I think this is a very fair post. It’s probably worth making two additional points though.

firstly it’s worth remembering that this was the Green Party strategy to prioritise winning our first ever seat over our general vote. So even though more people across the UK voted Green in a general election than ever have there were still some very disappointing results.

It was the trade off we made to accommodate to the wonky electoral system. better to win a seat than gain an increase in the vote across the board, but not come first anywhere. So the result is also a product of the Green strategy as well as the choice of the voters.

The second point worth making I think is that different systems do influence how people vote as well as how much representation each party gets with a particular vote share.

Just last year 1.3 million people voted Green in the PR elections for the European Parliament on a far lower turnout (from memory about 8%) so the 1% we got this time at this election is about how many people are willing to cast a vote for us under this system – and as such is an imperfect measure of our support (or the support of any party).

Anyway, as I say I still think this is a fair post, just wanted to add in a couple of additional thoughts.

Of course the Greens want PR, the Greens were always going to be squeezed in this election. The Labour message of “vote us to keep out the Tories” meant that many of our usual voters and supporters made a tactical vote for the Labour party, such was the fear being pumped out by Labour in this election.

Amongst students and the younger demographic, the majority would have gone to Clegg rather than the Greens. However, it is interesting to note that in Norwich South the Tory and Lib Dem vote hardly moved but, there was an 8% swing or so from Labour to the Greens, thus allowing the Lib Dems to take the seat.

The crucial thing for the Greens now is to build momentum. That is the mantra of the party. The Greens will be looking towards their first breakthrough in the Welsh Assembly elections next year, hoping to increase the number of MSPs and taking control of Brighton and Hove city council and Norwich city council, both of which are possible.

The new membership figures should be out sometime next week however, we were nearing the 11K mark just before the campaign.

We shouldn’t forget that the Greens gained council seats in Reading, Reigate and Cambridge. In the case of the former two, their very first councillors on those authorities and for the latter, they have increased their vote across every ward in Cambridge.

So, despite the squeeze, plenty of firsts for the Greens and plenty of smiles.

Some questions for the Greens to answer (congrats to them for BPav):

1) Under any reasonable proportional system, do you not see that the Greens would get zero MPs on the basis of their national vote? Any PR system which allows a party with around 1% of the vote to get any seats, is BONKERS. You need a threshold of between 5-10% for a workable electoral system with a PR top-up element (and the Greens prefer AMS). UKIP and the BNP have more right to an MP than the Greens. The strategy to win BPav at the expense of everywhere else has weakened the argument for more Greens on the basis of national vote.

2) How can the Greens convince voters in Norwich South and Lewisham Deptford, their second and third target seats, to back them at the next general election when this time they’ve come fourth in both seats? Last time in Lewisham, they came second; in Norwich, they had built up a number of local wins and European election votes, so they argued they were going into this election as the main challengers in second place. But next time they can’t say they are in contention to take those seats.

The squeeze effect will be even worse: if a Tory minority government or Tory-LibDem government fall, people will be even more likely to vote Tory or Labour to give a decisive national outcome. Any tactical arguments the Greens try to use to get their vote out can easily be countered by the fact they came fourth. This means those two seats are unwinnable for at least three elections’ time.

3) Where else can the Greens grow? They retained their deposit in the abovementioned three seats, in the neighbouring Brighton & Hove seats (which let in Tories), and in Cambridge. But they didn’t get above 5% in 328 out of the 334 constituencies they stood in! This means there aren’t any strong election results that could be developed into winnable elections in a few elections’ time. Perhaps more support should be channelled into fewer seats?

4) In the event of an early election, either this year or before a Tory minority or Tory-LibDem government serves a full term, is it not likely that Caroline Lucas will lose her seat? As I said, if a hung parliament doesn’t lead to a stable government, voters will want to produce a decisive outcome – Labour came second in BPav, people will go back to Labour to maximise the number of MPs who could form a government.

What this means is that the Green Party will spend the next two general elections at least purely defending Caroline Lucas’s seat and doing not much else. This might be fun for the Greens, and for Caroline Lucas’s ego and career, but for those people who thought the Greens could provide a new force in progressive politics, it will be a disaster. In the long run, there are no trends which suggest that either the Lib Dems or Labour cannot win back their voters – and there ain’t much the Greens can do about it, because they are not a national force. Not yet.

