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A Britain We All Call Home > Published by Sunder Katwala, March 7th 2011 at 3:15 pm

How would extremists fare under AV?

Ken Clarke has claimed that the Alternative Vote would make it easier for extremists to be elected to Parliament. This is the opposite of the truth. But it is one of a number of questionable and misleading claims about extremism being made by opponents of the Alternative Vote. Let’s look at the evidence.

Nick-Griffin 1. AV would make it harder for extremist candidates to win

Despite Clarke’s misunderstanding of the impact of AV, it is entirely rational for Nick Griffin and the BNP to be campaigning against the Alternative Vote, and calling for a No vote.

Leading pollster Peter Kellner has set out why the BNP’s call for a No vote makes sense from the viewpoint of their own party interest – and has called AV:

“The most extremist-proof of all electoral systems.”

The reason why is captured in today’s shock opinion poll in France, which has Le Pen of the Front National as the leading candidate with most first preference votes:

Marine Le Pen (NF) – 23%
Sarkozy (UMP) – 22%
Aubry (Socialist) – 22%

Le Pen may be the first-past-the-post leader in this one poll. But, under the French second ballot, a close cousin of the Alternative Vote, we know that Le Pen would be opposed by 75% of voters if she made the final two-candidate run-off, as centre-right and centre-left voters would rally to the mainstream democratic opponent, as we saw in 2002, when the Front National eliminated the Socialists, whose voters supported Jacques Chirac.

Supporters of systems of proportional representation may well have to accept that these increase the possibility of the BNP winning seats if the far right party could increase their share of the vote to 5% or more (they won 1.9% in 2010). By contrast, supporters of the Alternative Vote have a cast iron case that it makes BNP victories even less likely.

It is only fair to point out that the BNP remain a long way short of winning a Westminster constituency under first-past-the-post. Honest supporters of the No campaign would have to acknowledge that they would be even further away under the Alternative Vote.

The BNP have been able to win local election seats on minority votes. As Kellner argues, it very likely that Alternative Vote elections would wipe them out in local government.

(One irony of Eric Pickles’ offer last year to consider withdrawing the Conservative candidate from Barking to ensure that the BNP could not split the mainstream democratic vote to win was that such a tactic would be entirely unnecessary under the Alternative Vote: there would be no case at all for disenfranchising Tory voters by removing their opportunity to vote for their party. But a full field of mainstream candidates would never present the risk of an extremist victory under AV which Pickles clearly felt was a risk under first-past-the post).

***

Few opponents of the Alternative Vote claim extremist candidates can win. (They mostly make the entirely contradictory argument that only lowest common denominator candidates will win 50% of the vote).

But several other claims about how AV might boost the BNP were used during last Thursday night’s Oxford Union debate, where I was part of the Yes to AV team, with Katie Ghose of Yes to Fairer Votes! and ex-independent MP Martin Bell, which won the students’ vote on the night.

2. The Churchill canard: do the second preferences of the least popular candidates given a higher priority?

Bernard Jenkin MP produced a splendidly entertaining Winston Churchill impression at Thursday night’s Oxford Union to promote the claim that AV decides elections on “the most useless votes for the most useless candidates”, as Churchill once claimed. Shrewsbury MP Daniel Kawczynski complained that this meant that, if the BNP did badly and came last, it might be that only their voters would decide the winner, because those transfers “would get counted first”.

This claim that transfers for less popular candidates count for more than those of a more popular candidate placed third is both illogical and innumerate.

The Alternative Vote puts a “post” into first-past-the-post election. A candidate can get past the post without any transfers at all by getting 50% of the first preferences. If they get 49%, and then pass the post after only one or two candidates have been eliminated, it is not the case that the lowest placed transfers have been given greater weight than untransferred votes.

The untransferred votes are part of the equation too – an equation which shows that, once the 50% ‘post’ has been passed, the leader could not now be overtaken, even if every remaining vote would transfer to the same rival candidate. It is clear too that every voter only has one vote in every round of the count, whether that vote is still with their first choice candidate while they remain in the race, or has transferred after their elimination.

3. Would extremist second preferences decide the result?

Daniel Kawczynski told the Oxford Union that it was quite wrong that BNP voters could decide the result in his Shrewsbury constituency. This struck me as nonsense. Kawczynski has a 15% lead over the Liberal Democrats and a 23% lead over Labour. The 2% who vote BNP can’t decide who wins.

