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Surprise results I found as an election Count Agent
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- Опубліковано 11 лип 2024
- Count Binface is on tour around the UK in September and October 2024. Details and tickets here: www.aegpresent... Channel Binface here: / @realcountbinface
Tickets for An Evening of Unnecessary Detail NYC (and other London shows) here: festivalofthes...
This is the website I scraped the election data from: whocanivotefor...
But as of around 12 July 2024 it will be officially available here: commonslibrary...
This is the polling data website I talk about: www.thisvoteco...
Thanks to all the candidates who took time to help make these videos: Tom Wilson, Dave Rowntree and Count Binface. Plus all the many people who during a long night working at the counting centre, still kindly chatted with me and answered my questions.
Huge thanks to my Patreon supporters. Without them I wouldn't be first past the post. / standupmaths
CORRECTIONS
- None yet, let me know if you spot anything!
Filming by Matt Parker
Additional footage by the Count Binface Party
Editing by Gus Melton
Written and performed by Matt Parker
Produced by Nicole Jacobus
Music by Howard Carter
Design by Simon Wright and Adam Robinson
MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician
Website: standupmaths.com/
US book: www.penguinran...
UK book: mathsgear.co.u...
Thanks for asking me on Matt! Lovely to meet you (and the Count) at the count on what was a very very long night for both of us. Your next challenge is trying to explain the maths of how MRP polling projections work.
Great insider peek, so appreciated.
As someone directly related to a Tom Wilson, I was stoked when I saw the name on the candidate list! Thank you for helping make democracy happen, and good luck for the future! 👍🇦🇺
I was really tempted to ask Matt if he could explain how the exit pole predictions are calculated, if he knows? They were quite dramatically wrong this time.
I'm gonna keep myself anon on yt but was stoked to support you this election, and wish you the best in your future political career :)
This may seem obvious but if you know the PM can you not get him to change the football road signs?!
So close, if only Labour, Lib Dems, Reform and Greens hadn't split the Binface vote.
So true 😅😂
That's one way to look at it, the right way!
Professional counter and first-time count agent recounts his account of counting the count's counts, thus making sure every vote counts.
that's seven counts, but who's counting
@@necr0mancrr But does "counter" count? On account of the "count-" I think "counter" counts.
I knew I could count on him
Hopefully the count made sure to vote, too.
Change “gives” to “recounts”! He recounts his account!!
"It's not good footage" just as Rishi Sunak strolls through the shot. Nice.
2:28
@@yogeshsingla131 Ironically, that timestamp just says "good footage"
I went back twice to make sure I was seeing that right.
HadToDoItToEm
why do people not like him? i am american, so i am not familiar with UK politics
I love the tradition of having all the candidates gather at the count. It will never not be funny for the PM to have to stand on the same stage as Count Binface.
Politics isn't a show it leads to sometimes bad outcomes for the population when the wrong people get power and the wrong policies are implemented, you can see that now in Southport and all over the country.
@@thedave7760 . Ha ha ha, too funny for words....
Politics is all show and theatre, opinions are as many as the populace.
Right and wrong on this subject are all normalistic...
I do want to point out that "the only paper I have on me happens to be a hexagon" is the most on brand expected thing I've heard.
Pentagons not hexagons, that would be ridiculous!
pentagons
And "I wrote some terrible Python code to scrape the data"
Am I insane or did he say pentagon
Pentagon papers
I knew they were running in the same constituency, but seeing the previous prime minister in the same room as someone dressed as a trash bin was quite surreal.
Is there any way we could get Binface on the US presidential ballet? I do feel like, with the current contestants, he would have a real shot.
@@An_Attempt Donnie Dimwit gets 40% vs anything from Biden to Binface to a bag of hammers. I just thank FSM that it's not a majority!
@@An_AttemptI know a lot of people who will be voting for the independent Robert Kennedy this election, simply because they're fed up with both the Democrats and the Republicans. 😊
@@An_Attempt For what it's worth, the role of US president can only be held by citizens born in the US.
This requirement has held back some people who might otherwise have had a shot at winning, like former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
@@cmmartti Minor correction: "Natural-born citizens". Schwarzenegger is a US citizen but he was naturalised and not a natural-born citizen.
This has got to be the first time in Matt's life where he wandered into an event and just hung out for a couple hours before the thought occurred, "Hey, I should be doing some math." Binface must have been horrified at hearing this story
he then jots down 4 numbers, averages the ratio and misses the exact count by 9 votes .... probably redeeming himself :D
@@andytroo Only Matt 🤣 I am impressed (concerned?) at the lack of guidance given around what he was meant to be doing as a 'count agent'
@@Baiswith I assume that is not their official duty and just a new way to get more information more quickly.