The real danger of Caroline Lucas is that she is another George Galloway – minus all the horrible views and idiotic pranks – someone who makes a national breakthrough in one seat because the entire party was focused on that one seat, but fails to grow enough support to get elected anywhere else. If Caroline loses her seat in another squeeze election, the Greens are back to square one.

Also, the Greens lost many councillors in London:

Lewisham – 5
Camden -2
Hackney -1
Islington -1
Southwark -1
Lambeth -1

They now only have 2 councillors across the whole of the capital. Obviously this is partly a result of the local elections being on the same day as a general election. But surely this also represents a failure of strategy, to encourage people to split the vote between their local and national ballot papers, everywhere apart from Lewisham? Everywhere Greens lost councillors in London, Labour won – voters wanted to stop the Tories. You could’ve said vote Labour nationally to stop the Tories, but vote Green locally.

@Mark,

Let’s take two recent PR election results. Firstly, the Euro elections last year the Greens polled 8.6% nationally (obviously dispersed differently across regions) and, secondly, at the London Assembly elections in 2008 they polled roughly 8.6% of the vote. Therefore, it might be safe to assume that the Green vote sits at 8% or so.

Secondly, we cannot translate the results from the Generals to the possible make-up under PR. Green voters tend to be intelligent voters, they tend to vote tactically and, they tend to vote for the candidate most likely to stop the Tories. Across London and elsewhere the Greens were up against a “Vote Labour to stop the Tories” message, something very difficult to overcome from a party fighting an election on a small budget and with little access to prime time media coverage.

When most people I know read and understand Green policies, not just in the environment but wider, they generally seem to really like them, if not prefer them to any of the other parties.

Yet few of them, even those who call themselves Green supporters voted Green in this election. This was generally down to two issues, first anti-Tory tactical voting, and second pro-Lib-Dem voting in order to try and get some form of PR.

I am hopeful that once the dust of the Coalition discussions settles and the discussions get back to particular bills then with Caroline Lucas at Westminster then the Green view will be heard more often, and their message, which seems very popular once known, will be heard more widely.

That, and if the Lib-Dems price of entry into a coalition is some form of PR and this election could be the start of some Green momentum, even if the raw numbers seem to indicate the opposite.

“All this suggests that the extra money, airtime and credibility that Caroline Lucas MP”

Extra money, sorta and sorta not. She has to give up being an MEP of course, which is a loss of money (MEP expenses and staff allowances are greater than MP ones). On the other hand, next Green on the MEP’s list for the SE takes Lucas’ old seat so the MP funds are on top of the MEP ones.

As to extra airtime, really not sure at all. The Green Party now has the same Westminster representation as the “Save Our Local Hospital Party” (there is still one MP for them isn’t there?) and they’ve not exactly got a lot of airtime.

What I do think would be very funny indeed (just because I’m like that) is if there’s an election in a few months and then Lucas loses that seat. she’ll already have resigned as an MEP of course so she’ll have no job at all!

Tee Hee!

@ Luke

Firstly, I think you have a point about FPTP vote shares vs PR vote shares, however you cannot simply assume any future PR vote will remain stable. The Greens need to prove they aren’t a one-trick pony, and that means more FPTP wins (if we do get a Tory minority or Tory-LibDem coalition, bringing in PR will take more than two years – redrawing the boundaries, deciding what options are on the referendum, holding it, then the election).

Secondly, any future Green strength depends on what PR system we have, if we do get it for the generals. If we have AMS or AV+, then you might expect the Greens to do well on the list vote. However, you cannot transfer vote shares from a London Assembly or European election to a general election conducted under some form of PR. People will know their vote is electing a government, not just protesting or supporting green policies. This is especially true if the number of MPs elected under the list element is enough to hold the balance of power.

If it is STV, then I reckon the Greens will do even worse due to the stronger constituency link. In every single constituency apart from Brighton Pavilion, voters cannot realistically expect a Green MP. So they will vote tactically, as you say, to stop the Tories.

It would be great if you could answer my other questions.

Using a turnout figure from a FPTP election system as a yardstick for support is unwise. Even hardcore environmental activists such as Franny Armstrong were advising people who cared about climate change to vote for whoever could stop the Conservatives from winning.

