the following parties as right wing and left wing respectively (in descending order of electoral success):
Right: Conservatives, UKIP, BNP, English Democrats (ED)
Left: Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens
The elections used are council elections from all county, district, borough and unitary authorities in the South East region of England, from 2009 to 2012. Only main council elections (taking place in May of each year) are used; by elections may be subject to many other factors and influences, and have been excluded.
Council wards may be represented by one, two or three members, who may elected one at a time, or simultaneously. If multiple members are elected in one election, and hence there are multiple candidates from a single party, it becomes much more difficult to determine how an election might have been different if a particular party had not stood; therefore, the analysis is based only on single-seat elections.
The Data
Limiting the dataset to single-seat elections gives us 1,895 elections to work with. Of this number, 3 have no candidate from either left or right (all candidates are either Residents, Independents, or other, small parties); 6 wards have no right candidate, and 74 have no left candidate. Further, 38 wards were won by Residents’ Association candidates, and 30 by Independents. This leaves 1,744 seats won by a candidate of the right or left. These can be divided into four groups:
a) 1 right and 1 left candidate: 240 seats
b) multiple (2, 3 or 4) right candidates, 1 left candidate: 151 seats
c) 1 right candidate, multiple (2 or 3) left candidates: 740 seats
d) multiple right and multiple left candidates: 613 seats
a) The Baseline: Head-to-Head Contests
The straightforward contests in group (a) break down into 183 right wins, all Conservative (81 over Labour, 95 over LibDems, 7 over the Greens) and 57 left wins (30 Lab over Con, 2 Lab over UKIP, 25 LD over Con). So in straight 1 right/1 left contests, right wins 76.25%, left wins 23.75%. This is a baseline we can use to compare the other results against.
| Right Wins | Left Wins | |||
| Baseline Case: Head to Head Contests | 76.25% | 23.75% |
b) Splitting the Right Vote?
The Conservatives contested all 151 of these seats; 137 were against UKIP, 7 against BNP, 5 against the English Democrats, and 2 against UKIP and BNP
The left was represented (only one party from the left in each seat in this category, remember) by Labour in 45 seats, the LibDems in 104, and the Greens in 2.
The results were 118 Conservative wins, 1 UKIP win (i.e. 119 right wins), 14 Labour wins and 18 LibDem wins (i.e. 32 left wins)
| Right Wins | Left Wins | |||
| Head to Head Contests | 76.25% | 23.75% | ||
| Multiple Right, Single Left | 78.81% | 21.19% |
As can be seen, there is no significant difference in results with multiple parties on the right contesting a seat.
To go further, in 7 of 14 Labour victories, and 9 of 18 LibDem victories, the winning party’s vote was greater than the total of all right parties, meaning that even if there had been a single party on the right contesting the seat, and every right voter in the real election had voted for that party, the right would still have lost. We can therefore add these to the seats actually won by Conservatives and UKIP as seats where splitting the right vote definitely made no difference: a total of 135 seats. So this leaves us 16 seats, or 10.60%, in which a theoretical transfer of 100% of votes to the leading right party would gain them 16 seats, or 10.60%.
A YouGov survey from 2010 (http://cdn.yougov.com/today_uk_import/YG-Archives-Pol-YouGov-BNP-UKIP-Formattedv2-291110.pdf) shows that not every voter would transfer uniformly to a party on the same side of the political spectrum (in this case, UKIP or BNP to Conservative); the net transfer (the difference between transfers to the Conservatives and a Labour or LibDem opponent) would be around 18 or 19%. If we examine some hypothetical thresholds, assuming that a net of 50%, 25% or 10% of votes would transfer, the Conservatives would gain 6, 3 or 2 seats.
Split Effect
| 100% Transfer | 50% Transfer | 25% Transfer | 10% Transfer | |||||
| Head to Head Contests | 0.00% | – | – | – | ||||
| Multiple Right, Single Left | 10.60% (16) | 3.97% (6) | 1.99% (3) | 1.33% (2) |
c) Splitting the Left Vote?
449 seats were contested by Labour and the LibDems; 20 by Labour and the Greens; 18 by the LibDems and the Greens; 253 by all of Labour, the LibDems and the Greens.
