General Election
Fraser, Nick, Chris and Peter discuss the their certainty in general election results.
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by Tell Me Studios for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Peter Coghill, Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing if there's any point in having an election if you already know what the result will be.
Speaker B:So Nick, answer the question for us. I think this is probably why we're talking about it really is that we've got an election in a couple of weeks, what is it, 15 days time or something? So we've got, there's going to be a general election in the UK, we're going to vote for essentially the Prime Minister and the governing party. It's not obviously quite how it works, you vote for your MPs and then the MPs, you know, essentially decide those things. But anyway, it's looking at the moment, if you look at the opinion polls like Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour Party are going to do quite badly and obviously traditionally in the UK we've had two parties and we've had, they've been different two parties throughout the years, but we've more or less always had two parties and that has changed a bit recently with the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Nationalists. But anyway, I think the Conservatives at the moment are, have got, you know, they're 10, something like 10 or 20 points ahead in the opinion polls. So yeah, I mean, it's looking like it should be a shoo-in for the Tories. So the question is, why go through the palaver of having an election is what you're saying. That's right. Yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't really understand the question. Does anyone here understand the question? So who does understand
Speaker C:the question? I think it was sort of provocatively put that, you know, if it's a foregone conclusion who is going to form the next government, do you need to go through the inconvenience of an election? Why, why do we, why do we have an election? What's the, what's the
Speaker A:purpose of it? Yeah. And also especially as the party that we think is going to win is already in power. And also I think, I don't think we're actually huge fans of elections
Speaker B:in the UK. Oh, come on. I don't, I mean, look. I love elections. Well, you might. Love it. I love voting. I love watching the TV coverage. Elections is just brilliant. It's better
Speaker A:than Grand National. You were, I mean, that's maybe on the day itself or the night before, but I mean, there was, there was, there was a lot of people who don't. There's a lot of election fatigue around. We've had a few votes. You don't like it. Go and live in a dictatorship.
Speaker D:There is also, they are also costly. I think the cost of an election runs into the tens of millions of pounds just for the administration. That's cheap as chips, not costly. But, but, and that's before all of the parties are spending money on campaigning and canvassing, etc.
Speaker C:And of course, government shuts down effectively. And government shuts down. Yeah, another benefit.
Speaker D:Key government functions are, a lot of them are put on hold. So, whereas there's a normal discourse between business and the individual citizen and parts of government that shuts down because governments can't discuss various areas of policy. And an election is very disruptive
Speaker A:in the work of government. I just want to interject with something for a moment. It's slightly off subject here. But usually when we do these, is we all have fixed microphones. Okay. And at the moment, Nick's got a microphone that's not fixed, which he can wield in his hand. And I don't know if that's a good idea, actually, because he seems to interrupt more. And he seems to like sort of wielding it and sort of at any chosen moment, he doesn't, he doesn't have to move his head forward. All he has to do is move his arm up. And so I just don't
Speaker D:know if it's a good combination. I think I'm in fear of my life with this wielded microphone.
Speaker A:I think I'm gonna have to give you a different microphone in the future, Nick. See me not saying anything just to prove you wrong. Okay, so is there any point in having an election? Look, so obviously we're asking this provocatively. There are various reasons why one might have. But hey, I mean, what about this? So the point of an election isn't necessarily, it's not a binary thing. It's not necessarily this person gets into power or not. It's about other stuff as well, right? Which is arguably actually why this election has been called because it's about having a larger mandate and greater number of people, a greater number of elected representatives. So let's, let's move it on. Who wants to sort of? Yeah, okay.
