As the result of the referendum on the alternative vote is announced, journalists, commentators and social media users alike have begun to pick over the fallout.
In what was – as Nick Clegg was the amongst the first to point out – anything but a photo finish, the electorate delivered a resounding rejection of electoral reform. And where the blame, or indeed the praise, must subsequently fall has been a matter of considerable debate.There are those who will say that the relative merits and faults of the campaigns had an important impact. Many bloggers have criticized the failure of the Yes campaign to convince hesitant voters, and to really engage the minds of the British public. Conversely, it has been said that the scaremongering tactics of the No campaign may - despite widespread criticism that they were at best inaccurate, at worst hysterical – have proved effective in convincing an ambivalent electorate.
Certainly, the relatively high turnout, including in areas such as London which didn’t have local elections, would suggest that people were motivated, either positively or negatively, to come out and cast their vote.
(I appreciate at this point that there is an undoubtedly valid argument that a 35% turnout in London can hardly be considered high, but I would counter that we must set this against predictions of a turnout as low as 15% prior to the referendum!)
Yet neither campaign appeared to have garnered widespread success before Thursday’s vote. Of course, some polls gave the No vote a lead as high as 28 points but there is little evidence to suggest that this was directly connected to the success of the NO2AV campaign at the expense of its rival.
On my own twitter and facebook feeds last week, the Yes campaign was still attracting vocal support. So I find arguments that it suffered a catastrophic collapse in just one day unconvincing to say the least.
Could the devastating defeat then be part of a national backlash against the Lib Dems and Mr Clegg? Paddy Ashdown has blamed the Conservatives for the “national vilification of our party and its leader”. Unquestionably the Lib Dems were on the wrong end of a painful spanking at the ballot box, but again I remain unconvinced that the UK’s body politic would decide such an important aspect of their future on the chastisement of an unpopular politician.
It could, of course, simply be the case that the British people simply like the system currently in place. Margaret Becket said: "For many years it has been said that the British people were demanding a change to our electoral system.
"I have always doubted that. Now, for the first time, their view has been sought and it could not have been more clearly expressed.”
Or could it? It has been observed that the voter’s luxury in a referendum is that they do not have to express any reasoning, merely place an x in the appropriate box. Yet this has the obvious effect of making it impossible to determine exactly what motivated them to do so.
Can we really say that a no vote is a definitive acceptance of FPTP? For instance, there is a large faction of public opinion, we could call it the “Economist school” which clearly demands electoral reform, they just didn’t think AV was it.
After all the hours of analysis and campaigning, surely it could be the case that this referendum merely represented the British public’s preference of a devil they know?
Post scriptum: Whatever the causes, it occurs to me that Thursday’s election results combine with the referendum to produce a deeply significant result.
Could it be that the unprecedented success of the SNP in Scotland, added to the backlash against the Liberal Democrats across the country, represent a desire on the part of the electorate for a return to majority government, and indeed to two party politics? It is certainly something that would be generously assisted by the maintenance of FPTP.