The right was represented by the Conservatives in 738 seats, UKIP in 2, and BNP or ED in 0.
The results were 446 Conservative wins (446 right wins), 135 Labour wins, 150 LibDem wins and 9 Green wins (i.e. 294 left wins)
| Right Wins | Left Wins | |||
| Head to Head Contests | 76.25% | 23.75% | ||
| Multiple Right, Single Left | 78.81% | 21.19% | ||
| Single Right, Multiple Left | 60.27% | 39.73% |
This is significantly different to the baseline case, but the left has won more, rather then fewer, seats when the left vote is split. This is a counter-intuitive result; it is possible that this is because seats that are demographically more favourable to the left attract more left candidates, but it would be impossible to verify this without considerably more research.
In 338 of the Conservative victories, the Conservative vote was greater than the total of all left parties. Adding these to the seats actually won by left parties as seats where splitting the left vote definitely made no difference gives a total of 635 seats. The 100% theoretical transfer to the leading left party would gain them 108 seats, or 14.59%. This is comparable to the 10.60% where a split right vote would make a difference on a 100% transfer. The table shows the effects at 50%, 25% and 10% transfer.
Split Effect
| 100% Transfer | 50% Transfer | 25% Transfer | 10% Transfer | |||||
| Head to Head Contests | 0.00% | – | – | – | ||||
| Multiple Right, Single Left | 10.60% (16) | 3.97% (6) | 1.99% (3) | 1.33% (2) | ||||
| Single Right, Multiple Left | 14.59% (108) | 8.24% (61) | 4.87% (36) | 1.76% (13) |
These figures are noticeably higher than the reverse scenario. This may reinforce the speculation that multiple left parties stand in demographically more favourable territory: not only do the left win more when multiple left candidates stand, but in such areas they could benefit more from theoretical transfers. This would lead logically to a hypothesis that where there are multiple left candidates, the appearance that vote splitting is costing the left potential victories is caused by the seat containing more left votes, rather than actually being caused by split voting. It would be useful to obtain some polling data on potential transfer inclinations of left voters, to see how important this is.
d) Splitting Both Votes?
These 613 seats break down as follows:
| Right Candidates | Left Candidates | |||
| 407 seats | 2 | 2 | ||
| 175 seats | 2 | 3 | ||
| 20 seats | 3 | 2 | ||
| 10 seats | 3 | 3 | ||
| 1 seat | 4 | 2 |
The results were 388 Conservative wins, 1 UKIP win (389 right wins), 45 Labour wins, 178 LibDem wins and 1 Green win (i.e. 224 left wins). As the table below shows, this is similar to the previous analysis of seats where the right vote isn’t split, but the left vote is.
| Right Wins | Left Wins | |||
| Head to Head Contests | 76.25% | 23.75% | ||
| Multiple Right, Single Left | 78.81% | 21.19% | ||
| Multiple Right, Multiple Left | 63.46% | 36.54% |
Further analysis of multiple versus multiple elections is more complicated than above, as theoretical transfers are possible on both sides, but we can begin by determining the number of seats in which the winning party got more votes than the total for parties on the opposing side of the spectrum: this is 290 of the 389 right wins, and 162 of the 224 left wins. In the remaining 161 seats, we apply the same transfer thresholds – 50%, 25% and 10% – to both the winning party and the leading party on the opposite side of the spectrum. The results are shown in the table; the figures are marginally higher than, but very comparable to, the case with multiple right parties and a single left party.
Split Effect
| 100% Transfer | 50% Transfer | 25% Transfer | 10% Transfer | |||||
| Head to Head Contests | 0.00% | – | – | – | ||||
| Multiple Right, Single Left | 10.60% (16) | 3.97% (6) | 1.99% (3) | 1.33% (2) | ||||
| Single Right, Multiple Left | 14.59% (108) | 8.24% (61) | 4.87% (36) | 1.76% (13) | ||||
| Multiple Right, Multiple Left | 26.26% (161) | 4.89% (30) | 2.61% (16) | 1.47% (9) |
Conclusions
In areas where multiple right parties stand, there is no significant evidence of vote splitting harming the right. On the left, there is some evidence of harm, but at a very low level, 1 in 20 to 1 in 40 seats. Even this may be an artefact of seat demographics, rather than actual electoral damage. Further research, and opinion poll data, might resolve this.