Speaker C:So there are two questions. We still haven't escaped the fact, or we still haven't addressed the issue of whether or not the outcome is a foregone conclusion and the uncertainty that surrounds, surrounds that. So there's one, there's a question about that, which is, you know, what we have seen recent discrepancies between polling and election outcomes. You know, our last general election two years ago went against, went against the, the direction the polling suggested it was going in. So there's, first of all, that slight formality of actually determining whether more people want somebody to, to be the prime minister or not. But secondary to that. So let's come back onto the second point in a moment. So
Speaker A:the first thing is, of course you've got to have an election because there's no such thing as a foregone conclusion. You never know until whether something has, it will
Speaker B:happen until it actually happens. But also specifically, I mean, just, it's boring, but I mean, specifically in the UK, we are not just trying to choose a prime minister, you're choosing your local MP. And there's much more uncertainty about that for a lot of seats, you know, we don't actually know, it could go either way. So, you know, so we, you're, yeah. So that's, that's boring. So there's another reason. Yeah, we have,
Speaker C:yeah, exactly. But that then raises a question, you know, for places where somebody's got a thumping majority of 20,000. And it certainly feels as a voter, when you, when you vote in those constituencies, you, you get this sense of, this is, this is a slightly futile exercise because everybody knows the outcome. So from a voter's perspective, you know, it feels like a foregone conclusion and a formality. So actually, yeah, I'm with Chris
Speaker A:on this one, because you use the argument of, of, you know, your local constituency and where I live, you know, if you get, you've got a rabid donkey and put a blue rosette on it, it would still get elected. So it does feel fairly pointless where I am. So yeah, it's a fair description of your MP, to be fair. Anyway, so we were getting on to the secondary point there. And I interrupted you, Chris. Yeah, no, so I was just going
Speaker C:to say that there are, as Nick was alluding to, there are obviously different, different categories of, of win. So, you know, quite aside from who forms the government, the, the extent to which they are able to govern securely or, or manage their own party, the nature of the government is determined by how large their majority. If it's slim, then they may struggle to get through. They only need a few dissenters within their own party and they aren't able to get key, key legislation through. If it is large, they're much more likely to have the leeway to, to balance different, different factions within their party and drive legislation through because they don't need every single member of their party to, to vote, vote with them. And that's why this election was nominally called, was to, you know, the, the, the Conservative Party had a small majority and they feel with the Brexit negotiations coming up, they need a larger majority. So this election is about determining, arguably is about determining the size of that majority and how free a ride they,
Speaker D:they get. And likewise, the, the Her Majesty's loyal opposition, how, how fragmented and effective they are is tested during a general election. So at the moment that it's all quite fragmented. The Labour, the Liberals are suffering and the SNP and other parties are gaining, recently gained quite a lot of seats, but that's all under test again to see, see what, where the support lies for the opposition. Yeah. I mean, I actually think this is going to be one
Speaker B:of the most uncertain elections we've had for a while. That's why I'm particularly looking forward to it. I don't think really we, we know. And I, I, I found myself personally the most uncertain this election about what I'm actually going to vote for, than I can remember, which, which sort of, you know, times that by everyone else in Britain. And I, I dunno, I couldn't, I couldn't call it. Everyone seems very confident that the Tories are going to win comfortably. I'm, I'm not so sure, you know, I think, I think there's a lot of, there's still another two weeks for weird stuff to happen and weird stuff has already sort of got us where we are. Brexit was weird stuff and Jeremy Corbyn was, that was weird, you know, and so I think Theresa May is pretty weird as well. Yeah. I mean, I mean, the fact that we're where we are is the result of a lot of surprising things that have happened. So I don't, this election is going to be, it's going to be fun. And I think
Speaker C:fundamentally people, people are analysing the election as if it is as, as if the bounds of possibility sort of stretch from, you know, a, a, a conservative majority of one to a conservative majority of 150 or something. And that's, so, so they're making all their judgment as if that is the, the, the sort of space of possible worlds that could exist after, after the next general election. And almost entirely discounting the, the fact that there are another set of possible worlds which exist where they have no majority. And in fact, you know, another, another party has a majority or a coalition of other parties have, have a majority. And, you know, while it, while it is improbable that the Labour Party or Jeremy Corbyn becomes the prime, prime minister following the general election, it's certainly not implausible. So I think, you know, factoring that, that sort of probability space into people's analysis is something that's not being done at the moment.
Speaker A:Okay. So look, let's take stock. So the question was, is there any point in holding an election if you, if the, if we already know the outcome? And the answer is yes, because actually one, how certain really are we about the outcome? And two, it's not just about whether it's about who wins, it's about the manner of that victory as well. Okay. We're 10, 11 minutes in. Okay. So where do we go from here? We're halfway through our podcast.
Speaker B:Well, I, I, why do we have elections at all? I mean, I was wondering, you know, what is it that we, what, what constitutes the right approach with, with an election? What, how do we know we're getting it right? So at the moment we take, we, we do have an election every five years, unless by exception like this one, you know, they, they decide to have a sort of have a, have an election, which, for which I think they need to get past a vote in parliament or something. Yeah, two thirds, two thirds majority. So they can't, so basically we've got one every five years by default. Why, what is it about five years? That seems about right. If it is about right, should we have them every, every week or, you know, should we actually continually, perhaps we could continually gather data about how, how happy people are, e.g. from a mobile phone app. And you know, the minute people are fed up with the government, they get chucked out. That's the Italian system, isn't it? And, and so I think, you know, there's, I don't know, I feel like we've got this electoral technology, which is based on the prevailing conditions roughly 150 years ago, and the prevailing technology then, and, and we have, we, we're not rethinking it. You know, and we know, given that we know that people's opinions do change, often quite a lot over a short space of time. You know, why do we have an election, which is sort of one moment in time, rather than, you know, perhaps getting people to, to vote, you know, every week for three weeks and then averaging the results or something. I mean, there's, there's lots of ways you could do it. I don't know if there's any particular logic for the way that we happen to do it.
