Part 2 (1/2)

Attercliffe 6,532 5,354 1,178 -- Brightside 5,766 3,902 1,864 -- Central 3,271 3,455 -- 184 Eccleshall 5,849 6,039 -- 190 Hallam 5,593 5,788 -- 195 ------------------------------------------- 27,011 24,538 2,473

It will be seen that the Ministerial majority in each of the Attercliffe and Brightside divisions was larger than the aggregate of the Unionist majorities in the other three divisions; yet the Unionists obtained three seats out of five.

In the same election the result of the contested seats in London (including Croydon and West Ham) was as follows:--

Parties. Votes Obtained. Seats Obtained.

Unionist . . . . . . 268,127 29 Ministerialist . . . . 243,722 31

The Unionists were in a majority of 24,405, but only obtained a minority of the seats. Had their majority been uniformly distributed throughout London there would have been an average majority for the Unionists of 400 in every const.i.tuency, and in that case the press would have said that London was solidly Unionist.

It may be contended that the foregoing are isolated cases, but innumerable examples can be culled from electoral statistics showing how a system of single-member const.i.tuencies may fail to secure for majorities the influence and power which are rightly theirs. In the General Election of 1895 the contested elections yielded the following results:--

GENERAL ELECTION, 1895 (Contested Const.i.tuencies)

Parties. Votes. Seats.

Unionists . . . . . . 1,785,372 282 Home Rulers . . . . 1,823,809 202

These figures show that in a contest extending over no less than 484 const.i.tuencies the Unionists, who were in a minority of 38,437, obtained a majority of 80 seats. In this election, if an allowance is made for uncontested const.i.tuencies, it will be found that the Unionists were in a majority, but in the General Election of 1886 the figures for the whole of the United Kingdom (including an allowance for uncontested seats made on the same basis[6]) were as follows:--

GENERAL ELECTION, 1886 (All Const.i.tuencies)

Parties. Votes Obtained. Seats Obtained.

Home Rulers . . . . 2,103,954 283 Unionists . . . . . . 2,049,137 387

This election was regarded as a crus.h.i.+ng defeat for Mr. Gladstone. He found himself in the House of Commons in a minority of 104, but his supporters in the country were in a majority. The results of the General Election of 1874--although the system of single-member const.i.tuencies had not then been made general--are equally instructive. The figures are as follows:--

GENERAL ELECTION, 1874

Parties. Votes Seats Seats in Obtained. Obtained. proportion to Votes.

Conservative . . . . . . 1,222,000 356 300 Liberal and Home Rulers . 1,436,000 296 352

From this it appears that in 1874, while the Liberals in the United Kingdom, in the aggregate, had a majority of 214,000 votes, the Conservatives had a majority of 60 in the members elected, whereas with a rational system of representation the Liberals should have had a majority of 52.[7]

Such anomalous results are not confined to this country; they are but examples of that inversion of national opinion which marks at all stages the history of elections based on the majority system. Speaking of the United States, Professor Commons says that ”as a result of the district system the national House of Representatives is scarcely a representative body. In the fifty-first Congress, which enacted the McKinley Tariff Law, the majority of the representatives were elected by a minority of the voters.” In the fifty-third Congress, elected in 1892, the Democrats, with 47.2 per cent, of the vote, obtained 59.8 per cent, of the representatives.

The stupendous Republican victory of 1894 was equally unjustified; the Republican majority of 134 should have been a minority of 7, as against all other parties.[8] Similarly in New South Wales the supporters of Mr.

Reid's government, who secured a majority of the seats at the election of 1898, were in a minority of 15,000. The figures of the New York Aldermanic election of 1906 show an equally striking contrast between the actual results of the election and the probable results under a proportional system:--

_A ”game of dice.”_

Parties. Seats Seats in Obtained. proportion to Votes.

Republican 41 18 Democrat 26 27 Munic.i.p.al Owners.h.i.+p Candidates 6 25 Socialist -- 2

It is unnecessary to proceed with the recital of the anomalous results of existing electoral methods. It has been abundantly shown that a General Election often issues in a gross exaggeration of prevailing opinion; that such exaggeration may at one time involve a complete suppression of the minority, whilst at another time a majority may fail to obtain its fair share of representation. M. Poincare may well liken an election to a game of dice (he speaks of _les coups de de du systeme majoritaire_,) for no one who has followed the course of elections could have failed to have observed how largely the final results have depended upon chance. This, indeed, was the most striking characteristic of the General Elections of 1910. In the January election there were 144 const.i.tuencies in which the successful member was returned by a majority of less than 500. Of these const.i.tuencies 69 seats were held by the Ministerialists and 75 by the Unionists. The majorities were in some cases as low as 8, 10, and 14. The aggregate of the majorities in the Ministerialist const.i.tuencies amounted to 16,931, and had some 8500 Liberals in these const.i.tuencies changed sides, the Ministerialist majority of 124 might have been annihilated. On the other hand, the Unionists held 75 seats by an aggregate majority of 17,389, and had fortune favoured the Ministeralists in these const.i.tuencies their majority would have been no less than 274. Such is the stability of the foundation on which the House of Commons rests; such the method to which we trust when it is necessary to consult the nation on grave national issues.

_The importance of boundaries_.

All these anomalies can be traced to the same cause--that with a single-member system the whole of the representation of a const.i.tuency must necessarily be to the majority of the electors, whether that majority be large or small. It directly follows that the results of elections often depend not so much upon the actual strength of political parties, as upon the manner in which that strength is distributed over the country. If that strength is evenly distributed, then the minority may be crushed in every const.i.tuency; if unevenly distributed any result is possible. In the latter case the result may be considerably influenced by the manner in which the const.i.tuencies are arranged. A slight change in the line of the boundaries of a const.i.tuency might easily make a difference of 50 votes, whilst ”to carry the dividing line from North to South, instead of from East to West, would, in many localities, completely alter the character of the representation.” [9] An example will make this statement clear. Take a town with 13,000 Liberal and 12,000 Conservative electors and divide it into five districts of 5000 electors each. If there is a section of the town in which the Liberals largely preponderate--and it often happens that the strength of one or other of the parties is concentrated in a particular area--the net result of the election in five districts will depend upon the way in which the boundary lines are drawn. The possible results of two different distributions may be shown in an extreme form thus:--

Const.i.tuency Libs. Cons.

1st. 4,000 1,000 Lib. victory.

2nd. 2,400 2,600 Cons. ”