AV: It’s that button on the TV remote, right?

Civitas, 23 March 2011

By Tom Shakhli

Here’s a question: what event of national significance is coming up in the next six weeks?

Now, be honest – what came to your mind first, Prince William marrying Kate Middleton, or the referendum to change the Westminster voting system to the Alternative Vote (AV)? Now another question: which one do you know more about? I ask this because while the media informs us about every detail of the Royal Wedding, unless I’ve missed something, the public don’t have a say in the matter (though it would be quite fun). On the other hand, the issue that we do have the opportunity to influence through our vote is the one that we appear to know less about.

Scanning the newspapers over the last week, what struck me was the absolute non-existence of any debate on the technical aspects of changing the voting system, with the focus instead on the political narrative. To summarise what I learnt from this research, Nick didn’t like AV and neither did Dave, but now Nick does and Dave doesn’t want to upset Nick. Ed likes AV but doesn’t like Nick, which means that he doesn’t want to campaign together with him. Not that Nick is campaigning much at the moment anyway, because, well, he’s not that popular at the moment.

All this makes for pseudo-psychologist commentaries about relationship dynamics and inspires analogies from journalists who like to reference Machiavelli (The Royal Wedding beforehand will paint the country in shades of green and blue, and help the ‘No’ camp convince people that everything is fine as it is) and Shakespeare (betrayal/tragedy/Dave Montague and Nick Capulet take your pick). Discussing the pros and cons of the voting systems, offering examples and analysis from other countries, and putting it in the context of a wider debate on our democracy and the relationship between voter and politician, by comparison, must be terribly mundane.

The results of a recent poll by the Mail on Sunday suggest that the political melodrama should perhaps take a little break for a week or two in order to let a few facts emerge. When asked, ‘what does AV stand for?’, responses included ‘Aston Villa’, ‘anti-viral’, and ‘what you press on the remote control to switch to Sky on the telly’. More than half of the respondents did not know the basic functioning of the proposed new system, and more than a third could not name the date of the referendum.

An Ipsos-MORI poll at the start of March offers some explanation to all this. At present, the general public is more concerned about the state of the economy (60% of respondents cited it as a ‘dominating concern’), and increasingly about unemployment (28%). Constitutional and political reform only stirred the waters of 1% of respondents.

You may notice this post has not referred to poll results indicating the likely result of the referendum. The reason for this is that it would seem folly to place much weight on the variety of outcomes that are currently being predicted. Reviewing polls over the past six months, the most common answer by far on practically all questions is ‘don’t know/unsure/undecided’. With less than half of respondents saying that they are ‘certain to vote’ (49% of which say they’ll vote yes, 37% no, by the way), it means that there are a lot of people still to make up their mind.

Following the original announcement on July 5 last year that a referendum would take place, there was an outpouring of information in the media to match the excitement that accompanied the prospect of the first UK-wide one to be held since 1975. The coalition honeymoon period has since subsided, and where a permanent guide to the referendum was once pinned to the home page of most media websites, it now lingers in the subsections. It’s not too late to create an informed debate, but is it really too much to ask?