Shrewsbury 2010 election result:

Conservative: 43.9%
Lib: Dem 29.0%
Labour: 20.6%
UKIP: 3.1%
BNP: 2.2%
Green: 1.1%

Perhaps Kawczynski means they could do in an extremely close election. But this is a very weak and rather misleading objection to the idea of seeking to elect the candidate with majority support in the constituency.

The leading candidates must appeal to over a quarter of the remaining electorate to build majority support; of course, that means that any candidate who pandered to the 2% BNP vote on the fringe would expect to pay a heavy electoral price for doing so.

4. Why would extremist voters vote mainstream too?

In any event, BNP voters are the least likely of all to have a second preference – as this relies on their deciding to “vote extremist – and vote mainstream too”.

The “BNP voters will decide the result” claim entirely depends on most voters who have gone to the polls to express a “send all the immigrants back” message or a “plague on all your houses” message deciding to vote for a mainstream winning party too.

Is that how voters think? The “No to AV” campaign’s claim would depend on large numbers of voters thinking something like this in the voting booth:

“Well, it’s the BNP for me. I’m sticking two fingers up to the entire political class.

“Oh! I see I’m allowed a second preference too. Hmm. How interesting. Well, come to think about, maybe the Liberal Democrats aren’t so bad after all. I’d quite like to see them defeat the Conservatives around here!”

It is very likely that many BNP voters will cast only their first preference, while others might also vote for the English Democrats, or perhaps a more mainstream anti-politics appeal of UKIP, before exhausting their ballot without voting for the major parties who are in the top two in all constituencies.

BNP votes could decide results under AV only if several extremely unlikely conditions were met. They would need to have more votes than the winning margin (which is very rare); their voters would need to express a mainstream second preference (which is unlikely in most cases), and even where they do, those preferences would need to break very unevenly for one major candidate over another to have the potential to be decisive (and there is no evidence that they would do so). The electoral geography of BNP support – strongest in heartland Labour seats – makes their ability to affect results even less plausible.

Pandering to BNP votes would prove a self-defeating strategy under AV. The winning candidate needs to seek 50% of the vote – since the BNP have under 2% of the vote and 80% of voters very strongly disapprove of them, any association with them is going to be toxic. There is simply no hard evidence that BNP voters would be more likely to play a decisive role under AV than under the current system, where extremist voters could already decide to vote for one of the likely winning candidates over another.

The fact that the extremist BNP prefer first-past-the-post to the Alternative Vote does not and should not delegitimise the arguments of mainstream democrats from the Conservative or Labour parties who think first-past-the-post a better electoral system for their own quite distinct reasons. But it does make their attempt to argue that the Alternative Vote would be good for the BNP especially unconvincing.

http://twitter.com/jyotibhojani/status/44779177483841536 Jyoti Bhojani

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence
http://twitter.com/jcwinterburn/status/44780158707707904 John Winterburn

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence
http://twitter.com/morosychristios/status/44781630577049600 Miles Douglas

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence
http://www.twitter.com/niaccurshi Lee Griffin

And, perhaps more importantly, those claiming that people winning on the support of the BNP is morally wrong ought to look therefore to the system they’re in. If there is no BNP candidate, and those BNP supporters do want to vote tactically (say, against Labour, or Tories, or whoever) then they may well end up voting for the winning candidate under FPTP. The only difference here is that with FPTP the candidates can claim ignorance about the nature of who has supported them to a win, under AV they can not.
http://twitter.com/niaccurshi/status/44782528124555264 Lee Griffin

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence
http://twitter.com/nextleft/status/44783606186520577 Sunder Katwala

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence
http://twitter.com/markreckons/status/44784241350934528 Mark Thompson

RT @Niaccurshi: RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence
http://twitter.com/rachelala/status/44784393134411776 rachelala

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence
http://twitter.com/jon_bartley/status/44784447651987456 Jonathan Bartley

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence #yes2av
http://twitter.com/_jameslloyd/status/44785897622863872 James Lloyd

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/gVKyN9
http://twitter.com/davidangell/status/44786682305843200 David Angell

RT @_Jameslloyd: RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/gVKyN9
http://theoldpolitics.blogspot.com/ oldpolitics

I am rather enjoying this outbreak of apparent expertise about the French political system. The high poll rating of the Front National comes within a system which uses second ballots widely – so while they may not win, it’s hard to argue that they have been damaged by the voting system. For more on that, I’d recommend Marc Bayle’s book (old, but not necessarily dated), “Le Front national: ça n’arrive pas qu’aux autres”