Speaker D:Well, I think, I mean, you say it's old technology, the paper ballot, but it's, it's actually a significant technical challenge to, to digitize that in a, in a way that's robust. At least with, you know, with a physical, with a physical ballot paper, it's, it's possible to duplicate or manipulate, but to do it at scale is incredibly difficult. Whereas with electronic voting, it's considerably easier to lose or to, to adjust or to manipulate results.
Speaker B:We could have a system where every, every week one constituency votes for its MP and you get a kind of rolling change in the parliamentary makeup without there being, without there being a one big, one big, one big election. I'm talking myself into this. I think that's quite a fun idea, actually.
Speaker C:Well, it also means every sort of six years, you'd have, everyone would have been, you'd have effectively had one big general election over the course of six years, but it essentially means that you can pass judgment or you can give a clear indicator to the governing party of how things are going. So it is a feedback mechanism, whereas at the moment, obviously we have polling, but you know, that's, that's not quite the same as, as you know, being right at the culf face of an election.
Speaker D:More opportunities to give direct feedback and to rail against particular policies, but they, I mean, America also elects more of their sort of officials, so police chiefs and fire chief and things like that. So on devolved, democracies devolved to very specific parts of policy.
Speaker A:Yeah. I mean, okay. So I think that's an interesting question because I like Nick's point about, you know, sort of that it all happens in one bang, you know, what about if it was spread out? And I think that's really interesting. I can't ever see that happening, but I do think it was a good way of doing things or an interesting concept. But one of the questions is, is, yeah, is there too, can you have too much democracy or too many elections? Because, yeah, when I look at the American system where I don't really think it's my, I, it just seems to me really odd voting it, voting for your police chief, you know, that it becomes very political.
Speaker C:I think it's the same now. And if you look at the, if you look at the mayoral elections, which, you know, our new system of elected mayors where we've had, you know, various parts of the country now have elected mayors, the turnout in some of those elections was lower than 25%. So clearly the electorates can't really see the point of being asked about those positions.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, I mean, but I mean, everything about the United, the US voting system is, is bonkers. I mean, it's totally baffling. I think it's great fun. But, you know, for everything down to their, you know, I think Peter referred to the sort of electronic voting and they have, they have a lot of elect, a lot more, well, they've got electronic voting in some places and then they have those weird punch cards. Why? What's wrong with just a bit of paper, which you put a cross into? It's the easiest method of doing it. It seems like actually it's just massively complicating things by having these.
Speaker D:Well, I mean, that's, that's an interesting point. A lot of activists make that point that some, some electorals, some of the mechanics of the casting a vote are deliberately made difficult or obtuse or complicated to try to exclude certain people from voting. Stupid people. Well, stupid people. Yeah. Or uneducated people.
Speaker B:I mean, I think, you know, we put a little bit of a hurdle in front of voting. We, you have to go to the, go to the polling station and cast your vote. This apparently is enough of a pain in the bum that we still have a sizable, you know, let's say a third or so of the population not willing to do it. And, you know, I think that's fine. I don't know why people get worked up about voter apathy. I think, you know, if you, if you're apathetic enough to not be bothered to vote, I'm glad that your opinion isn't being reflected in the makeup of Parliament because it's, you're clearly not.
Speaker D:Notwithstanding that people actually actively choose not to vote.
Speaker B:Yes or no, because I think if people who spoil their ballot paper, that's fine. You can go physically going to the polling booth and then scribbling on, scribbling, you know, a rude doodle onto your ballot paper is fine. I think you're making the effort. You're actually consciously choosing to say, I don't support any of these parties. But that's not there. I mean, people who don't vote, fine. I don't want them to go and vote. If you're not going to vote, I can't be bothered to get you out of, you know, I'm not going to invest effort in trying to get these people who don't really care to go and vote because that's just going to introduce noise into the system, isn't it?
Speaker A:Also, I mean, something, again, this question of, you know, how much do we want to vote for is, you know, having a second body. So having a second camera to your representatives, like most countries do, and indeed in the UK we do, but our second, our other House of Parliament, we don't vote for.
Speaker B:Well, we do, but very, very indirectly in the sense that the parties in the House of Commons, which we do vote for, choose the people who go into the House of Lords.
Speaker A:And I think there's a kind of a status quo on that at the moment that doesn't seem to be too contentious.
Speaker B:No, I think it's a great system. I think it's really good that they don't have to worry about being re-elected. I mean, that's a really important thing. They get a sinecure, they're plopped in there.