Although it may be that the Greens would do worse in an AV system, they wouldn’t do worse in an AV-plus system; it frees people to vote Green as their first preference (“vote for what you believe in”) with the endless risk in FPTP that this could let in their least favoured candidate. In AV-plus the proportions of first choices would – given the figure in the Euro elections – carry them over a likely threshold.

And AV-plus in multi-member constituencies also benefits parties which are able to build local bases – in this respect some of the greens strategy seems to me to resemble the long Liberal strategy which rebuilt the party from its nadir of six seats in 1970.

Finally, I don’t think you should underestimate the visibility which being in Westminster will give to the Greens, simply because of the way in which television news works: Caroline Lucas will be on television *a lot* as a credible voice on environmental and social justice issues, in a way that simply isn’t true for MEPs. The strategy of a ‘single seat’ is sensible for this reason.

What Jim and Luke said. (Further to Luke’s post: http://rupertsread.blogspot.com/2010/05/so-what-happened-in-norwichsouth.html )
Much of what Climate Sock says is correct, and some of what Mark L. says is correct (Factual correction: We were 4th in Lewisham in 2005, not 2nd.) The big factor that they omit is this: This election, having turned into a classic two-Party squeeze (it came down to whether one hated the Tories or Labour more; earlier in the election, it was a novel phenomenon, a 3-Party-squeeze, which already was very tough for smaller Parties such as the Greens – Others shrank from c.13% to c.6% in the national opinion polls, as a result of Cleggmania), was always going to be very very tough for a Party many of whose voters are thoughtful. People vote for the BNP and UKIP because they are angry and are flailing around for a scapegoat (namely: people of a different skin colour / culture / religion). People vote for the Green Party because they want a better future. This makes Green Party voters far more inclined to vote tactically. We know for a fact that in Norwich South many many would-be Green voters voted Libdem or Labour for tactical reasons. This effect was present tenfold stronger in virtually every other seat in the country. This explains the drop in our vote outside Brighton Pav, Norwich South, and Cambridge. Green voters are very likely to vote for other Parties, under FPTP. BNP and UKIP voters, far less so – they are just expressing their anger and frustration, and venting it on an easy target.
So, there is no need to worry that Greens would do badly under AV. AV is not a proportional system, but it would allow people who want to vote Green to give us their first preference. In many many places, these first preferences would very soon start stacking up enormously. In Norwich South (which I know personally best), huge numbers of people want to vote Green; and some do, already. The Party which should fear AV is the LibDems. For how many people have LibDem as their first preference? Hardly any. The LibDems are purely the ‘We’re not Labour and we’re not the Tories’ Party. The LibDems could do well under AV if they get more first preferences than (one of) Labour or Tory, and so survive to clean up on their 2nd prefs. But in how many constituencies would that happen? Very few, is my educated guess.
Furthermore, Mark is wrong to think that there is a big risk of Caroline Lucas losing her seat next time around. Here is another huge difference between BNP and Green elected politicians – where Greens get elected, we usually stay elected, and often grow and grow. When people get Greens, they like what they get, and want more of us. When the BNP get elected, they are out on their ear within a few years’ time.
Without PR, the next General Election will be tough for us. Norwich South is our only obvious strong prospect for a gain, next time around. But going from 1 to 2 wouldn’t be bad; and we could get set up at the same time for a big tranche of gains at the following G.E. . With AV, the sky’s the limit. And the same with any genuine form of (real) proportional representation. The Euro elections give a reasonable indication of our potential at a PR election. We would make any likely threshold in a national system.

@Luke

a party fighting an election on a small budget and with little access to prime time media coverage

Every party starts like this. The Green Party has been around for 37 years. There is very little sign that its members understand or even want to understand how much of a mountain there is to climb if they want to be more than just a tiny tiny bit-player in national politics. You might say the hung parliament gives Lucas power; not really, because the “rainbow alliance” would be extremely unstable if it relied on 1 MP for a majority of 1. (and let’s not even talk about the Nats)

@ Rupert

I might be a bit thick because I find it hard to read something that’s in one big paragraph, some line breaks might help!

@Andrew Curry

“In AV-plus the proportions of first choices would – given the figure in the Euro elections – carry them over a likely threshold”

Not sure Greens would get most first choices. The experience of London Mayoral elections is that the Green Party recommended their candidate 1st, Ken Livingstone 2nd. The reality is that a lot of people voted Ken 1st, Green 2nd – great for Ken, but not much help to the Greens, who didn’t get into the second round.