Some specific points;

* That poll is a bit dodgy – it picks a particular list of possible candidates, which is by no means certain to be the actual list of candidates.
* Electing a President is different from electing an assembly. I’d probably support AV over FPTP) for electing a President, despite its flaws (but then I don’t think electing a President is a particularly good idea.
* It remains most likely than the FN will come Third, rather than First or Second. In that scenario, what we have to worry about is not their chances of victory, but the corrosive effects on French politics of the eventual victor being determined by who can attract the most FN voters to their corner.
* In that poll, left-wing voters split 21% for the Socialist Party, and 17% for some other fringe party. That wouldn’t happen under FPTP, so they would probably actually win – as opposed to getting eliminated as in the past even though they might have won an individual run-off with candidates 1 and 2.

I addressed the BNP issue in what I think was a more nuanced way a while ago: http://theoldpolitics.blogspot.com/2011/01/end-of-av-week-would-av-help-bnp.html
http://theoldpolitics.blogspot.com/ oldpolitics

“The Churchill canard: do the second preferences of the least popular candidates given a higher priority?”

Yes. Of course they do. The lower placed your candidate, the more likely it is that your second preference and further preferences will be counted. So, for example, if an election results in a close split of the type favoured by AV example-givers as follows;

A) 35%
B) 33%
C) 32%

Then it is C-voters who get to determine the result. They have had more say than A-voters. Supposing C-voters all back B over A; a classic AV scenario – B wins by 65% to 35%. Yet, A-voters, whose second preference never gets counted under AV, might prefer C to B.

Therefore in a pure match-up, C would beat the candidate actually elected, by an even bigger margin – 67% to 33%. But the option for that to happen never exists, because in order to make your second preference effective, you have to have supported an unpopular candidate in round one.

In other words, if you are in an X/Y marginal constituency, there is no incentive for X or Y to attract one another’s second preferences. The incentive is to attract the preferences of candidates who will not be in the later rounds – the more you can guarantee they will be knocked out, the better.
Sunder Katwala

oldpolitics,

The French example just happened to be in today’s newspapers; I am aware the poll is out of line with others (not least in assuming Aubry, not Strauss-Khan, will be the Socialist), but the hypothetical example does I think capture Clarke’s mistake in claiming extremist candidates are helped to win.

There is a significant difference between an extreme party on 2% and one on 15-20%, as in France. There is no evidence at all to suggest the BNP is going to make that kind of leap, whatever electoral system we have. This is not, in my view, primarily a question of electoral systems, though my recollection was that it was the [tactical] switch to PR for the French National Assembly elections of 1986 which assisted the FN’s breakthrough in terms of national media presence and Parliamentary platforms ahead of the 1988 Presidential election. The increased personalisation of a Presidential system was no doubt also somewhat useful to them.

Giving greater representation to minority parties and viewpoints (both nice and nasty) is part of the trade-off around PR (a case for or against, according to viewpoint). I don’t see a persuasive case that it is a significant factor between FPTP and AV, and the insistence on majority support is a bulwark against extremism.
http://twitter.com/debsalini/status/44792231256788992 Deborah Segalini

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence
http://twitter.com/double_karma/status/44792735143694337 Double.Karma

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence
http://twitter.com/pjfacey/status/44792971215912963 Peter Facey

RT @Jon_Bartley: RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence #yes2av
anyleftiwonder

Is that how we got Ed and not David M
http://theoldpolitics.blogspot.com/ oldpolitics

“the hypothetical example does I think capture Clarke’s mistake in claiming extremist candidates are helped to win.”

Agreed – particularly at a fixed point in time. AV is centripetal within an individual electoral cycle, and won’t help an extremist on polling day, though it may help people be more willing to lend them a “protest preference” giving them a gradually increasing vote over time.

That said, I’m sure the BNP would win at least some seats under STV, so if “Yes” campaigners want to say that AV is a bulwark against extremism, they probably have a valid case to do that – but they can’t, at the same time, claim that AV is a stepping stone to a more proportional system. It’s one or the other.

“There is a significant difference between an extreme party on 2% and one on 15-20%, as in France. There is no evidence at all to suggest the BNP is going to make that kind of leap, whatever electoral system we have”

Yeah, I think the BNP are fatally wounded for the foreseeable by the existence of a party that offers a lot of what their supporters want, withoug being politically toxic on anything like the same order of magnitude (celebrities are happy to admit voting UKIP, for example, in a way they’d never admit voting BNP).
http://refusingthedefault.blogspot.com/ cim

Sunder Katwala: the insistence on majority support is a bulwark against extremism.