@@andytrooEven as sampling for small percentages is notoriously difficult.
Part of why the Lib Dem vote translated into seats so efficiently is tactical voting. In general, supporters of Labour and the Lib Dems were happy to vote for each other in order for 1 of the pair to win. That means that normally, you'd ONLY VOTE FOR the Lib Dems if they had a strong chance of winning. In contrast, supporters of the Conservatives and Reform are often sick of the other party and wouldn't consider switching. Therefore they tended to compete with each other, often both losing when one of them could have won.
Plus the Lib Dems explicitly campaigned on the basis of that strategic voting
I think 'happy' is a bit of an overstatement. More 'reluctantly willing'. While there are certainly voters who don't really identify as Labour or Lib Dem and are indeed happy to vote for either, there's also a fairly surprising amount of bad blood between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Generally in my experience the more involved someone is with one of the two parties, the more likely they are to strongly dislike the other.
This has been more obvious in past elections, where both parties have campaigned fairly hard in seats where they were in a very definite in third place. The amount of tactical voting this election was kind of anomalous, which is why the vote->seat conversion of both Labour and the Lib Dems was so much more efficient than it has been in the past.
Which is why we are trying to adopt STAR voting whero I live, because it would let people vote for the parties and candidates they actually support, not the ones they think are most likely to win.
A similar pattern happened in the last Australian federal election where Conservative-lite independents targeted a small number of previously well held conservative seats and won, then in other seats became a spoiler that split the conservative vote which helped another party to get more seats.
@@BadatTanking In Australia splitting the vote only matters if the further down preferences aren't consistent so you're never really splitting the vote.
I cannot comprehend how someone could vote for the Tories over Binface.
His stance on Ceefax alone should be enough to convince anyone over the age of 35.
Must have been a misclick
I cannot comprehend how someone could vote for the Tories.
One is throwing your vote in the bin and the other is voting for a bin.
Don't worry, the truth is millions of people were kicked in the head by a horse on election night. @@Enaiarr
I've worked on several election counts, and I found the rigour and transparency of the process hugely reassuring for my faith in democracy. Just gutted that I was working in the wrong part of Yorkshire to meet you and the Count at the count!
Too bad people casting their vote are the weakest link.
@@JGnLAU8OAWF6 Not really, that's a good sign. It means the only way to influence an election is to change people's minds
@@mtk77621 yes, absolutely no way. Not a single thing comes to mind. For the last century the wins were split between labour and tories. This feels like an entirely organic result. Nothing to worry about. This is a good sign.
@@ThePlacehole Absolutely. As a 51yo who didn't vote Labour and who has never voted Labour - this election is still a good sign that democracy in our country is alive and well.
@@mtk77621 BS. The only thing that can 'change' minds are media, that are totally by coincidence owned by tory ultra rich buddies, that brainwash them instead. Great idea!
Your explanation of Libdem vs Reform vote share is so good. Makes it clear why they got so many more seats.
Libdem took advantage of the FPTP system brilliantly. They positioned themselves as the anti-Conservative vote in constituencies where the population hated the Tories, but not enough to vote Labour. Meanwhile, all Reform was doing was just splitting the conservative vote. Of course, ranked-choice is better and much fairer though, and you can understand the Reform voters' frustrations
@@Ramboost007 Their two parties also had different aims in mind:
The Lib Dems are old hands at the game. They already had a basis to work from, with party structures in place, results of previous elections to go on, etc. Therefore they targeted specific seats they calculated they had a chance to win.
Reform, on the other hand, had none of that. There was little party structure to be pushing leaflets through doors, thus their campaign was largely social-media based and more broad brush in approach. Their intention was not so much to win lots of seats, rather to get a few key players into Parliament, establish a voter base and to punish the Tories for reneging on the deal that saw Reform (as the Brexit Party) step down from seats to benefit the Tories in 2018.
@@Ramboost007 ranked choice barely changes outcomes.
@@Ramboost007 Reform had a strategic victory in destroying the do-nothing Cons & hopefully Reform can surge next election
While the argument that the campaign strategies depend on the rules of the vote is fair, I was hoping for a comment on how FPTP system affects the power balance and the politics themselves. The stance felt quite one-sided. Then again, this is a math channel and not a political one, so it's probably better to stay away from that as much as possible.