When people can split their vote, evidence suggests they put their tactical vote (i.e. to stop the Tories) first, and their ideological vote (i.e. Green) second.

Other commenters made this point implicitly already, but I suspect AV would be good rather than bad for the Greens. I think a lot of people who would otherwise vote Green end up voting tactically instead. In AV there’s nothing lost by putting the Greens as your first choice even if you don’t think they have a chance of winning, so I think they would actually get a lot more first-choice votes than the numbers of votes they get in the current system. True PR would obviously be better for them though.

(On the other hand, I live Brighton Pavilion and I voted tactically in favour of the greens in order to keep the Tories out. Under AV I would have voted Lib Dem first and Green second. But Brighton Pavilion is an unusual constituency.)

@ Rupert

Was able to pick this out:

“When people get Greens, they like what they get, and want more of us. When the BNP get elected, they are out on their ear within a few years’ time”

That is true for the BNP, but how do you explain the “they want more of us” factor in the loss of all but 2 of the Green Party’s councillors in London? They’ve been wiped out.

Again, the issue is that there are no obvious places to target next time as winnable. Norwich South might be great for you, Rupert, but your candidate came 4th. This time it was mainly Greens vs Labour. Next time it will be Labour vs the Lib Dems, with the Greens a minor player. You are pinning your hopes on AV or AV+ but there is no guarantee that we will have electoral reform. What if the next two general elections are fought under FPTP, and Caroline loses her seat, as Tim W suggests? You will be back to square zero.

Another point the Greens need to confront: they are rarely the masters of their own destiny, their electoral fortunes depend largely on others. Look at the high points of their electoral history:

1989 – got 15% in the Euros, not even 1 in 5 but heralded as a breakthrough, thanks to Chernobyl etc. (collapsed in 1992 general)

1999 – winning 2 MEPs, thanks not to your party but to Blair bringing PR into the Euros, same thing with the London AMs and the MSPs. You went on to never increase your MEPs and you let the BNP in last year in the NW region; you went down to 2 AMs from 3 and your power then depended on the number of Labour AMs; you went down to 2 MSPs from 7.

2010 – a breakthrough, absolutely. But will this be followed by another decline?

There is no sign the Greens want to take control of politics, they seem content to swill around powerless until fate hands them a sop.

As someone who works in Norwich South but is not a member of any Party I’d add that in addition to the recession burying environmental concerns, the national leadership debates and Clegg mania had a similar effect of marginalising them, something that also happened more generally in the national and local media. In addition, locally the Lib Dems did a brilliant job of projecting themselves as the Party for tactical voters who wanted to stop Clarke – something they won’t be able to do next time around. Also, as well as their local election successes for Norwich Council and in Euro elections, if you look at the number of people who’ve voted Green in Norwich South over each successive General Election, starting in 1997, then the rate of increase is phenomenal – doubling or more than doubling their vote at each successive election. So Norwich South definitely isn’t a basis for arguing that the Greens are stagnating or in any kind of decline.

@Nathaniel

“In AV there’s nothing lost by putting the Greens as your first choice even if you don’t think they have a chance of winning”

Voters aren’t electoral geeks. In preferential systems, they vote for the party they think most likely to win with their first choice, and then give their second choice to smaller parties, like the Greens. It is the wrong way around, but it’s hard to get that point across.

@Mark Lightwood, there are a few quite simple and connected reasons why the Green councillors were almost wiped out in London.

The general election lifted the turnout, bringing significant increases in tribal voters (mostly Labour) to the ballot box. The Green Party can’t yet count on that level of tribal support, so was overtaken. My evidence for this is that the Lib Dem and Conservative vote doubled or tripled in Southwark wards where they didn’t even campaign, didn’t have local candidates and are actually very unpopular with people involved in local politics. They got lots of votes from people who don’t turn out for local elections, but wanted to vote in the general election.

There’s a very specific example on my blog, about the ward I ran for. Across Southwark we significantly increased our vote, doubling it in my ward. But this wasn’t matched by the huge swell in votes for the 3 grey parties:
http://tom.acrewoods.net/2010/05/08/should-local-elections-coincide-with-the-nationals

This was compounded by the TV debates, which focused so much attention on the party leaders. I spoke to a lot of voters who said “I’m voting for Nick Clegg” in an area where the Lib Dems are pretty inactive.

