Comparing the Australian and UK electoral systems

The position for Labour and the Conservatives is more complicated, with members of both parties at times believing they are disadvantaged. Conservative activists in recent times have tended to focus on the actual boundaries rather than the actual mechanics of voting itself. Labour activists have long believed that the Liberal Democrats have split the “progressive” vote, allowing the Conservatives to govern for most of the 20th century. This latter assumption is debatable as there have been indications that Liberal Democrat voters see the party as a centrist force, willing to work with either of the big two, rather than a distinctive version of one side or other of the divide.

What is clear is that both major parties have usually secured a greater percentage of seats than votes, but that when one party crashes it does especially badly because of a willingness by hostile voters to tactically vote for whichever party has the best chance of beating it in a particular seat - effectively a preferential voting outcome without the transfers. The Conservatives have been especially hard hit in several recent elections and only slowly shook off this tactical effect. Preferential voting in the 1997 and 2001 elections would have made their miserable performances even worse.

The big contrast between the UK and Australia here is the extent to which smaller parties are willing to advocate tactical voting. The UK system presents small parties with a dilemma - do they seek more votes as a sign of support for their causes or do they tactically campaign in the hope that their least hated big party will win the election?

Australian parties are spared this dilemma as they can seek first preferences and encourage transfers in a particular direction, thus killing two birds with one stone.

The use of compulsory preferencing has, however, given a partisan advantage. Initially it was to the Coalition, both because it allowed the two parties to compete but also because the Democratic Labor Party to direct preferences to the Coalition over Labor. But the dynamics of third parties have steadily shifted leftwards, with first the Democrats sitting in the centre but leaning leftwards giving an edge to Labor and now the Greens are firmly on the left. As a result compulsory preferencing has benefited Labor much more than the Coalition in recent decades.