With the upcoming election of the 4th July, I thought I would write a blog on my views on voting behaviour of individuals and the ways in which people may choose the best candidate in the election. 

Let’s begin with the current political party in power: the Conservatives. The party has been in power since the rule of Gordon Brown’s Labour between 2007-2010 and Labour’s dominance under the Blair government. It may come as a surprise, but it has historically been the party that has had the most prime ministers over the 20th and 21st century. Evidently, the so called ‘Tories’ must be doing something well yet it can be argued that recently this has not been the case. Some may argue that with the current situation of the government individuals may be apprehensive to vote for them due to the poor way they handled Brexit, Covid-19 and the recent Cost of Living crisis. Yet most people are seemingly tired with the Tories and want a change, but in their manifesto, they are proposing new policies that are a change from their previous actions.  I believe by judging a party purely on its manifesto, this allows for the fairest way of deciding who to vote for in the elections as one can compare each party equally. Applying this to the general elections, Labour has not been in power since 2010 thus it is hard to compare their performance to that of the conservatives so we may look at their manifesto to see this.

 It must be noted that in General Elections in the UK one votes for the member of parliament they would like to represent their local constituency. Most individuals overlook the actual candidate they are voting for but rather choose them based on their party and the potential prime minister that may be elected. This highlights the key importance of the manifesto which I therefore believe is the most important piece of information one should base their decision on whom to vote for in a democratic election. Yet those who also look at the manifesto of their local MP may face the dilemma that they do not agree with policies the candidate for a certain party is making for their local area but they do like the manifesto of the party overall. This issue may be solved by the UK adopting the proportional voting system, where one votes for a party instead, a system which most countries in the EU already utilise. This differs from the current first-past-the-post voting system in the UK. For the purposes of this article, I will not go into further detail about the ins and outs of specific voting systems.  

It can be said that the UK effectively runs a two-party political system which is similar to other democracies across the world such as the USA. Although there are more than two parties in the UK which are possible contenders, they tend to have a slim chance of winning due to the monopolistic nature of the Labour and Conservative party. Why? Well, this is partly due to the main parties establishing a legacy of being proved capable of ruling thus giving them unassailable advantage over their smaller competitors and smaller parties being unable to field credible candidates across the whole country.  Yet my view still holds that one should rely on the manifestos of the party and focus on the future rather than the past as I believe that all the parties should have an equal opportunity at being elected and voters should take this into consideration but the current political system does not allow for this “pure” democratic notion to work in reality. This does therefore pose the question of whether voters act rationally. Looking at Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, it states that  it is not possible to design a voting system that meets the following three conditions: (i) a fair vote; (ii) people being able to make logical and transitive decisions and (iii) the person's decision having independence of irrelevant alternatives. Focusing on the condition of ‘independence of irrelevant alternatives’, this means that the preferences of whom one should vote for dos not change when a new party is introduced in an election, so the individual continually votes for the same party each time. In reality, this may not occur as people may be swayed, once again, by the recent performance  of a party in the parliament or by simply reading their manifesto , therefore it can be concluded that some voters may act irrationally and change their voting habits. This theorem also links back to my previous point about people making transitive decisions within the voting system as people may struggle to choose if the local MP candidate they prefer stands for a different party to the one they prefer overall. Yet it is also important to consider that some voters cast their vote tactically  meaning that transitive decisions are often not made by such voters. This is due to the fact that such voters  may not see the point in voting for a party that is unlikely to win the general election as it can be seen as a wasted vote (which I agree with). 

Overall, the political system does have material impact on how people decide to vote. In the first-past-the-post system people tend to look at the personality of the leader of the main two parties and their general policies when they cast their vote rather than at the individual candidate MP they vote for. They also tend to disregard the other/smaller parties as they are unlikely to get a majority in the parliament, so their policies are likely to be irrelevant. There is a fair amount of tactical voting that occurs within the Uk, but one should always vote based on the visons and policies set out in the manifestos of all the parties. So before choosing who to vote for in the upcoming election, maybe try to focus mainly on the manifestos that you agree the most with and chose your candidate from there! 

Resources:

1) https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers 

2)https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arrows-theorem/