That’s just the reality of the political system and media climate that we operate in. It’s grossly oversimplified to suggest the 2010 results reflect a rejection of Green policies, or to suggest the same factors were at work in the other elections results you mention.

Agreed with Jim Jepps @1.
Most people who would vote Green under a more proportional system (I count myself amongst them) simply didnt on Thursday out of sheer realism (a vote for the Greens in Bham Ladywood would be wasted, for instance).

So to analyse the Greens’ true weight without forgetting the circumstances is not at all correct.

Also, unless I missed it, no-one looked at the case of Brighton Kemptown, which is actually quite dramatic.

The Conservatives there got 38%.
Labour 35%
The Lib Dems 18%
The Green Party 5.5%

Quite obviously, at least 60% of the electorate in Brighton Kemptown didn’t want the Tories in, but the progressive vote was crucially split, handing a previously Labour seat to the Conservatives.

That should be a lesson to learn for the future.

@ Claude

Yep, the Greens let the Tories in. Possibly in Hove as well.

Mark/Luke, you’re both making assumptions not backed up by actual evidency.

Luke, your point about 8% in London gor GLA/EU elections is correct, except…

Both of those have low turnouts, and Green voters are much more likely to vote in such an election (where they know their vote counts) than the softer supporters of other parties, especially true of Labour voters who stayed away in droves at a lot of recent elections (the success of the BNP in getting seats being despite a loss of total votes, it was disproportionate collapse of Labour votes that let them in).

Mark, you say STV would be bad as people’ll be more likely to vot etactically. I think you’r ethinking of a different voting system, STV negates the need for tactical voting on first choices, completely. In my area (Calder Valley), the Green vote halved, despite an exceptional candidate.

People voted tactically, either for the Labour or LD candidate (both got about 26%), exactly as Tatchell et al told them to.

STV does require tactical choices of a type, but not for first preferences. Frankly, if we had STV and my constituency was all of Calderdale and Kirklees, as it probably would be, Sweeny would have an excellent chance of picking up large numbers of first pref votes, and even more 2nd prefs. She might even pick up mine, and I’d be helping run the LD campaign.

With a transferable vote in larger constituencies, as people, and campaigners, get used to the change, the Green vote will increase. For evidence, look at results. In Calder Valley, Kate got 858 votes. In the Calder ward, one of 9 in the constituency, the Green candidate got 762 votes.

I suspect, if out candidate hadn’t had a maissive personal vote (which he has, he’s a brilliant councillor), that vote would’ve been even higher. Greens in the local elections outpolled Kate substantially, but mostly in wards where there was a strong established campaign.

First election under STV, as in the Europeans, Greens will get a few MPs scattered in places, but most voters will vote for the big three. Second election? Votes’ll go all over the place, as voters will know what they can get away with a lot better.

STV’ll benefit the Greens, and other parties with stronger appeal in some regions.

It’s possible you may even get back up to that 8% of votes, despite the massively higher turnout.

Not sure if this has been said already, but I don’t think you can compare a super small party like the Greens between 2005 and 2010…especially in a year where the prospect of reform that could give the Greens some seats regularly meant perhaps tactically voting for the Lib Dems.

I think the Greens have more room than the OP suggests. First, the next Labour leader, whoever it is, will commit to PR. Since the Lib Dems and Greens already are, the Greens can offer to stand down (e.g. in Hove and Kemptown for Pavilion).

Second, they should identify the seat(s) demographically closest to Brighton Pavilion (someone here must know or be able to find out) and start to build a local government base there. That’s what got Caroline elected at the end of the day.

Mark – of course the big loss of Councillors in London for the Greens was disappointing. But it isn’t at all comparing like with like. Those Councillors had been elected in a non-General-Election year; and this year we had not only a General Election, but a severe two-Party squeeze.
Next time Councillors are elected in London in a non-General-Election year, there will be a huge increase in Green Councillors.

the next London council elections are in 2012 – 4 years from now. I imagine the Tory-LibDem govt will agree to a fixed term of 4 years. That’s the most likely possibility: this means there will be a General Election the same time the London councils are elected next, and you will lose your remaining seats.

This could’ve been avoided, as I said above, but the Greens have an attitude of “we let things happen to us rather than make them happen” – you only have MEPs/AMs/MSPs because of Blair’s reforms etc etc

Can the Greens answer my other questions:

2) How can the Greens convince voters in Norwich South and Lewisham Deptford, their second and third target seats, to back them at the next general election when this time they’ve come fourth in both seats?

