AV Awesomeometer
This tool shows how the voting landscape changes under different Alternative Vote scenarios. Parties could use it to figure out whether it is worth courting the voters loyal to other parties to get their second choice votes. People generally interested in the Yes2AV and No2AV campaigns could use it to support their position in some way (the calculation itself is pretty neutral, I guess a smaller hung parliament zone could be considered a good thing). If you are curious about the impact of tactical voting with the second and third choice votes this might reveal something interesting. It does require a modern browser (tested in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, doubt it works in Internet Explorer but I don’t have any computers to test that on) and may take a longish time to calculate, if your browser tells you the script has taken too long try telling it to wait a few times, it will probably get there. The Javascript engine in Google Chrome is freaky fast, so if Firefox takes a bit long give Chrome a try.
What it does
Assuming “other” gets 10% national share of the vote (it is a bit less than that really) there are 3916 different ways to share out the remaining 90% between the three major parties, e.g. Con 36% Lab 34% Lib 20% would be one way to share out the 90%. For each of these we calculate the likely result in 531 constituencies (there are boundary changes and 50 fewer constituencies next time so it is a bit approximate) we then discard the lowest options and transfer those votes to the other options using the values you specify in the transfer percentages table. Then we calculate the new result, then discard the lowest result, then calculate again. Finally we end up with a result for that consituency, and sum these up to national level and plot the overall national result colour in the party colours of red, blue, yellow and with a darker shade signifying the largest party in a hung parliament. The table of transfer percentages is pre-populated with some educated guesses based on polling data asking people what their second preferences would be.
The constituency data and AV algorithm came from Refusing the Default and hacking that into the visualisation was done on the Rewired State National Hack the Government day.
What Next?
I could add the little tooltips that we have on the similar charts made for the last election and a good enhancement would be to allow you to change the percentage overall share going to “other”, at the moment it is 10% because that leaves a nice round 90% to share out three ways, but actually it is has historically been closer to 8%. I would love to do a 3d representation of the data, so for each point instead of a simple circle it would be a column with the height representing the size of the majority or number of seats short of a majority in a hung parliament. That would give a 3d object that you could spin about and examine. I might get round to some of these at some point between now and the next election, because they sound like fun. I am also available for hire for this kind of hacking about with interesting data, so if you represent one of the parties, or some other organisation that really wants to see these things implemented do get in touch. Alternatively view-source, grab the lot and have a play with it. Let me know if you come up with anything interesting.
Feel free to use the comments section below to discuss the calculations and visualisation or share interesting sets of transfer percentages you have found and your interpretation of the results.
