Issues Affecting The Single Transferable Vote - Effects On Parties, Factions and Candidates

Effects On Parties, Factions and Candidates

STV differs from all other proportional-representation systems in actual use in that candidates of one party can be elected on transfers from voters for other parties. Hence, the use of STV may reduce the role of political parties in the electoral process and corresponding partisanship in the resulting government. Unlike proportional representation systems employing party lists, voters in STV are not explicitly constrained by parties even when they do exist; voters may ignore candidate party labels and mix their preferred candidate rankings between parties. Similarly, candidates may achieve electoral success by obtaining a quota of voters not generally within their own party, perhaps by winning transfers from moderates or by championing a specific issue contrary to party doctrine. STV advocates argue that, by requiring a candidate to appeal to the supporters of other candidates for their second and further preferences, it reduces adversarial confrontation, and indeed, gives a substantial advantage to candidates who broaden their appeal by being not only collegial but as open-minded and flexible in their principles as they can manage. STV detractors see this as a flaw, arguing that political parties should be able to structure public debate, mobilize and engage the electorate, and develop policy alternatives.

Unlike List PR, STV can be used in elections in organizations without any political parties at all, such as in municipal non-partisan elections, trade unions, clubs, and schools.

Some STV variations, however, may encourage the role of political parties and actually strengthen them. In Australian Senate elections, where a combination of large districts, mandatory complete ballots, and compulsory voting results in the near 95% usage of partisan group voting tickets, political parties gain significant power in determining election results by adjusting the relative ordering of their tickets, both in terms of their own candidates and of transfers to other parties.

Successful campaign strategy in STV elections may differ significantly from other voting systems. In particular, individual candidates in STV have little incentive for negative campaign advertising, as reducing a particular opponent's ranking among voters does not necessarily elevate one's own; if negative campaigning is seen as distasteful by the voters, the practice may even prove harmful to the attacking candidate. Conversely, in order to avoid elimination in early counting rounds by having too few first place votes, candidates have a significant incentive to convince voters to rank them explicitly first as their top preference, rather than merely higher. This incentive to attain top preferences, in turn, may lead to a strategy of candidates placing greater importance on a core group of supporters. Avoiding early elimination, however, is usually not enough to win election, as a candidate must still subsequently win enough votes on transfers to meet the quota; consequently, strategies which sacrifice wide secondary support in favor of primary support amidst a core group may ultimately fail unless the group is particularly large.

There are also tactical considerations for political parties in the number of candidates they stand in an election where full ballots are not required. Standing too few candidates may result in all of them being elected in the early stages, and votes being transferred to candidates of other parties. Standing too many candidates might result in first-preference votes being spread too thinly amongst them, and consequently several potential winners with broad second-preference appeal may be eliminated before others are elected and their second-preference votes distributed. This effect is amplified when voters do not stick tightly to their preferred party's candidates; however, if voters vote for all candidates from a particular party before any other candidates and before stopping expressing preferences, then too many candidates is not an issue. In Malta, where voters tend to stick tightly to party preferences, parties frequently stand more candidates than there are seats to be elected. Similarly, in Australian Senate elections, voters also tend to vote along party lines due to the relative ease of selecting a party's declared preferences rather than individually casting their own complete list. In the Republic of Ireland, the main political parties usually give careful consideration as to how many candidates to put forward in various Dáil (parliamentary) constituencies. Transfers are often not along party lines, but rather go towards more prominent local personalities. Election posters for the most prominent candidate of a political party usually list preferred 2nd (and possibly 3rd) preferences for that party.