3) Where else can the Greens grow?

4) In the event of an early election, either this year or before a Tory minority or Tory-LibDem government serves a full term, is it not likely that Caroline Lucas will lose her seat?

As I said above (with more exposition), the next few general elections will simply consist of your entire national party defending Lucas’s seat, with no resources being given to grow anywhere else – much like how you failed to grow at last year’s Euro elections and instead simply defended your existing 2 seats.

Mark – Others and myself have already answered most of your questions. You are right that there is clearly a problem in Lewisham, though – it is going to be tough to persuade voters that we can win there, next time, after Thursday’s result!

Btw, I doubt that a Cameron-Clegg government – _if_ it happens, I am hoping for a #progressivemajority government instead (http://rupertsread.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-green-party-can-help-stop-tories.html ) – will last 4 years…

One point where I do think the Green Party has some soul-searching to do is in relation to last year’s Euros. We needed to take a bolder approach, then. To have a realistic chance of winning in more seats than just Brighton Pavillion this time, we needed to push harder for victory in NW and Eastern, and possibly other Regions too (in the end, SW and Yorks came into play for us – but, as you say, we narrowly failed to make any gains at all). If we had come out of last year’s Euros with 4 (or even 5 or 6) seats, that real progress would have made more than just the (brilliant, groundbreaking) one gain of last Thursday possible.

How will you convince people you can win Norwich South either, you came fourth?

What no Green seems to be able to answer is that the percentages they achieved this time do not make it obvious where any future success might come from – Norwich, Lewisham and Cambridge are long shots. Everywhere else, you couldn’t retain deposits.

And if there is another FPTP election, just over 1300 people who voted Green in Brighton might want to produce a more decisive outcome, and send a Labour MP to Westminster. Then the Greens will be wiped out, to nothingness once again. And the council elections will coincide with the general election after that… Wipeout.

@Mark Lightwood

“Voters aren’t electoral geeks. In preferential systems, they vote for the party they think most likely to win with their first choice, and then give their second choice to smaller parties, like the Greens.” (comment 16)

Can you supply me with a reference for that? If it’s true and remains true in countries that have had AV-style systems for a while, where it should be well-understood by the electorate, then it makes for a strong argument against AV and for some other, more intuitive system. Naively, I would have thought that smaller parties would be able to get the point across in their campaign literature, but if the data doesn’t support that then I’d like to know.

“Yep, the Greens let the Tories in. Possibly in Hove as well.” (comment 19)

I don’t think that’s the whole story. In both Brighton Kemptown and Hove it would have required more than half the greens to vote Labour instead, and I suspect a lot of those votes would have gone to the Lib Dems if the Greens hadn’t stood. Both seats also saw a substantial gain for the Lib Dems, which probably contributed a lot to the Tories getting in, since I suspect that a lot of those Lib Dem votes were from people who voted Labour previously. I don’t have any data on that though, obviously. I agree, though, that whichever way you look at it the Tories got in because the majority progressive/liberal vote was split.

Can I suggest something unfashionable?

The Greens could be set for a major boost in support in the next week or so.

Lib Dems are largely left wingers – and they are, in part at least, people who vote against the Tories, or people who can’t stomach the compromise on principles that Labour makes to be a party of Government.

Well if Clegg hands the keys of No.10 to Cameron, a lot of those betrayed Lib Dem voters will want a new home.

Some will head to Labour to ensure their vote is never inadvertantly a vote for the Tories again.

But some will go the other way and vote Green as a progressive party that isn’t tainted by compromise.

I genuinely feel a Lib Dem compromise the delivers a right wing government is a far worse compromise than any Labour compromise to deliver it’s left-wing, all-be-it woefully centrist left-wing government.

I may be proved wrong. The Tories may increase the national minimum wage year on year as part of a pact with the Lib Dems. But I expect not, and I expect the Geens to win over a lot of voters from the Lib Dems as a result.

re luke walter . don’t all parties use fear as a motivator to get votes? “only greens can save the planet” type of message.

Margin4Error: Absolutely. The LibDems need to bring in a form of PR that is helpful to small Parties – because they may well soon BE a small Party…

Mark: If we had listened to you 5 years ago, we would never have tried to win even in Brighton Pavillion this time (where we were in 3rd place, in 2005). You take my point: your argument is a counsel of despair. Greens are growing so fast in local elections etc etc in places like Norwich, that sooner or later we will be unstoppable.

