CAER – Conservative Action for Electoral Reform – Why?

CAER was founded in 1974, after an election in which the Conservatives won more votes than Labour but fewer seats, many Conservatives came to appreciate the unfairness of the present first-past-the-post system and the need for electoral reform. Over the years there has always been support for reform but that dwindled with elected power.

While Labour’s vote lead in 1997 was large by any standards, the parliamentary majority and the lead over the Conservatives were swollen by an increase in electoral bias, to the extent that if Labour and the Conservatives had polled level votes Labour would have only been 79 seats ahead.

The 2001 election saw a massive increase in electoral system bias, as a moderate swing to the Conservatives (1.8%, comprising Labour losing 2.5% and the Conservatives gaining 1.0%) saw hardly any seats change hands.

It is time for our party to consider electoral reform and not just hope that our time will come, coupled with a re-juvinated party under David Cameron. We can admit that there is bias, not just due to boundary changes, or we can have the debate.

The Conservative Party is also going through a period of change at the same time as the electorate claims it feels more dis-enfranchised.

Startling facts for reform:

To put the case for electoral reform we should study a few facts about why our party should be considering STV, based on the 2005 election results:

• Cities seats in 2005 – Actual seats = 5, STV seats = 30
• Counties where we are un-represented under STV we would have gained over 40 seats more (Avon, Cleveland, Cornwall, S. Yorks, etc)
• There are 10 counties where our representation would not change
• And other counties where we currently hold 126 where our share would drop to 81
• In England we had a vote lead of 65,704 over Labour but 92 seats behind Labour
• In 2005 in Scotland we polled 1/6th of the vote but only returned one MP, however in 2003 in the Scottish Parliament elections, we gained an appropriate amount of representation – 18 seats out of 129 – 1.3m Scottish Conservatives have had to make do with 1 seat in Westminster
• Conservatives in Wales are in 2nd place but the Lib Dems have more seats at Westminster because our vote is thinly spread across the country
• Boundary Review – estimated effect is that we would gain 10 seats but still based on the 2005 election results we would still have only 205 seats with Labour on 350. Our party sometimes claim that the boundary review system is biased against us but this is more to do with inefficient vote distribution

Why is the system biased against us?

• Under the present FPTP system Labour only need 35% of the vote to regain power but we need 40% because of inefficient voter distribution, tactical voting, differential turnout and electoral strategy.