In short, it would seem that not only does having more parties on the ballot paper mean more choice for the electors, it does not mean more problems for the politicians. Variety may indeed be the spice of (election) life.
I would welcome comments on or criticisms of the above analysis, or suggestions of different ways to look at the figures as presented or further analysis of the base data.
Filed under politics
This Week at West Sussex County Council (17th-23rd September 2012)
Committee Meetings:
September 17th Governance Committee
2.15 p.m.; County Hall
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/R7u0YF
Governance committee tends, obviously, to deal with the internal workings of the council, rather than policy matters, but there is an important item on the policy of allowing teachers recruited from academies to WSCC schools to count their service as continuous; it might seem rather obvious that it should work that way, but it needs to be made explicit.
September 17th North Horsham CLC
7 p.m.; County Hall North, Chart Way, Horsham, RH12 1XH
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/Ox4DyM
September 18th Planning Committee
10.30 a.m.; County Hall
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/U7Ti8h
Considering the draft West Sussex Waste Plan; there will be more debate at the full Council meeting in October, but this will inform that discussion
September 18th Joint Eastern Arun Area Committee (CLC)
7 p.m.; Woodlands Centre, Woodlands Avenue, Rustington, BN16 3HB
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/S04Zxl
Forward Plan Decisions (September-December FP) by Cabinet/Cabinet Member
Full forward plan available here: http://bit.ly/UXVPBi
[Note: decisions outstanding from the previous month, plus decisions made during the past week]
Leader
Decisions made last week:
none
Deputy Leader/Cabinet Member for Communities, Environment & Enterprise
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Children & Families
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Education & Schools
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Finance & Resources
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Health & Adults’ Services
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Highways & Transport
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Public Protection
Decisions made last week:
none
This Week at Worthing Borough Council (17th-23rd September 2012)
Holidays are over, back to work… 🙂
Meetings:
September 17th Licensing Control Committee
6.00 p.m.; Town Hall, Worthing
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/OwPSfA
1 application for a Private Hire Driver’s License. Normally these would be delegated to officers, but there may be some specific information in the application that would require more consideration.
Cabinet/Cabinet Member Decisions
Leader of the Council:
Remembrance Sunday Reception – location: decision due after September 24th
It might seem that deciding where to hold the traditional reception after the Remembrance Sunday service and parade would be uncontroversial and straightforward, but not really. The council has managed to allow almost every possible location in the town hall complex – the committee suite, the Gordon Room, the Assembly Hall – to be booked up for other purposes, or in one case, filled with stored documents. It would seem difficult to be taken by surprise by Remembrance Sunday, but Worthing BC have managed it.
Deputy Leader/Cabinet Member for Regeneration:
Portland House/Town Hall Car Park – Marketing Brief: decision due after July 2nd, but still not recorded as made!
Cabinet Member for Resources:
Irrecoverable Debts – Council Tax and Non-Domestic Rates: decision due after July 6th, but still not recorded as made.
Cabinet Member for Customer Services:
none
(last decision 30/7/12 – joint decision with Adur)
Cabinet Member for Health & Wellbeing:
none
(last decision 16/5/11)
Cabinet Member for Environment:
none
(last decision 31/5/12)
Best Foot Forward? Setting an Example on Transport
Our last county council meeting, on May 18th, fell on the last day of Walk to Work Week, and it got me thinking about how I, and other county councillors, get to County Hall for meetings; do we set a good example to council officers, and West Sussex residents, for using alternatives to the car?
Most of the time I cycle to Worthing railway station, take the train to Chichester, and walk from there to County Hall. It’s perfectly feasible to get to County Hall for 10.00 a.m., even gtting an offpeak fare. With the mileage rates councillors get for driving, I save the council money as well as feeling virtuous, or possibly smug, about my choices.