9:48 Loving the footage and photos where soon-to-be-just-another-MP Rishi Sunak gets to be in the same frame as Count Binface
And Count Binface got all the media attention
Too bad Liarmer already confirmed he will keep 90% of most important policies of that scumbag, including whitewashing genocide and economy for the ultra rich only...
@@theelmonk as he deserves
Excellent video. For years now I've been a candidate, election agent and counting agent for the Green Party.
The tallying you describe yes is done for finding out if your candidate is winning or not, but also it's done to find out how well each candidate has done in each polling district. The verification is done ballot box by ballot box (IE polling district by polling district). That's when the tallying happens. After the verification is finished, the votes are then mixed together so we can no longer tell where each of the votes came from. It is useful for knowing where your support is and where you might want to work harder to get your vote up.
In Australia, the votes are published on "by polling place" basis, so you get to see trends. The ABC (BBC equivalent) employs a man that Matt should one day interview, Antony Green, who then has the ability, on election night, to take early results from individual polling places and extrapolate out to get results, he also has "moles" inside the main parties to feed him early data from during the count
Indeed - former counting agent for the Conservatives and then an Independent candidate here. The count is pretty much the *only time* candidates can assess how their *actual votes* were distributed within the geographical constituency. To do it well you ideally have one counting agent identifying and sampling each polling station. You can then target your efforts for the next election to increase / maximise support.
@@chrismarkhill at least one. For local elections we have at least 4 per polling district in each of our target seats. But it is easier for council elections because they don't really verify more than 1 or 2 polling districts at the same time for each seat.
Worth mentioning that even despite the LDs' 72 seats, they still have fewer than they'd have got if seats were properly proportional
Also something people seem to have forgotten is that the Tories redrew all the boundary lines when they were in their first coalition with Lib Dems, to change the voting block in favour of the conservatives. Now the system isn't working for them, they want to overhaul it.
It would be funny if it wasn't genuinely concerning, especially seeing how many votes Reform UK got. This country is fucked.
Proportional representation is a terrible system.
@@michaelsommers2356 No, it's the only fair system, where your voted actually counts. In a first-past-the-post system, why even bother going to vote if you live in a district dominated by another party. That's basically saying, screw you and your opinions, they do not count.
Change starts in Small increments. Even if only a couple people in each district vote for a new party, adding those up from the whole country could result in 1 or perhaps 2 seats. And those can make a difference and perhaps start some bigger change.
@@goldenghostincPR gives power to party bureaucracies and enables fringe parties. I'd prefer AV but we're not getting that.
And safe seats don't inevitably stay safe. Look at Oxfordshire...
The only change we need is AV, which we fucked up in 2011 by believing the propaganda from Labour and Conservatives who stood to lose their top billing.
I counted 53 Counts - 50 by Matt.
0:05
0:08
0:20
0:22
0:23
1:12
1:18
1:32
1:44
1:49
1:52
1:54
2:00
2:15
2:31
2:33
2:42
2:49
3:05
3:12
3:28
3:40
3:44
3:52
3:57
4:00
4:03
4:27
4:36
4:38
5:07
5:10
5:20
5:22
5:28
6:02
6:16
6:22
7:54
7:56
7:57
9:18*
9:58
10:20
10:40
12:08
12:58
17:09
17:10
22:08
22:16*
22:18*
22:31
23:18
23:39
23:45
Wow
That's dedication to a bit that I do not possess. Fair play.
Jumping from one to the next leads to an odd count centralised video sped up to ridiculousness
I'm happy that you didn't have any trouble posting this, YT has had an itchy trigger finger when it comes to a large amount of timestamps recently.
👏wow👏
You are dedicated to the counting of counts.
I was a vote agent for the labour party this year. Sampling the vote is less about estimating the overall result (we'll know that soon anyway), but more knowing the local data for each polling station.
These data let us know the topology of our support and where to concentrate our efforts in future campaigns
I am not a native English speaker, and I was wondering the entire time what Count Bin Face had to do with counting and some kind of binface, whatever that is lol, eventhough he clearly looked like a robot mimic. Until I realized he is a Count that has a Bin as his face. :facepalm:
😂
It's even more confusing because the UK doesn't have counts: it has earls.
also he is a (satirical) candidate one can vote for
I think he used to be called Lord Buckethead but had to change his name (maybe because there was a copyrighted TV character with a similar name or something like that).
I've counted votes too a couple of times. Good times all around. Mainly city council elections in Finland, so relatively small, but still thousands and thousands of votes of course.
