CONVENTION dictates that newspaper columnists write nothing on election day that might be interpreted as seeking to influence your vote.
This may be good manners but it is rather presumptuous. I would not let a columnist tell me how to vote and I have no reason to believe anyone else is more suggestible.
However, at least it is possible for election outcomes at Stormont to change. In many ‘normal’ democracies, results stay the same for decades and can be predicted in dispiriting detail before a single vote has been cast.
Well over half the UK’s 650 Westminster constituencies are considered ‘safe seats’. Four weeks before last year’s general election, which every pollster called wrong, the Electoral Reform Society predicted the winner in the 364 safest seats and got every one right. The typical such constituency has not changed hands since the 1960s and the phenomenon favours larger parties. In 2015, two-thirds of Tory and Labour seats were safe compared to one-eighth of Lib-Dem seats.
Westminster elections in Northern Ireland should in theory be more competitive, due to the presence of four or five major parties. In practice, the constitutional question overrides all and makes us the UK’s second most predictable region, after the north east of England, with 14 out of 18 seats safe.
The Electoral Reform Society says: “Safe seats are the rotten boroughs of the 21st century.” It blames them for public disengagement with the political system, as they make millions of votes obviously futile or unnecessary.
The society has a long connection with Ireland. Founded in 1884 to campaign for proportional representation (PR) at Westminster, it opened a branch in Dublin in 1911 to demand PR, single transferable votes (STV) and multi-seat constituencies in any home rule parliament. Sinn Féin and southern unionists were both attracted to the implicit sectarian safeguard and this led directly to PR being put in the Home Rule Act and the Irish Free State’s constitution. The society also campaigned successfully against 1959 and 1969 referendums to make Dáil elections first past the post.
Today, touchingly, the Electoral Reform Society cites Stormont’s system as “the answer” to all Westminster’s woes (the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly use a watered down version of PR.)
Even Westminster is a model of accountability compared to the United States. UK seats are only safe by accident - American seats are safe by design. Most UK constituencies have a historical basis, with geographical boundaries adjusted by independent panels. A 2011 law requires future changes to bring each constituency’s electorate to within 5 per cent of the national average, which should slowly address the rotten borough effect.
By contrast, the creation and adjustment of American constituencies has always been an explicitly party political act. State and federal boundaries and the formation of states themselves have been intended from the outset to favour the incumbent party or been a stitch-up between the two main parties. This is only getting worse as the social classes become more physically separated and electoral analysis becomes more sophisticated - not that it has to be particularly sophisticated. A classic southern Democrat constituency, for example, might be half a mile wide but 50 miles long to include all the low-income households either side of a road.
Some attempts have been made to reverse the entrenchment, mainly over concerns about racial segregation. However, an astonishing 95 per cent of incumbents were returned to both houses of congress in the last federal election in 2014, despite a record low voter approval rating of 14 per cent. Americans now seem unable to change their government even when they want to.
A lack of competitive elections must go some way to explaining the rise of figures like Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn. The flipside of the millions of people left powerless by safe seats is the handful of swing voters who become decisive in the few remaining marginals. Populists will be attracted to the former, activists will be attracted to the latter and anyone who can connect both forces can maybe beat the system.
But if even that fails to deliver change, public frustration will just deepen. The combined divisions of political gerrymandering and a culture war are increasingly causing Americans to mutter about a de facto partitioning of their country, with liberal coasts and cities surrounded by a republican ‘Jesus land’.
So take heart on your way to the Stormont polls. All the usual parties may be guaranteed a place in government. But apart from that, anything could happen.
newton@irishnews.com
