Have select committee chair elections got more competitive? 

Since 2010, the chairs of most Home of Commons choose committees have been elected by MPs. On this submit, Tom Fleming explores current strategies that these elections have turn into extra aggressive. Outcomes from 5 rounds of elections counsel a extra difficult image. 

MPs elected the chairs of most Home of Commons choose committees in September. One glorious abstract of these elections has raised the attention-grabbing prospect that they could have turn into extra aggressive over time. This issues, as a result of choose committee chairs are influential and distinguished figures, with a number one function in parliamentary scrutiny of ministers. That makes it necessary to know the method by which MPs win these positions. This blogpost due to this fact takes a more in-depth take a look at the outcomes of chair elections since they have been launched in 2010. 

How do these elections work? 

In the beginning of every new parliament, elections are held underneath Standing Order No. 122B to decide on the chairs of (presently) 26 choose committees: 20 ‘departmental’ choose committees and 6 others (Environmental Audit, Petitions, Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs, Public Accounts, Process, and Requirements).  

Earlier than these elections, the chair positions are distributed between the events. Within the present parliament, Labour have been allotted 18 of the 26 chairs, the Conservatives 5, and the Liberal Democrats three. Because of this for every committee, solely MPs from one specified occasion can turn into candidates for its chair. Nevertheless, MPs of all events can nonetheless vote within the election to decide on amongst these candidates. 

The elections are held utilizing the Different Vote system. This implies MPs quantity the candidates so as of desire, with 1 indicating their first alternative, 2 their second, and so forth. They’ll listing a desire for as many or as few candidates as they need. If a candidate wins greater than half the first-preference votes, they’re elected. If not, the candidate with the fewest first preferences is eradicated, and their second-preference votes are redistributed among the many remaining candidates. This means of eliminating candidates and redistributing their lower-order preferences continues till a candidate secures a majority of the votes. 

Additional elections may also occur throughout a parliament if an incumbent chair resigns, ceases to be an MP, or is subjected to a vote of no confidence by their committee. Nevertheless, this blogpost focuses solely on the preliminary elections at first of every parliament. It additionally excludes elections for the chair of the Backbench Enterprise Committee, as these occur each session, and underneath barely totally different guidelines. 

What’s the proof to date? 

Summarising this 12 months’s elections, Marc Geddes and Stephen Holden Bates highlighted a number of indicators of their competitiveness. First, there have been stories of some MPs being annoyed by candidates’ intense electioneering efforts and the quantity of marketing campaign literature they acquired. Second, the authors present that an unusually low variety of chairs have been elected unopposed (and, conversely, an unusually excessive variety of positions have been contested). They define a lot of components which could have contributed to this sample, together with the low variety of incumbent chairs in search of re-election. 

The rest of this blogpost examines two additional measures of competitiveness for every set of elections since 2010: what number of candidates took half, and the way shut the outcomes have been. 

Numbers of candidates 

The competitiveness of an election will be influenced by the variety of candidates collaborating in it. At one excessive, an election with a single candidate just isn’t aggressive in any respect: the result’s a foregone conclusion, decreasing the candidate’s incentive to commit effort and time to campaigning. However as further candidates be part of the race, there could also be extra uncertainty over who will win, and larger stress on candidates to out-campaign a extra crowded subject of rivals. 

There are a number of methods to calculate the variety of candidates collaborating in every spherical of choose committee elections. Desk 1 exhibits the imply and median variety of candidates. The imply (i.e. common) is calculated by dividing the entire variety of candidates by the entire variety of committees. However as this determine will be overly pushed by excessive outliers, the desk additionally exhibits the median: the quantity within the center after we listing every committee from the smallest variety of candidates to the biggest.  

These figures don’t present any clear pattern towards a bigger variety of MPs standing for election as choose committee chairs. The median variety of candidates in 2024 was two, simply as in all different earlier rounds besides 2017. The imply quantity was barely larger than that for 2017 and 2019, however – to a bigger diploma – decrease than that for 2010 and 2015. 

To provide a fuller sense of the patterns underlying these abstract statistics, Desk 2 exhibits the quantity and proportion of elections in every parliament with totally different numbers of candidates.   