Could others do the same? Well, with a list of county councillors’ addresses from the WSCC website, Google Maps, and a website for checking train times, it turns out to be quite easy to work out who (in theory) should be able to use public transport for their trips to County Hall. Note that this does not take into account individual circumstances: there are at least two county councillors I know of who would find it physically difficult, if not impossible, to walk/train/walk to Chichester. They both do good jobs, so this is not intended to impugn them directly or indirectly; but they are included in the figures I give. There may well be other cases where personal circumstances make it difficult or impossible to use public transport.
The parameters I set for this are:
- Is it possible to walk directly to County Hall in less than half an hour.
- If (1) isn’t possible, is there a nearby railway station from which it is possible to get a train after 9 a.m. to arrive at Chichester by 10 a.m.?
- If (2) is true, could someone walk from their home to that station in 20 minutes or less?
- If it’s not possible to walk to a station in 20 minutes (3), can you drive in 10 minutes or less?
I’ve ignored the possibility of cycling, either directly or to a station, as I’d have to start making my own calculations of cycling times. I’ve also left out the option of getting a bus to Chichester; you can do this on Google Maps, but I’m not convinced the timetables are up to date, nor that it would make much of a difference to the overall figures.
Using Google Maps, you can enter two postcodes and ask for walking directions between them. It doesn’t take account of pedestrian short cuts, only using paths beside roads, so some of these calculations could possibly be slightly shorter; I’m also a little sceptical about the projected walking times in Google Maps, as it claims that my walk to Worthing station should take 18 minutes – in fact I can do it in 12 minutes, and my 3 year old can scoot it in 18. So I’ve split the difference and called my walk to Worthing 15 minutes, and hence adjusted down elsewhere by a similar factor of 5/6.
There are 71 county councillors, but only 70 give a full address on the WSCC website: still a pretty good sample.
Here’s what I found:
2 County Councillors live within 30 minutes walk of County Hall
42 live within 20 minutes walk of a station
8 live within 10 minutes drive of a station
18 really have no option but to drive
So nearly 75% could avoid car use without too much personal disruption. And happily, in all but one case the train fare would be cheaper than the mileage allowance – so, given the disruption we’ve asked council staff to put up with pay freezes, job cuts and reorganisation – perhaps even a little disruption to councillors’ lives would really show that we’re ‘all in it together’.
Breaking it down by district:
| Councillors | Walk | Walk/Train | Drive/Train | Drive | No Address | |
| Adur | 6 | – | 6 | – | – | – |
| Arun | 13 | – | 9 | 3 | 1 | – |
| Chichester | 10 | 2 | – | – | 8 | – |
| Crawley | 9 | – | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Horsham | 12 | – | 8 | 1 | 3 | – |
| Mid Sussex | 12 | – | 5 | 3 | 4 | – |
| Worthing | 9 | – | 8 | – | 1 | – |
Unsurprisingly, it’s the rural areas of Chichester and Horsham, and the farther reaches of Mid Sussex, where councillors don’t have much choice about their travel mode, whereas in the coastal region from Southwick west through Worthing and Arun it’s much easier for people to choose the train.
Perhaps if more people travelled by train, there might be a keener sense of the worth of public transport? And if the bus was a feasible option, perhaps the council might have done more to protect bus service subsidies?