@mark lightwood –

finding the tone of your remarks unnecessarily hostile, especially since many of them aren’t borne out by evidence but assertion, and since others in the comments seem to be trying to engage with your arguments in an honest fashion.

As you say, voters are’t electoral geeks. And at the moment, if you live in London, or Scotland, or Wales, you have four different electoral systems to navigate (possibly even five, if you include the rubbish multi-councillor ward council systems) on different timescales, sometimes overlapping. In other places you have to contend with the national, European, and council systems all being different. Of these, only first past the post is clearly understood.

So maybe it’s not surprising that in the London mayoral elections despite being AV – people mirror the behaviour in FPTP. Social behaviour involving learning takes time. If these systems were more aligned around versions of similar systems, people would, over time, learn how to express their preferences – just as they have, to the limited extent allowed, within the confines of FPTP in national UK elections.

As for your persistent plaint as to ‘how’ or ‘where’ the greens’ next seats are going to come from: maybe you aren’t old enough to remember the Liberals in 1970, but it was assumed at the time that they had nowhere to go but down. Instead they build local political bases – many of them in places which people assumed would never vote for a Liberal council. They have MPs in quite a lot of those places now. And I also wonder what the long-term effect of the Transition movement will be on the Greens’ political base: it probably won’t be damaging.

@MarkL,

You seem to be suggesting that London Greens didn’t think about their strategy, or focused on the GE instead of the locals. Everywhere except Lewisham, this is entirely untrue.

In Hackney, for example, we sacrificed saving my deposit (which we could definitely have done) for a strategy of ‘vote Green in the local elections’, just as you suggest. The issue was, as Tom Chance explains above, that the turnout was so high that even an increased Green vote was swamped by tribal Labour voters, who voted Labour down the ticket.

Our six target candidates all got higher votes than any other Green candidates in the history of Hackney council elections. It just wasn’t enough, because we were swamped by the GE turnout. As a non establishment party with hardly any coverage in the campaign, we simply didn’t feature on the radar of hundreds of voters who were mainly concerned with the GE, and who happened to fill in the local ballot paper cos it was there, voting the same as they did in ‘the main election’.

So, basically, what I’m saying is that we aren’t idiots. We tried the strategy that you suggest. It just couldn’t overcome the structural problems that Green Party local candidates faced this time around.

Matt

Mark Lightwood strikes me as proof positive of the adage “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

He thinks he’s an expert. Actually, he’s pretty clueless.

“Unstoppable in Norwich ” …so funny ..sounds like something Alan Partridge would say … Come the next election , and that might be quite soon …The Greens will lose their 1 mp … unstoppable my arse: )

Matt, you’re almost certainly right that you got swamped, but…

I was expecting the two local Independent candidates in our elections
to get swamped in exactly the same way, so we ran a strong positive
campaign on the issues and ignored them. How wrong I was, they both
massively increased their votes, and support for them split across
party lines, giving them both thumping majorities, completely against
prediction. Need to learn from that.

People will vote against party in a local election, the amount to
which they’ll split votes, at least in W, Yorks suprised me. But the
message needs to be good, and they were both incumbents with support.

(and this comment has weird formatting as my phone browser refused to post it last night at all, so I emailed it to myself, bloody technology, bring back slates and chalk…)

On the subject of the Greens getting less votes than the BNP overall: I don’t think this really reflects their relative levels of support.

Many people who would otherwise be Green supporters surely vote tactically outside of the few constituencies where there’s a credible Green campaign – especially in marginal seats where one of the two ‘real’ candidates is ignoring environmental issues. Better to have a candidate with at least some interest in Green issues than one with none.

I would hazard a guess most natural BNP supporters don’t generally vote tactically, since they generally seem to believe all other candidates are in league with the Muslims to abolish Britain. (…and many probably don’t know what ‘tactics’ is anyway)

There’s an argument that this election came at a difficult time for an environmentalist party: the focus on the economy squeezed out most coverage of green issues.

This is something we really need to work on: “the environment” and “the economy” are not separate issues, they’re two sides of the same issue. The economy is a green issue – in fact, it’s the biggest green issue. Everything else is just tinkering at the margins.