Speaker D:They're designed to provide continuity.
Speaker B:Yeah, you have no means of getting rid of them if they're rubbish, you know. But, you know, that doesn't, I think the benefits of having people who don't worry about getting elected is really, really good, actually. And, you know, the House of Lords knows its place. It doesn't try, it doesn't push things too hard. And, you know, I think that's why I suspect there's no great pressure to change because we just end up with another House of Commons. And one is enough.
Speaker A:But I think I agree with you. I think what's nice is, you know, a phrase that's commonly said is, you know, the people who end up in power are the ones that are least likely to be trusted with that power or, you know, have got the worst kind of, what's the word I'm looking for?
Speaker B:Well, I think this was Plato's argument, wasn't it? That the problem is, if you have cut some sort of democracy, then what you'll vote for, what you'll end up voting for is politicians, and politicians are the worst people to govern, you know. And I think he was in favour of compulsory service, almost, as I recall. It's basically a turn-based system. It's your go to be, you know, an MP this week.
Speaker C:Like the Lottery of Babel.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, that would be kind of fun, I think. Another interesting way of doing it, you know, like jury service. You have to take a year to be an MP. Now you're talking. I quite like the idea of that. I mean, it would be catastrophic, but you look at the kinds of decisions juries make and then multiply that by, give them the reins of power for an entire country. Give them the defence budget.
Speaker A:OK, right, we'll stop there. I think we've definitively answered that. We went to town on that one. We sorted it out. We've got our answers to our questions.
Speaker B:Oh, but no, we haven't made a prediction about the election, though.
Speaker A:OK, let's make a prediction. Let's have a certainty. Give yourself a probability.
Speaker C:What about a size of the majority?
Speaker A:Yeah, so what's the majority at the moment? Is it about 10 people or something? It's 16, I think. Is it? OK.
Speaker D:Yeah, I think Conservatives have improved maybe 50, but not a huge majority. And I put their win at 70%, maybe, let's say 75.
Speaker B:You mean for a majority? No, that's their chance to win. Yeah, so that they get an absolute majority.
Speaker D:Yes, yeah. And the majority will be around 50, so not as strong as they hope. But I think what's going to be interesting is in other areas. So I think the SNP might lose some of their seats that they won in the last election. And rather than losing it back to Labour, I think there might be some interesting results for the Conservatives getting back into Scotland. OK, Nick?
Speaker B:Yeah, I'm actually about the same as Peter for a win. And I think that's low. 75% is probably lower than most people would put on a Tory victory if you look at the polls. But I think people are just discounting weirdness. You know, it's been a very weird couple of years. And I think this is going to be a weird election and some weird stuff will happen. And I think, you know, people are writing off Jeremy Corbyn a bit and that's dangerous to do that. You look at what's happened to him, you know where he's come from. And I think, you know, I think we could be just one or two interesting revelations or a Tory cock up from him doing pretty well. I think him winning is probably unlikely. But, you know, I think people are probably acting like it's a foregone conclusion. I don't think it is.
Speaker C:So I did some sort of research into the size of majorities since in the post-war period in this country. The average majority has been about 65. But of course, that has fluctuated more or less evenly between Labour and the Conservatives. So in real terms, the sort of average size of majority is is kind of zero. So that's that's quite that's quite interesting. Labour majorities tend to be much more sort of volatile. So when they have governed, they have had anything from when they form the government minus 33. So a minority government through to 179, whereas the Tories have tended to be a bit more stable with their majority between 16. Strong and stable. Strong and stable. Quite. Yes. Between 16 and 144. But the average size of a Tory majority has been about about 60. So on occasions when the Tories have won, on average, they've had about 60 seats. So I think we obviously don't know the Tories are going to win. So I think, you know, funnily enough, their predictions of about, you know, a majority of around 50 or 60 is is, you know, is about sounds about about right.
Speaker A:I'm not gonna make a prediction, because not because I've learned from past mistakes when I've made predictions. But one, I don't think I've got anything sensible to add beyond what you three have just said. And second, I kind of just cannot be bothered. I just, I just I've got better things to be doing. It's the Fraser thing of, oh, it's all too complicated. Yeah, it is. Presumably you're one of those people who Nick despises, who won't be going to vote. I know I will vote. I definitely will vote. But I just I don't want to devote any more of my brainpower to this than I already have. And you know, I've got other things. I've got other more important things to think about. Will the rabid donkey be getting your vote? That's the question. There's always a good chance that a rabid donkey will get my vote. So yeah. Okay, gentlemen, thank you very much. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Chris Wragg, Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights. You've been listening to the Cognitive Engineering podcast. Thanks, and until next time, goodbye.
