Hi I've just written an answer to the question about the outcome of the 2015 General Election everyone seems to think is going to come up. Would anyone be able to have a look for me and suggest some improvements/give me a mark?
Intro: General Elections are normally held every 5years in the UK, the last one being in 2015. Each member of the electorate(those who are eligible and registered to vote) gets the opportunity to electan MP to represent their constituency and by doing so elects the government torepresent them for the next 5 years. The electoral system used for UK GeneralElections is first-past-the-post – a simple plurality system with single memberconstituencies where the winning candidate is required to get 1 more vote thanthe next placed candidate. First-past-the-post is usually known for providing aclear outcome to elections but 2015 was somewhat unique in the fact that it wasn’texpected for the Conservative party – headed by David Cameron – to achieve amajority of 342 seats in the House of Commons. Many factors lead to thisoutcome and I will be examining them in this essay.Point 1: The first factor which I believe played animportant role is the rational choice voting adopted by many voters around thecountry. It is estimated that 10 million voters make up their minds in the lastmonth of the election campaign, suggesting that they take their time toevaluate each parties/candidates policies as well as a range of other regencyfactors. Regency factors (short term influences on voting) such as partyleadership, previous term in office and party policies would have played a hugepart in the rational thinking of these types of voters. As far as previousterms in office go, David Cameron had held office as the major partner in theCon-Dem coalition from 2010 to 2015 and, although the success of theirgovernment is questionable, a lot of people would agree with me in saying thatthe Conservative leader helped to set the UK back on track after the recessionsof previous years. Therefore voters may have been more inclined to stick withthe ‘safe’ option – the Conservatives – to allow them to carry on what they setout to do back in 2010 as often 5 years in office is not enough time for aparty to implement their manifesto parties under their granted mandate. This isfurther supported by the fact that the turnout in 2015 was only 62% -decreasing from 65% in 2010, suggesting a hapathetic attitude to the governmentand hinting at the fact that a Conservative government was widely intended toremain for the next term. Again, anotherregency factor that rational choice voters would have evaluated in the run upto the 2015 General Election would have been policies. The Conservativesperhaps most popular policy included in their 2015 manifesto was the proposedreferendum on membership of the EU which may have perhaps swayed a lot offloating voters towards the Conservative party as it is evident in the run upto this referendum in June that it is a controversial topic that the majorityof the country have an opinion on – shown by only 12% of the electorate beingcurrently undecided on their vote on BBC online polls. Therefore I believe thatrational choice voters - and therefore regency factors – were an importantfactor in determining the outcome of the 2015 General Election.Point 2: Another factor that may have had aninfluence on the outcome of the General Election back in 2015 may have beenmass media. Past statistics about the influence of media – namely the fact thatThe Sun newspaper switched from Conservatives to Labour in the run up to the1997 General Election cost the Conservatives 500,000 votes – prove that mediacan have a very big role in helping voters decide which party to vote for in aGeneral Election. Mass media has such a wide audience, and with the rise ofpartisan dealignment meaning that less and less voters are loyal to aparticular party, I would be inclined to bring the hypodermic model of mediainfluence into this. The hypodermic model suggests that media ‘injects’ voterswith certain ideological views because of the way the media portrays certainparties and their representatives. For example the Liberal Democrats loss of 43seats in 2015 could be said to have been down to the way that Nick Clegg was poorlyportrayed in TV debates which have a large audience, especially with the riseof non-electoral participation. Similarly, the SNPs winning of 56 seats inScotland could have been down to the intense media coverage of Scottishconstituencies, especially those where there is genuine multi-party politics.Therefore it is evident that the mass media can have a significant influence onthe outcomes of General Elections as, although the BBC and ITV are legallyrequired to remain politically neutral, this is not always the case and as anation of technology addicts, the media is something that people generallywould trust more than the words of politicians who often seem very distant and disconnectedfrom the public.Point 3: Although all of these factors have had animpact on the outcome of the 2015 General Election, it cannot be forgotten thatthe UK’s electoral system – first-past-the-post – would have had a significantimpact on the outcome of the election. First-past-the-post is known for notbeing a proportional system, leading to two-party, adversarial politics andfavouring larger parties, particularly Labour. Therefore only Labour andConservative stand a realistic chance of forming a government anyway, soperhaps it was no surprise to some people that our current government isConservative in nature. However, first-past-the-post did have some interestinginfluences on the success of smaller parties. UKIP – a single-issue party – wasseen to receive 3.9 million votes in 2015 yet they only gained 1 seat in theCommons – Clacton, held by Douglas Carswell. This is due to the fact thatfirst-past-the-post disadvantages smaller parties with more evenly spread supportas it is hard for them to win a seat due to the fact that their support isn’tconcentrated in certain areas, making them more likely to achieve the majorityof votes in a constituency. Also, as UKIP are seen as a rather controversial partythat many people have strong view points towards, it could be argued that a lotof tactical voting occurred in constituencies where UKIP had a realistic chanceof being elected. Tactical voting is only effective if tactical voters vote fortheir least preferred candidate’s biggest rival and due to Labours somewhatflagging campaign leading up to the General Election, perhaps many people votedfor the Conservatives as they are the only party that posed a realistic threatto UKIP. Therefore it is evident that the electoral system – in the casefirst-past-the-post – can have a significant impact on the outcome of GeneralElections.Conclusion: Furthermore, it is evident that not onefactor alone could be responsible for the outcome of the 2015 General Electionand that it was more of a combination of factors that lead to the Conservativesreceiving a majority of 342 seats when the polls predicted Labour to form agovernment. This shows that perhaps the polls are becoming a rather unreliableinsight into the outcome of elections and many factors could have caused this decreasingaccuracy compared to 2010 where BBC, ITV and Sky predicted each of the main 3parties seats to within 4 seats of the actual outcome. However, now that theelection has occurred, it makes sense to evaluate the factors that lead to theactual outcome, not the predicted one. Although it is difficult to say which ofthe factors mentioned above had the greatest impact, I would say that the UKselectoral system definitely had the most interesting impact. Along with isdisproportionality, I believe that the view that this system leads to a lot ofwasted votes could have furthered it’s influence as there was only a 62%turnout – a drop of 3% since the last election. Therefore whilst the impact ofthe first-past-the-post electoral system used is vast and uncertain, I believeit had the greatest impact on the outcome of the 2015 General Election.