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Researchers Show Impact On Parties Of Shifting To A New Welsh Voting System
June 22, 2004Wales could move easily to a new voting system for the Welsh Assembly, without significantly shifting the balance of power between the political parties, according to a new model being presented today by academics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
The Richard Commission, which reported on the future of Welsh devolution in March 2004, recommended that Wales should enlarge the Cardiff Assembly from 60 to 80 members, and elect them using a Single Transferable Vote (STV), similar to that used in the Republic of Ireland.
The new model will be presented to an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) conference in Cardiff today.
The conference, part of the ESRC's Devolution and Constitutional Change programme, will be addressed this afternoon by the First Minister of Wales, Rhodri Morgan AM.
Under the current Additional Member System (AMS), members of the Welsh Assembly are elected through a mix of constituency seats and regional lists. There has been some criticism that the lists are dominated by 'failed' constituency candidates imposed by the party machines.
Dr Richard Wyn Jones and Roger Scully, senior lecturers in the Institute of Welsh Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, suggest that twenty four-member constituencies could be created across Wales. Each seat would contain two existing Assembly or Westminster seats (creating, for example, a single Swansea constituency).
The researchers compared what the 2003 result would have looked like using STV, where voters list their favoured candidates on the ballot paper in order of preference, rather than AMS. They estimate the following results for the larger assembly:
| Party | AMS Actual Result | STV Estimated Result | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Labour Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) | |||||||||||||||||||||
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