While it’s definitely true that AV would almost certainly make it even harder for the BNP to get elected than FPTP does, as AV can never elect a candidate when the electorate as a whole would rather have anyone else, “majority support” is not a property of AV under any useful definition of “majority” or “support”.
http://twitter.com/hal_berstram/status/44803254751731712 Hal Berstram

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence
http://twitter.com/jordanbhall/status/44832979331186688 Jordan Hall

@leftfootfwd dispelling myth that AV a: benefits extremist parties & b: gives their supporters' votes greater weight'g http://bit.ly/eGzIoH
http://twitter.com/norvik_1602/status/44840908188942336 Norvik_1602

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence
http://twitter.com/robertcp/status/44849469002481664 Robert CP

RT @Jon_Bartley: RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence #yes2av
http://twitter.com/myinfamy/status/44852763317911552 Daniel Pitt

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence
http://twitter.com/simonkillane/status/44856538388643840 Simon

How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/ecybLa
Sunder Katwala

7 – yes, you are right. A slip in that comment: making candidates aim for majority support, or some such
http://twitter.com/labouryes/status/44868208993378304 Labour Yes

Why Ken Clarke is plain wrong http://bit.ly/hOqTL7 #labouryes
http://twitter.com/calderbank/status/44868411238522881 Michael Calderbank

RT @labouryes: Why Ken Clarke is plain wrong http://bit.ly/hOqTL7 #labouryes
http://twitter.com/theday2day/status/44868658144620544 Adam White

RT @labouryes Why Ken Clarke is plain wrong http://bit.ly/hOqTL7 #labouryes
@padrag

Oldpolitics, you example in comment 3 is mathematically accurate, but meaningless. If party C obtained 32% of votes then they would be far from extremist and would be justified in being able to decide who wins, whether they are the right person for the job or not.. That is a flaw with democracy, not AV. How many Lib Dem supporters (in the past) have had the deciding vote between Labour an Tories, or BNP supporters for that matter.

Basically who ever is greater in number, left or right, will decide who wins between centre-left and centre-right, if one doesn’t have a majority. Seems pretty fair to me. If the far right becomes popular enough to start affecting this, then I will not like it, but that is democracy.
http://twitter.com/ed4holywellwest/status/44886237412200448 Ed Watkinson

RT @labouryes: Why Ken Clarke is plain wrong http://bit.ly/hOqTL7 #labouryes
http://twitter.com/thedeadduck/status/45029092411715585 Molly

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence
http://twitter.com/alex_ross1983/status/45095866817712128 Alex Ross

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/gVKyN9 < Go on, guess! Guess!
http://theoldpolitics.blogspot.com/ oldpolitics

“If party C obtained 32% of votes then they would be far from extremist and would be justified in being able to decide who wins”

Fine, but then why don’t Party A, with 35% of the vote, get to make the same decision between parties B and C?
http://www.twitter.com/niaccurshi Lee Griffin

Because AV is a run-off system, AV doesn’t aim to create endless loops of people transferring their votes to help a lesser evil win as you suggest, oldpolitics. It takes the weakest candidate out, it gives priority to the strongest candidates and then it asks the supporters of the weakest candidate to vote differently on the assumption their most prefered candidate never stood.

You can sit there and whine about how “unfair” AV is, but in reality it is a more inclusive form of FPTP which elminates vote spoiling while ensuring the priority and the impetus goes with those truly popular on higher preferences first and foremost. If there’s a problem like you state for AV, then it is there…but more so…under FPTP.
http://twitter.com/duncankeeling/status/45132730383605760 Duncan Keeling

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/gVKyN9 …ruining more #no2AV mythology. #yes2AV
http://twitter.com/simonbarrow/status/45146598581338113 Simon Barrow

RT @Jon_Bartley: RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH @NextLeft examines the evidence #yes2av
http://twitter.com/av_monkey/status/45224590347223040 YES to Fairer Votes

RT @labouryes: Why Ken Clarke is plain wrong http://bit.ly/hOqTL7 #labouryes
http://twitter.com/jessica_fuhl/status/45498837271449601 Jessica Fuhl

Left argues AV would make it harder for extremist candidates to win http://bit.ly/hOqTL7
http://twitter.com/jkmassey/status/45537369734131712 Jeanne Massey

