If I’m not confused by timezone differences, today is election day in Britain and the outcome seems pretty much a foregone conclusion (I haven’t checked the omniscient betting markets, I must admit). So, I’ll look at a more trivial question. If the British government wants to increase voter turnout, why don’t they hold elections on Saturdays instead of Thursdays?
I looked into this question in the case of the US, and there’s a complicated historical explanation, but the central point that, at the time Tuesday was chosen as a polling day, the standard working week was six days, and Sunday was excluded for religious reasons. So it didn’t really matter which day was chosen.
But in an economy where, even with a 24-7 service sector, Saturday is a day off for most people, it seems like a much more convenient choice. For a bunch of reasons, I can’t see the US ever making a change like this[1]. But in Britain it would be easy, and presumably modestly beneficial to Labour, which could therefore push such a change through Parliament any time it wanted.
fn1. First, the US is very conservative in relation to traditions of this kind. Second, the Republican party routinely opposes measures to increase voter turnout.
John Quiggin 
Yes, JQ, tomorrow (Thursday 5/5/05) is general election day here in Britain.
One of the wonderful ironies of colonialism is that we Australian expatriates, along with our Commonwealth and Irish brethren, get to vote in UK elections. Indeed, we also get to vote in European elections. I have thought of trying to mobilize commonwealth nationals, many of whom live in west London, to get one of our number elected as a Euro-MP. If the rightwing anti-Europe UKIP party can get EMPs elected, we lot should be able to, maybe on an anti-Common-Agricultural-Policy + cheap-long-distance-flights platform.
Perhaps as a result of this skewing of the electorate to allow non-nationals to vote, Britons don’t seem to mind having overseas-born people sit in the Cabinet. During WWI, the future US President Herbert Hoover was offered a post in the British Cabinet, but declined. The present British Labour Government has an Australian (Patricia Hewitt, Sir Lennox Hewitt’s daughter), a Kenyan-South African (Peter Hain), a Guyanaian (Baroness Amos), and a Ghanaian (Paul Boateng). That’s 4 out of 22 Cabinet members.
Latest opinion polls put Tory support at 27%. This is less than Labour got at its low point election of 1983.
Beats me why Labour doesn’t introduce proportional representation. Britain would have a permanent Labour Liberal Democrat coalition, with Labour as the senior partner. The Tories would be frozen out of government forever.
Don’t forget, Britain has had a Canadian PM.
But Labour doesn’t want a high turnout; it would rather have the rusted-on reliables of both sides fighting it out. No point encouraging the people.
Richard Freeman has the best discussion I’ve seen on what Saturday voting would do for the US. He uses a Puerto Rican natural experiment. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9896
Becasue Dave at present both Labour and Conservatives can rule alone.
They probably look across at Europe and see what PR does to Government.
I would vote for Howard!
Homer, thr idea that PR always creates unstable government is a myth, caused by the Italian experience from the end of the war to the mid 80s.
Germany has PR and has hyper stable government.
I agree that Labour is against PR because it can now rule alone. Added to that, Blair probably is closer to the Tories than the Lib Dems ideologically and in practiical policy terms. But Blair won’t last forever, and one day the Tories will raise their support back to a level where they could form government, under the current system, but not under PR.
Labour should take the long view.
Dave,
I didn’t talk about stable Government but good Government.
Homie
Ireland has a form of PR ie. multi-member electorates in the lower house and elections often produce coalitions of one hue or another. Given that Ireland’s standard of living is now higher than that of both Britain and Australia and probably that of the US (ironic since many Irish left in the 70s and 80s for economic reasons only now to find they can do better at home and are returning) I would say that PR can and does produce good government.
Poms – A Slippery Slide towards New Labour!
The UK election will be beginning in a few hours. I’ve written about the campaign a fair bit, if you want to go back and have a look. Alex at Psephological Catechism links to the latest coverage in the media, John Quiggin wonders why British elections…
-“One of the wonderful ironies of colonialism is that we Australian expatriates, along with our Commonwealth and Irish brethren, get to vote in UK elections”-
It’s a consequence of their lesser focus on nationality that us. If i’m not mistaken perm residents can also vote there??