This Week at West Sussex County Council (16th-22nd July 2012)
Committee Meetings:
July 19th Gatwick Airport Consultative Committee
2 p.m.; Hilton Hotel, South Terminal, Gatwick Airport
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/Sudrnf
Includes first presentation of new Gatwick Airport Master Plan
July 19th Sussex Police Authority
2 p.m.; Sackville House, Lewes
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/MaCcnv
July 20th Full Council
10.30 a.m.; County Hall, Chichester
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/NuxkZg
– includes motion on fracking
Forward Plan Decisions (July-October FP) by Cabinet/Cabinet Member
Full forward plan available here: http://bit.ly/MIqoYa
[Note: decisions outstanding from the previous month, plus decisions made during the past week]
Leader
Decisions made last week:
Health & Wellbeing Strategy; call-in deadline July 23rd
Deputy Leader/Cabinet Member for Communities, Environment & Enterprise
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Children & Families
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Education & Schools
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Finance & Resources
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Health & Adults’ Services
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Highways & Transport
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Public Protection
Decisions made last week:
none
This Week at Worthing Borough Council (16th-22nd July 2012)
Meetings:
July 17th Full Council
6.00 p.m.; Town Hall, Worthing
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/NAPntH
Cabinet/Cabinet Member Decisions
Leader of the Council:
Mayoral Support – Budget for staff overtime payments: decision due after July 12th
Deputy Leader/Cabinet Member for Regeneration:
Portland House/Town Hall Car Park – Marketing Brief: decision due July 2nd
Cabinet Member for Resources:
Irrecoverable Debts – Council Tax and Non-Domestic Rates: decision due after July 6th
Cabinet Member for Customer Services:
none
(last decision 17/8/11)
Cabinet Member for Health & Wellbeing:
none
(last decision 16/5/11)
Cabinet Member for Environment:
none
(last decision 31/5/12)
Joint Cabinet Decisions with Adur:
none
This Week at West Sussex County Council (2nd-8th July 2012)
Committee Meetings:
July 2nd Governance Committee
2.15 p.m.; County Hall, Chichester
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/KT2PO1
– Sussex Police and Crime Panel Draft Constitution; sadly the link within the document to the actual constitution doesn’t work, but there does seem to be provision for public involvement; political balance has not been addressed, however.
July 3rd Cabinet
10.30 a.m.; County Hall, Chichester
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/N0fqxG
July 3rd East Crawley County Local Committee
7 p.m.; Crawley Library, Southgate Avenue, Crawley, RH10 6HG
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/O2pA27
July 4th Health & Adult Social Care Select Committee
10.30 a.m.; County Hall, Chichester
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/LaqdI5
- Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust Update on Service Redesign
- Future Model of Services for the Frail Elderly
July 4th Chanctonbury County Local Committee
7 p.m.; Henfield Leisure Centre, Henfield, BN5 9QB
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/OOGe7U
July 5th Policy & Resources Select Committee
10.30 a.m.; County Hall, Chichester
Full agenda and reports at: http://bit.ly/MIUJag
July 6th Chichester Harbour Conservancy
2.15 p.m.
This is the correct date for the meeting I published in error last week (based on the WSCC meeting calendar); however, there’s a problem with the Conservancy website and they haven’t been able to upload the agenda. I have been sent a copy however!
Forward Plan Decisions (July-October FP) by Cabinet/Cabinet Member
Full forward plan available here: http://bit.ly/MIqoYa
[Note: decisions outstanding from the previous month, plus decisions made during the past week]
Leader
Decisions made last week:
none
Deputy Leader/Cabinet Member for Communities, Environment & Enterprise
Decisions made last week:
Review of fees and charges for public rights of way; call-in deadline 9th July
Review of fees and charges for trade waste at Waste Transfer Stations and Strategic Planning; call-in deadline 9th July
Cabinet Member for Children & Families
Decisions made last week:
Procurement of a framework of providers for children’s residential and foster care (call-in deadline 5th July.
Cabinet Member for Education & Schools
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Finance & Resources
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Health & Adults’ Services
Outstanding from May:
Preparing for an Ageing Population (has now slipped to July)
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Highways & Transport
Outstanding from May:
Review of on-street parking charges (slipped to September)
Decisions made last week:
none
Cabinet Member for Public Protection
Decisions made last week:
none
This Week at Worthing Borough Council (2nd-8th July 2012)
Committee Meetings:
None
Cabinet/Cabinet Member Decisions
Leader of the Council:
None
Deputy Leader/Cabinet Member for Regeneration:
None
Cabinet Member for Resources:
Irrecoverable Debts – Council Tax and Non-Domestic Rates: report 28th June, decision due after 6th July.
Council tax writeoffs total £14,156.63
Non-Domestic Rates writeoffs total £29,691.53; this doesn’t actually cost the council anything as NDR go into the national pool, and these writeoffs are deducted from our contribution, but it does serve as a local economic indicator of sorts.
Cabinet Member for Customer Services:
none
(last decision 17/8/11)
Cabinet Member for Health & Wellbeing:
none
(last decision 16/5/11)
Cabinet Member for Environment:
none
(last decision 31/5/12)
Joint Cabinet Decisions with Adur:
none
James Doyle: Green Councillor for Central Ward, Worthing 