Good Q & A about UK's Alternative Vote . RT @ PJfacey RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH #yes2av
http://twitter.com/perdyp/status/45603010604306432 Perdita Patterson

RT @Jon_Bartley: RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/eGzIoH #yes2av
Poi

Start a campaign to encourage 3rd preference tactical voting?
I had a few hours and tried to calculate whether one could manipulate the AV system to have a disproportionate number of seats for small left-wing candidates by getting people to vote for them as 1st and 2nd preferences and a mainstream party (one in particular). I also thought about what incentives would encourage people to vote tactically. The main answer to that question was to ask people to vote for small parties if they are interested in them, but fear Conservatives getting in; to vote 1st, 2nd prefernces as small parties and have a mainstream party as a back-up. If people wanted to vote for a mainstream party as a 1st preference, they could be encouraged to vote for small parties as 2nd and 3rd.
The experiment worked on a worst case scenario basis. That the BNP, UKip, Conservatives all voted for each other. That Labour and Conservatives never voted for each other. That Labour 1st prefernce voters only voted Liberal Democrats 2nd and no smaller parties. That the Greens and a second left-wing party i.e. Left Foot Forward voted for each other. That the Greens voted specifically for Labour as a third preference and the small left-wing parties had no third or mainstream preferences. That Liberals 1st preference voters split their second preferences to Labour and Conservatives, but that some voted for a third left-wing party. Lastly I split the votes importantly 60% of voters voting leftish (Greens, 2nd left-wing party, Labour and Liberals) and 40% (BNP, UKip, Conservatives and Liberals again) reflecting the public mood. I did different scenarios based on whether 90%, 60% and 40% of population (from both left and right) would try to vote for small parties first and the rest voted for mainstream as if still in FPTP system.
The emphasis is on third preferences. I found that it is more proportional. Even if the entire right-wing voted for each other, by getting to the third round, more votes were counted in thus reflecting by how much people according to their political direction. So the right-wing could not collectively get a vote to 50% ffor ANY candidate. Furthermore, I found that by the third round, the Liberals being inbetween were more likely to have their votes bolstered by mainstream parties to about 40%, which leaves a tactical vote to play for with the smaller parties. The most tactical thing I found was to vote Labour to have more votes than the Liberals to about 40-45%, thus in the fourth round Liberal Votes would be distributed to a left-wing party, thus bolstering an already strengthened in the second round green or other left-wing party (strengthened by each other’s votes) past 50%. In this worst case-scenario, the Greens won for the 90%, 60% trial, but Liberals ended up winning for 40% trial. However lots of things could be played with. You could more likely produce say a Left Foot Forward win if the Liberals were encouraged to vote for them as well. If they used a third preference as well as the Greens to manipulate the situation. If Labour choose left-wing parties as second or third preference (remember was worst case scenario). Even if the BNP and UKip replicated the idea, because people are unlikely to vote for them from the much needed 60% leftwing, at most they could win seats in very conservative areas but this was a worst case scenario. Many Conservative voters for example will not vote BNP.
If this is true, I’d start a campaign first beginning by encouraging voting alliances between groups of 2 leftish small parties and seeing where similarities in policy lie to see if there is much difference or not. Just in case people are upset if one party’s candidate wins and not theirs. This is to help each other in the second round with second preferences.
Then I’d start a campaign telling people not to worry if they vote for a third party because can use mainstream party as 3rd preference back up. I’d also ask those who adamently vote for a mainstream party as a 1st preference (they may not believe it would work or want their party to win atall costs), to vote for small parties at any preference just in case or for symbolic reasons to help boost democracy.
Lastly depending on your area I’d start getting local discussions started, especially for small parties’ 1st preference voters as to how use their 3rd vote to manipulate numbers, so that in the fourth round, the people from which party that is more likely to vote for small parties is the first one to have their votes transferred in the run-off.
Could be wrong. What do you think?
http://twitter.com/marjien/status/45821324207194113 marjorie narey

RT @leftfootfwd: How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/gVKyN9 #political #blog
David North

Oldpolitics, in your example, C is presumably the centre party of the three – otherwise it is highly unlikely that their voters will prefer B to A and A’s voters will prefer C to B. Therefore, B’s voters will probably prefer C to A. Therefore, in head-to-head contests, C would beat B 67-33 as you say, and C would beat A 65-35. It seems rather misleading to describe the candidate who would beat either of the others as “the least popular”, despite the fact that they got the fewest first preference votes.
http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/03/william-hague-libya-questions/ Hague now has a whole series of questions to answer | Left Foot Forward