This echoes the sooner proof that 2024 noticed a report low variety of chairs going uncontested: simply seven out of 26 (Geddes and Holden Bates put this at eight out of 27, presumably because of together with the Backbench Enterprise Committee). Nevertheless, these elections which have been really contested noticed comparatively small fields of candidates. Greater than half – 14 of 26 – had solely two candidates. This can be a larger quantity (and proportion) than in any earlier parliament. Against this, solely 5 elections featured greater than two candidates, which is similar as in 2019, however barely decrease than in 2017 and significantly decrease than in 2010 and 2015. The clearest distinction is with 2015, which had 11 races with a minimum of three candidates, and solely three with simply two candidates. In comparison with earlier years, due to this fact, the 2024 elections noticed extra contests, however with fewer candidates coming into these contests. 

Successful margins 

Election winners’ margin of victory is a doubtlessly extra necessary indicator of competitiveness than the easy variety of candidates. Whereas every further candidate could eat right into a front-runner’s help, there is no such thing as a assure that they’ll. In some conditions it might be apparent that these further candidates pose no actual menace to the anticipated front-runner(s). For example this, think about the flock of novelty candidates who often stand within the constituencies contested by the Prime Minister and different occasion leaders at common elections. Whereas this will increase the variety of candidates, nobody severely anticipated Keir Starmer’s bid for re-election in Holborn and St. Pancras to be harmed by Bobby ‘Elmo’ Smith (19 votes) or Nick the Unbelievable Flying Brick (162 votes). Against this, a contest might contain simply two candidates but be gained by a really slender margin. Specializing in the margin of victory can thus assist us to know how shut every contest got here to being gained by a special candidate. 

Desk 3 exhibits the imply and median profitable margins in contested choose committee chair elections since 2010. That is calculated because the hole in votes between the profitable and second-placed candidates. In instances the place no candidate secured a majority of first-preference votes, this determine relies on the ultimate stage of redistributing lower-order preferences. Desk 3 stories these margins when it comes to the uncooked variety of votes somewhat than in percentages, provided that the variety of MPs, and due to this fact of (potential) voters in these elections, didn’t change throughout this era. Whereas in Desk 2 bigger numbers indicated extra aggressive elections, the reverse is true right here: decrease numbers point out smaller profitable margins, i.e. nearer election outcomes.  

This exhibits that committee chairs elected in 2024 did usually win by narrower margins than their counterparts in 2019 (with medians of 98 and 121, respectively). Certainly, this 12 months noticed the narrowest profitable margin but, with Patricia Ferguson profitable the election for the Scottish Affairs Committee by simply two votes (237 to 235). This beat the earlier report of three votes, set by the 2010 election for chair of the Communities and Native Authorities Committee. 

Nonetheless, taking an extended perspective, Desk 3 additionally presents additional indicators that the 2024 elections have been much less aggressive than the 2010 and 2015 elections. Each the imply and – extra markedly – the median profitable margins have been narrower in these elections than the equal figures for this 12 months. 

Abstract 

Total then, 2024 didn’t point out any easy pattern in direction of extra aggressive choose committee elections (a minimum of on the metrics used right here). The variety of candidates collaborating within the choose committee elections total was similar to the earlier two rounds of elections, and was decrease than in 2015 and 2010. There’s a comparable sample in a extra helpful indicator of competitiveness: the margins of victory for profitable candidates. These have been barely smaller in 2024 than in 2019, however nonetheless clearly bigger than in 2015 and – much more so – 2010. So even when there was a slight enhance in competitiveness in comparison with the final spherical of elections, that is within the context of a longer-term fall in competitiveness. 

This 12 months’s elections did see a really low variety of uncontested elections. However this got here alongside a longer-term decline within the variety of contests that includes greater than two candidates. Placing these two developments collectively, probably the most distinctive function of those elections could have been simply what number of of them have been solely two-horse races. 

Concerning the creator

Tom Fleming is a Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics at UCL. He’s presently main the Unit’s ESRC-funded challenge ‘The Politics of Parliamentary Process’. 

Featured picture: Cat Smith MP (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by UK Parliament.