It seems that the polls are open from 7am to 10pm. Ok weather predicted though:
In response to Martin Pike —
I believe that UK Permanent Residents who are not Commonwealth or Irish citizens (eg, Americans, Germans, Indonesians) may vote in local, regional and national elections, but not in European elections. Indeed, at the 1997 national election one successful Labour candidate was a young German woman. Such permanent residents who are not EC citizens (eg, Americans, Indonesians) also need to register with their local police station within a short time of their arrival, and keep this registration up to date. EC, Commonwealth and Irish citizens do not need to do this.
Because of the special historical relationship with Ireland, Irish citizens may vote in Britain as soon as they are (or claim to be) resident. It would be legally possible for all 2 million or so adult citizens of Eire to traipse across to Britain, register, and vote. Could make for interesting politics. Eire does not return the favour.
Er… DR, no. The post-Mussolini (and to some extent pre-Mussolini) Italian experience did indeed confirm the idea that proportional representation usually gravitated towards unstable governments, but people first got the idea from the French Third and Fourth Republics. Indeed, the Fifth Republic was largely given its different characteristics to head off that sort of thing.
Err, PML, yes. The Italian experience was exceptional, and gave PR an unwarranted bad name. Germany, Israel, Spain since Franco, and many other countries have had PR without instability. More recently, so has New Zealand.
Back to the Poms. Here’s a sensible comment in today’s (London) Daily Telegraph.
“Lynton Crosby, the Australian campaign manager, also became more of a problem than a solution for the Tories. He was brilliant at galvanising the team. But his expertise is with a two-party system; he didn’t seem to understand that in Britain voters have a third and even fourth option. In Australia, health and education aren’t considered national issues, while immigration is an obsession. And they like their politicians calling each other “liar”. There is also compulsory voting, so he hasn’t had to deal with voter apathy before.”
Apart from the health and edication comments, this seems spot on.
JQ – how about starting a discussion on what a Brown government will be like.
Might the Tories (209 seats) be prepared to move, and if not move, support a vote of no-confidence in Blair’s handling of the War in Iraq? All of the Lib-Dems (55 seats) would support a no-confidence vote on this question. That adds up to a total of 264 votes out of 646 total MPs. 98 BLP MPs voted against the war. That adds up to 362, a parliamentary majority.
If the Tories pursued this tactic with the intention of destroying Blair and splitting the BLP, then Blair would be compelled to resign as PM and his successor might become PM on a promise to remove British troops from Iraq.
The next week or so is fraught with interesting possibilities.
“98 BLP MPs voted against the war. That adds up to 362, a parliamentary majority.”
Yeah, but how many of these 98 are still going to be in the House?
Hmmm, George Galloway, friend of Saddam, has beaten the half-Jewish, half black Labour MP Oona King.
A bad result, IMO, but the (Muslim) voters in that electorate have spoken.
Cue Michael Burgess …
Katz —
Your tactic would be unlikey to be adopted by the Tories, because it would split them also. Leading Tories (eg, one M. Howard) strongly supported the war prior to its commencement and since, while others (eg, Kenneth Clark) opposed it before and since. The 209 votes of the Tories would not be on one side of such a vote.
Peter,
Note that the motion of no confidence that I suggested may be moved concerns not the justice or otherwise of the War in Iraq. Rather it might be worded to express want of confidence in the misuse of intelligence and the lack of frankness of the Blair Government’s case for war.
David Riccardo, I think your comments about the success of George Galloway, are indicative of your recognition that “Old Labour” did rather better than Blairite “New Labour” in this poll. The BLP is probably now more willing to end Blair’s political career than they were before the poll.
DR, you are plain wrong. Even Germany confirms that straight PR doesn’t lead to stability – Weimar Germany had lots of problems.
What you suppose are counterexamples are in fact examples of the fixes various places put on top of PR after the problems were revealed. Itlay is only exceptional in following the previous pattern, and it did not give PR a bad name – as I said, France had already done that. There’s a Steinbeck novel called something like “the short reign of Pippin the somethingth” that was based on a parody of French Fourth Republic instability.