[...] which Hague has promoted, for sooner or later he will surely have to admit the truth: that AV is demonstrably the worst of all possible systems for the BNP, because voters can gang up against them, and don’t have to [...]
http://theoldpolitics.blogspot.com/ oldpolitics

Sorry, belatedly – they might not be. They might be, say, Conservative, Labour, and Green. Greens tend to prefer Labour to Tory, but Tories tend to prefer Green to Labour.
http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/04/av-bnp/ Debunked: The latest No2AV ‘AV/BNP’ spin | Left Foot Forward

[...] month on this blog, Sunder Katwala comprehensively demolished the premise that extermists would fare better under AV, explaining: “BNP votes could decide [...]
http://twitter.com/labouryes/status/53850710357446656 Labour Yes

How would extremists fare under AV? by @nextleft http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj #labouryes #yes2av #yesinmay
http://twitter.com/amydodd80/status/53850734931886081 amy dodd

RT @labouryes: How would extremists fare under AV? by @nextleft http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj #labouryes #yes2av #yesinmay
http://twitter.com/trevdick/status/53856851200188416 Trevor Stables

RT @labouryes: How would extremists fare under AV? by @nextleft http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj #labouryes #yes2av #yesinmay
http://twitter.com/theoldbrewer/status/53859034427703296 Bruce Brown

@labouryes http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj By contrast, supporters AV have cast iron case that … BNP victories even less likely. #yes2av #no2av
http://twitter.com/theoldbrewer/status/53859280398450688 Bruce Brown

RT @labouryes: How would extremists fare under AV? by @nextleft http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj #labouryes #yes2av #yesinmay
http://twitter.com/theoldbrewer/status/53860030256123904 Bruce Brown

#no2av reckon Marine le Pen Front National is the best person for French President – FPTP rules http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj
http://twitter.com/thomasvenables/status/53861719411396609 Thomas Venables

RT @TheOldBrewer: #no2av reckon Marine le Pen Front National is the best person for French President – FPTP rules http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj
http://twitter.com/theoldbrewer/status/53862283775971330 Bruce Brown

#yes2av reckon potential for Marine le Pen Front National defeat in runoff round (similar to AV rules) http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj
http://twitter.com/theoldbrewer/status/53862720134586369 Bruce Brown

#yes2av reckon potential for Marine le Pen Front National defeat in runoff round (similar to AV rules) http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj #no2av
http://twitter.com/nextleft/status/53873131315671040 Sunder Katwala

RT @labouryes: How would extremists fare under AV? by @nextleft http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj #labouryes #yes2av #yesinmay
http://twitter.com/alexander_ball/status/53875511998431233 Alex Ball

RT @labouryes: How would extremists fare under AV? by @nextleft http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj #labouryes #yes2av #yesinmay
http://twitter.com/anthonyleahy/status/53875791716556800 Anthony Leahy

RT @labouryes: How would extremists fare under AV? by @nextleft http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj #labouryes #yes2av #yesinmay
http://twitter.com/fairervotesedin/status/53878584657444864 FairerVotesEdinburgh

RT @TheOldBrewer: @labouryes http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj By contrast, supporters AV have cast iron case that … BNP victories even less likely …
http://twitter.com/danbrettuk/status/53880028424974336 Daniel Brett

RT @TheOldBrewer: @labouryes http://bit.ly/hJL8Zj By contrast, supporters AV have cast iron case that … BNP victories even less likely …
http://twitter.com/johnrentoul/status/54158635093344256 John Rentoul

.@Bubblejet Oh good. Because it doesn't. I'll put you down for #Yes2AV then. http://bit.ly/hOqTL7
http://twitter.com/olibradley/status/54199185506963456 Oliver Bradley

RT @JohnRentoul: .@Bubblejet Oh good. Because it doesn't. I'll put you down for #Yes2AV then. http://bit.ly/hOqTL7
http://twitter.com/maylor/status/60040235978993664 Phil Maylor

How would extremists fare under AV? http://bit.ly/gVKyN9 #Yes2AV
http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/04/no-to-av-16-point-lead/ Fear rules the facts as No campaign surge to 16-point lead | Left Foot Forward

[...] again had the extremism point and the comparisons with Australia from the no camp – rebutted here and here – with the myth of the day that AV is a system of “one person, many [...]