General Election 2021 Results Analysis

[wrighty]

On 10/5/2021 at 3:21 PM, Phillip Dearden said:

I looked at a similar-ish issue. How do the constituencies compare in their ability to distinguish between candidates. For this I looked at the Standard Deviation of votes in each constituency. The results were as follows;

A&M and Glenfaba and Peel come top of the Standard Deviation tables but their results are different. A&M has two clear winners and 5 candidates who got significantly less votes. G&P has one clear winner, one who just beat two fellow contenders and three who were some way off.

The lower end of the SD table, ie the constituencies where votes were not  widely dispersed includes all four Douglas constituencies and Garf. Looking at the votes here, it does seem that the difference between winning and losing is not so pronounced. 3 of these also had the lowest voter turnout (as % of eligible) – does this suggest less voter engagement or more closely matched candidates?

A&M provided more candidates than anyone, a higher proportion of their eligible voters actually voted and this was a repeat of 2016 (ie the highest voter turnout) and the Standard Deviation calculation suggests they are the best at distinguishing between candidates they like and don't like. They seem to be good at this democracy stuff...but not perfect, theirs is the only return of votes not yet available on the Government web-site.

Whether the stronger distinction between preferred and less-preferred candidates is as a result of better voter ability to identify the qualities they want or whether it actually reflects a difference in quality of candidates is a good question, to which I don't know the answer.

 

 

It makes no mathematical sense to calculate the standard deviation. SD is a measure of spread in a distribution that is assumed to be normal. With categorical variables, a better idea would be to use a chi-squared test, with the expected votes being an equal split. 

[Roger Mexico]

I thought I'd look at the sort of people who were elected to the new Keys and how and if they differed from previous one.  The most obvious and commented on was the number of women elected - particularly dramatic when you consider that just over five years ago in July 2016 there was one woman MHK and 23 men.  Now it's 10 and 14.

But one other thing strikes me, which is how many of the women have young children.  Lord-Brennan, Faragher and Maltby all do, joining Barber and with Caine and Poole-Wilson having older ones (I'm not sure about Haywood I suspect they may be a bit older still).  Among the men I think only Watterson has young children.  I can't help thinking this will bring a change in focus  - especially with Faragher and Maltby both having worked with children.

Both in 2016 and 2021 with the massive influx of new MHKs (12 then 11 now) you'd expect that it would have affected the average age of the Keys with new, young blood replacing tired old politicos.  But actually The average age of the elected only dropped from 52 to 50.5 in 2016 and stayed the same (50.5 to 50.7) this year.

One thing that has changed however is where they were born.  Of the 24 elected in 2011, 18 were born  in the Isle of Man, in 2016 that fell to 11 and now it's down to 10.  True some of the non-Manx born were educated here .  Cannan, Glover and Johnston all went to King Bills and the first two at least have strong Manx links, while  Hooper and Crookall (in part) were also educated here.

The other big change is education.  In 2011 only 4 of those elected were graduates (compare this with around 90% of UK MPs).  That went up to 10 in 2016 and 15 now.  That's quite a change even allowing for the larger number of graduates in younger groups.

[SleepyJoe]

Hopefully with all this degree level education they'll think at least twice before appointing a vacuous autocrat to the top job

[quilp]

Intelligence and sensibility don't necessarily go hand-in-hand though, Joe. 

[Barlow]

12 hours ago, Roger Mexico said:

One thing that has changed however is where they were born.  Of the 24 elected in 2011, 18 were born  in the Isle of Man, in 2016 that fell to 11 and now it's down to 10.  

At what stage will the Isle of Man become a county of England? I reckon, say, 4?

[Roger Mexico]

1 minute ago, Barlow said:

At what stage will the Isle of Man become a county of England? I reckon, say, 4?

I suspect it may have stabilised, remember that half the population has been born off-Island according to the Censuses for quite some time.  That percentage will be higher among adults.  Of the youngest 12 MHKs, 7 were born on-Island, of the older 12 only 3.

[Barlow]

1 minute ago, Roger Mexico said:

I suspect it may have stabilised, remember that half the population has been born off-Island according to the Censuses for quite some time.  That percentage will be higher among adults.  Of the youngest 12 MHKs, 7 were born on-Island, of the older 12 only 3.

Aye, your analysis looks good. But it's all about those that want to govern.

I could not imagine setting up in another country and then feeling that for some reason that country needs me to be part of its parliament.

It's odd.

Well, I suppose that is democracy.

[Roger Mexico]

We've finally got the official electorates and other turnout-related data for the election, though according to Gef, it only emerged after Ian Kermode made an FoI request to get them.  A country where you need FoI to get basic information about elections.  It's not a good look is it?