The 'voting constituency' sizes in Finland usually vary from 1,000 to 2,500 voters in municipal elections (yes smaller municipalities may elect to have only a single consituency and hence might have more voters in the single consituency -- but larger cities tend to favour smaller constituency sizes). And with the rate of prevoting roughly at 50%, the local consituency election boards will be counting roughly 500 to 1,250 votes during the election day counts.
I've been personally counting votes a few times in Helsinki (all types of counts: municipal, parliament, presidential, and EU) -- and my gut feeling is that there were usually more than 1,000 vote slips -- but never as much as 2,000 slips --- to be counted. The municipal votes are the most annoying ones -- with more than 1,000 candidates in Helsinki the number of vote slip piles is huge and hence the amount of table space required is also pretty big...
@@anttilehtoranta3152 For the last part: Would having shelves instead help? I realize there's possible logistical problems with carrying them, but they wouldn't have to be massive and sturdy.
@@anttilehtoranta3152Slight nitpick: the constituencies (vaalipiiri in Finnish) for all municipal elections in Finland are always the whole municipality.
All but the smallest municipalities are likely to have multiple polling stations though, and the initial election night count for votes cast at each polling station happens at that polling station itself.
(Advance votes are counted at central locations in each municipality, iirc during election day, but their results are not released until slightly after the polling stations close)
I can see why Matt likes COUNT Binface so much
Outside the Count Room: Everyone's vote counts
Inside the Count Room: Everyone counts votes
I know Matt was a teacher but seeing him in a suit and a landyard really shows it 😂
Matt I have helped at elections here in Australia. I found it to be a amazing expirence. i was proud to see how pleasent everyone was and how well the count was run. I am glad that you had the oppertunity to do the same.
Did you do AEC work or party representative work?
I've done AEC and ECQ (Queensland state equivalent) a few times. It's such good fun!
I was there as a party representative. So I wasn’t one of the counting officials, but I did see a lot of the work they did. I was impressed by how they made sure every vote was made fairly and counted accurately. It may feel very glad I was in a country but took the counting process so seriously.
@@Asher0208yet constant questions about going electronic, and why do we use pencils, and why are the cardboard ballot boxes really secure....
There is always room for some improvement, but really.. If it ain't broke, don't fix it
@@Asher0208 and agree, I've worked for the AEC and VEC, And as a party scrutineer, the people on all sides of politics and those who work officially, are all lovely people and just want a fair election and count
Please send a copy of the binface leaflet to the university of Bristol elections archive!
+1
Maths aside, seeing Matt Parker walking down the same high street I drive down not too infrequently (and used to walk down on my breaks while at college), past a shop I used to work at, and standing next to a pool I used to swim in, is just... weird. Like "oh, hey, I know that place, I was there last w-... WHAT IS HE DOING THERE?!!" 🤣
Last video I had a similar reaction when I learned he lives like 10 mins away from me 😂
Haha I was thinking the same thing
That swimming pool looks so nice
I used to swim there as a teenager (1988-1990) because I used to go to school in Thirsk. Back in Dewsbury at 50. Ah well.
I saw the Cooplands in the background and immediately, nostalgia hit me a like a truck
15:33 Lol @ saying views instead of votes, classic UA-cam
Even Matt isn't immune to the UA-cam brain rot
At least he didn't say watch time.
Perhaps Matt is proposing replacing First Past the Post with an electoral system based on UA-cam views? MrBeast for PM?
That’s what I get for commenting without reading ALL of the other comments… the part of my brain that spots anomalies and errors even when I’m definitely not even trying to couldn’t resist adding a comment about it… but of course, I’m not going to be the only one of Matt’s viewers with that kind of brain 😊
Never would have expected Niko and Stand-up Maths to be in the same room
Preferential voting is the obvious first step before worrying about proportional systems.
Speaking as a Liberal Democrat you have described it perfectly; whereas previously we had done Proportional Representation Campaigns, but this time we were doing a FPTP Campaign. If you were in a Target Seat you saw a lot of Liberal Democrat coverage, whereas in non-Target Seats it was down to the Local Candidate to run their own campaign. This is why we achieved a much greater success than we have done previously.
While I do agree with you, it did go wrong in my seat as we got hit with many more LibDem flyers when Labour were much better placed to win (came 2nd). The LibDem candidate came 4th behind Reform and Cons retained a safe seat even though their vote was split.
@marcosmith6613 That's Democracy for you, I don't know how the Party selected their Target Seats fully; but, the fact that as a Party we went from 15 seats to 72 showed that the policy worked. Now the aim will be to build upon it moving forward.
