With the mayoral elections coming up, Professor Michael Thrasher, co-author of British Electoral Facts, Election 2010 and the Local Elections Handbook 2010 and 2011, on the effect of the order of names on a ballot paper on voting behaviour. It's more important than you might think...
In the UK the common practice is for ballot forms to be printed in alphabetic order of candidate surname; the exception to this is for List voting, when candidates are ranked in the order determined by the party selection process.
I’ve just opened the leaflet supplied by the estimable London Elects , that tells voters about the runners and riders in the up-coming Mayor and Assembly election. As an avid gatherer of election results, I’m a great fan of London Elects!
But let’s look closely at this pamphlet. On page 5 there is a facsimile of the mayoral ballot paper, headed by independent candidate, Siobhan Benita, then some candidates called Johnson and Livingstone, and ending with UKIP's Lawrence Webb.
Later, there are lists of candidates standing for each of the 14 constituencies. Again, all are shown in alphabetical order. When it comes to the description of the 11 list seats, this time it is the parties listed in alphabetic order and candidates in their rank order.
Does it matter that democracy in alphabetic order? Yes, it does, because it affects the outcome.
I suspect that the people at London Elects also know this. Interestingly, the order of the mayoral candidates' addresses to the electors is not in alphabetic order. This time Lawrence Webb gets first crack at wooing the voters, while Ken Livingstone is seventh and last.
Students of the annual Local Election Handbooks also know that alphabetic order matters when it comes to votes. Take a look at the 2011 Handbook and at those wards where two or three councillors are being elected at the same time. Consider each party’s slate of candidates. For each party the candidate that features before his or her colleagues will receive more votes. Not every time, mind you. But on average more.
Examine the 2010 Handbook and take a look at the London borough elections. The same thing happens.
In fact it’s been happening since we’ve been printing ballot papers in alphabetic order. I know this because we’ve been looking at more than six hundred thousand local election candidates – their names, their votes and where they featured on the ballot paper.
The key findings are these. Those candidates listed in the top half of the ballot paper are also more likely to finish in the top half after the votes are counted. This even happens when there are only TWO candidates on the ballot paper!!
We devised ten equal categories for UK surnames and compared those categories with candidates that stood for election. There was a perfect match.
When we compared them with elected councillors, however, the match was not perfect. We saw more councillors with surnames located near to the top of the alphabet. We saw fewer than expected numbers of councillors with surnames towards the end of the alphabet.
In some countries the order of the ballot paper is determined through some random process. This is designed to remove any advantage that follows from being listed near the top. Isn’t it time we started to do the same?