Gef headline their report with the fact that overall turnout was down from 53% to 51%[1].  On a constituency basis the figures and change on 2016 are:

Three constituencies had a rise - most notably Douglas South and the drop in Ramsey stands out among the rest.  

 

[1]  Note that my figures will differ slightly from theirs and the Cabinet Office's as I include spoilt votes in my turnout calculation while they exclude them.  My definition is the same as that used by the House of Commons Library ("Turnout calculated by Total vote turnout (incl. postal votes rejected and votes rejected at the count)") and makes sense when you consider that those who spoil their votes have still turned up at the polling station to do so.  In practice it doesn't make much difference - less than 100 votes in total were rejected this time (probably - we still don't have the A&M spoilt votes).

Edited November 15, 2021 by Roger Mexico
Exclude not include

[Sheldon]

6 minutes ago, offshoremanxman said:

Douglas South showing the “Cretney Effect” of an increase in voters as he forced all his relatives out to vote for his daughter.

I was in two minds earlier whether to post this, but the timely segue was too much to resist. Apologies in advance to those who might be offended by my hijacking of a hijacking.

In a week when Harry and Meghan have been taken to task for publishing a load of pictures of themselves attending a Remembrance event in the US, and "making it all about them", I was happy to observe that nobody here had made that same mistake. Not even Josem. Then this popped up on my Facebook feed.

 

[cissolt]

1 hour ago, Roger Mexico said:

We've finally got the official electorates and other turnout-related data for the election, though according to Gef, it only emerged after Ian Kermode made an FoI request to get them.  A country where you need FoI to get basic information about elections.  It's not a good look is it?

Gef headline their report with the fact that overall turnout was down from 53% to 51%[1].  On a constituency basis the figures and change on 2016 are:

Three constituencies had a rise - most notably Douglas South and the drop in Ramsey stands out among the rest.  

 

[1]  Note that my figures will differ slightly from theirs and the Cabinet Office's as I include spoilt votes in my turnout calculation while they include them.  My definition is the same as that used by the House of Commons Library ("Turnout calculated by Total vote turnout (incl. postal votes rejected and votes rejected at the count)") and makes sense when you consider that those who spoil their votes have still turned up at the polling station to do so.  In practice it doesn't make much difference - less than 100 votes in total were rejected this time (probably - we still don't have the A&M spoilt votes).

Why did it need an FOI? Shouldn't this be published?

[Roger Mexico]

35 minutes ago, offshoremanxman said:

Douglas South showing the “Cretney Effect” of an increase in voters as he forced all his relatives out to vote for his daughter.

Probably not.  The turnout at the by-election was 40%, equal to the previous election (and that's very unusual it's usually a lot less) and that was a Cretney-free event.  I suspect you're crediting the old man with more influence than he has (as does he).

[Roger Mexico]

13 minutes ago, cissolt said:

Why did it need an FOI? Shouldn't this be published?

I think they were just slow - they've published it after previous elections - and the FoI was kicking them into action.  But the electorate numbers in particular should have been available almost immediately.

[Omobono]

45 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

Probably not.  The turnout at the by-election was 40%, equal to the previous election (and that's very unusual it's usually a lot less) and that was a Cretney-free event.  I suspect you're crediting the old man with more influence than he has (as does he).

No sign  of the Cretney effect  at Sundays Douglas armistice service and  of the other labour MHK and the labourites on the Douglas council couldn't even turn  out  up pay respect to the fallen in their own community and support the mayor and council , at the Church service    , being elected is not all about silly photographs  and  column inches on the facebook pages , people need to actually see you at some of these important community events .after all you are supposed to be representing them 

[Declan]

2 hours ago, Sheldon said:

I was in two minds earlier whether to post this, but the timely segue was too much to resist. Apologies in advance to those who might be offended by my hijacking of a hijacking.

In a week when Harry and Meghan have been taken to task for publishing a load of pictures of themselves attending a Remembrance event in the US, and "making it all about them", I was happy to observe that nobody here had made that same mistake. Not even Josem. Then this popped up on my Facebook feed.

 

Damned if you do. 

1 hour ago, Omobono said:

No sign  of the Cretney effect  at Sundays Douglas armistice service and  of the other labour MHK and the labourites on the Douglas council couldn't even turn  out  up pay respect to the fallen in their own community and support the mayor and council , at the Church service    , being elected is not all about silly photographs  and  column inches on the facebook pages , people need to actually see you at some of these important community events .after all you are supposed to be representing them 

Damned if you don’t. 

[The Voice of Reason]

49 minutes ago, Declan said:

Damned if you do. 

Damned if you don’t. 

Exactly. Hardly inappropriate.
 

In fact good on them for highlighting the contribution these animals made in these conflicts.

If they hadn’t done it nobody else would