Tuesday 29 March 2011

The Voter Index and its use by Yes2av

Just a short post tonight. I will be making a video or presentation with this subject so feel a quick explanation will suffice.

Yesterday evening I was looking through an unofficial Yes2AV facebook page and came across a critique of the "One Person, One vote" No2av campaign.

This, obviously, should be expected..but what struck me is HOW they were attacking it...
then this
"So, No2AV think that FPTP means one man one vote. Let's make our own video to show them exactly what one man one vote means under FPTP. Use http://www.voterpower.org.uk/ to find out how much your vote is actually worth. Write it on a piece of paper and record yourself for a minute. Send all the footage to mevanbabakar@gmail.com. Like this post if you'll take part!"
..was posted

I tried explaining at the time that this is a bit of an own goal, the voter power index is not designed with AV in mind and would not look favourably on it.
What did I get for my trouble? A quick "Oh yeah..whoops" perhaps? "Thank you" ?

Nope, got banned!

So, here we go. Here is the ready made reply to the video they haven't even made yet.

Please keep in mind that AV's whole principle is 50+% good, -50% bad.

Here is the list of the BEST constituencies according to the voter index.

The format is constituency, followed by supposed vote worth and then the amount of total vote the winning MP received.

1.Arfon                                    1.308  votes 33.88%
2.Ceredigion                           1.220 votes 36.52%
3.Clwyd West                         1.217 votes 36.12%
4.Belfast South                       1.077 votes 30.15%
5.Wirral West                         1.053 votes 41.77%
6.Preseli Pembrokeshire       1.036 votes 36.38%
7.Sittingbourne & Sheppey    1.032 votes 41.72%
8.Na H-eileanan An Iar           1.031 votes 44.90%
9.Aberconwy                           1.018 votes 33.00%
10.Edinburgh South                1.013 votes 33.23%


Notice something a bit weird there?
Gets better...

Same thing, his time with the WORST constituencies..

650.Sheffield Brightside & Hillsborough     0.002 votes  69.59%
649.Knowsley                                                  0.002 votes 71.8%
648.Easington                                                   0.002 votes 71.29%
647.Barnsley East                                            0.002 votes 70.97%
646.Washington & Sunderland West             0.003 votes  68.79%
645.Liverpool Walton                                     0.003 votes 71.75%
644.Bootle                                                        0.003 votes  71.05%
643.Normanton, Pontefract & Castleford     0.004 votes  65.34%
642.Islwyn                                                        0.004 votes  64.35%
641.Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill           0.004 votes  64.48%

The average is 0.253 if anyone wanted to know.


So according to the VoterIndex site, the WORST place is where 72/100 people voted for their MP...and the best is where 66/100 voted against their MP...

Hopefully they'll realise this themselves...that if they are campaigning for 'a majority' to vote for their MP, the voter index is not their friend..and using it to berate FPTP when it is going to rank AV lower, is down right mental.

But hey..video to come.
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3 comments:

  1. D Birkin30 March 2011 at 17:18

    Seems they have realised their mistake

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wes Viola15 April 2011 at 07:56

    The Voter Power index website is currently running an 'AV referendum edition' specifically to demonstrate how voter power increases under AV.

    Did you not even click the link before you wasted your time on this typically misleading blog post?

    ReplyDelete
  3. D Birkin16 April 2011 at 09:55

    At the time of writting, the Voter Index site was happily promoting that the best 10 places that your vote counted was in areas where the MP received only 30% of the vote.

    The worst places were where 70% voted for their MP.

    Can you see why it would be silly for the Yes to AV campaign to push this view?

    Yes, in the time after this was pointed out, the NEW EDITION website has replaced the old one (with all details of the old one disappearing hehe).
    [I do have screen shots though, as like many other yes affiliated organisations (the ers) I was expecting them to butcher their own views to try and pretend they supported AV all along when really they were devastatingly critical.]

    I won't bore you with the new formula on the Voter Index, though I will say it is very very sneaky and in not anyway accurate ..and funnily enough, unlike last time where they published the formula, they have made sure it has remained as hidden as possible for anyone not geeky enough to reverse engineer the results :)
    ..wonder why ;)

    ReplyDelete

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