Having worked in U.S. politics for a couple of decades now myself, this video is a delight. Thanks Matt, and congrats to Count Binface on his record night!
Great to know who was behind Count Binface
He put the count in count binface
I love that shot of Rishi Sunak doing a double-take when he spots Count Binface, hilarious.
The tally is also to get an idea of the vote breakdown in each ward of the constituency as this is not officially recorded. Specific wards may have been targeted with leafletting and canvassing.
You should also plot those Lib Dem results against the Labour ones. Both parties shared their votes very efficiently
First-past-the-post has all sorts of problems causing people to vote against their preferred candidates and reinforces the top two across elections. It can also lead to "spoilers" causing a split vote and unpopular candidates winning.
Yeah both UK and US have the FPTP voting system. But the US also has the electoral college, which means not everyone’s vote is worth the same. In the US, a theoretical party can win with only 22% of the popular vote (in a 2 party election, so the other party gets 78%)
@@techheck3358The electoral college doesn't actually increase this effect by much though, because while it does introduce some additional weights to some votes in theory, in practice a huge part of the problem is that it bundles votes together into smaller FPTP races which each delete a ton of votes for the losing candidates at that step (each state is generally winner takes all). That more important effect applies to the UK as well since the PM is selected by the Parliament and each seat in Parliament is a winner takes all, FPTP vote.
In fact, without a more sophisticated design any system that uses a tiered voting system like this empowers major parties and functions as a more or less 2 party system, even in Australia there's some minor party influence due to proportional voting but the minor parties have very little sway in Parliament for exactly the same reason - you can proportionally vote for your local candidate but each seat is then winner takes all once decided, and at a national level that winds up functioning like FPTP and results in 2 dominant parties (our senate is somewhat more directly proportionate so minor parties actually have more power in the senate here)
In NZ we use MMP, which is sort of a hybrid of national proportional and FPTP. Basically half the seats are standard FPTP electorate seats. The other half are then split between the parties that achieve at least 5% of the national vote so that it most closely matches that national proportion.
This means a couple things:
-First, we get two votes. A local MP vote, and a national vote.
-Second, minor parties have a distinct advantage in getting into parliment if they go all out on one electorate focusing on local issues. Meanwhile large parties are forced to fucus on the nation as a whole or they could lose the popular vote and thus the election.
-Third, to win the election you must hold more than 50% of the seats or lead a coalition of parties that does.
Its not a perfect system, but it means we get a more balanced government (currently 6 different parties) and forced compromise amongst the winners to consider multiple view points.
@@anthonyhovens7488 Thank you for that, most interesting.
@@anthonyhovens7488 I don't think it is much better than first past the post. Because you only really get one vote. Which you have to use tactically to achieve representation in your district.
Aka. It may still be worth it to go vote in a secure seat unlike in FPTP, but that is it. It is just a liable to squeeze out small parties, spoiler parties, and tactical voting as FPTP.
9:50- Sunak's face is just priceless here, eyes of incredulity glued to that big ol binhead.
I love the names on the example ballet box. I personally support dusty boots.
Earl Grey is clearly the superior candidate 😔
@@Tombsar Robin Hood is obviously stealing the show here!
Windy Miller from the Alternative Power Forum 😂
@@LeafHuntress Yeah stealing from the people. He is a socialist and what he is doing is clearly corrupt and illegal
Pentagonal paper for the civil service should be a policy on Count Binface's 2029 manifesto!
I think the difference of vote distribution between LibDems and Reform is not only about campaign strategy and "focusing effort" - it's likely also how the potential voters is distributed across the country. While you can focus your campaign spending to specific locations, voters generally won't move to locations where their preferred party has a chance (and can't even do so in the time the election was announced). (And to a lesser degree, your party volunteers are also mostly going to campaign near where they live.)
Another factor is that the Lib Dems are a long established party with activists around the country, whereas Reform is a limited private company with no structure and no real membership base - to the extent that there are questions over whether some of the candidates they fielded actually exist, as there are no photos of them on their campaign materials, they didn't attend the hustings or the count, and they have no digital footprint at all. (There are, at the time of writing, somewhere between 50 and 100 that are being considered as suspect, although further investigation could well find that many of them are real people who agreed to have their name on the ballot paper but had no intention of actually doing anything for it).
Or any intention of being able to afford their manifesto, sorry “contract” promises.
It’s easy to throw shade at policy makers when you have no risk of having to follow up
@@luelou8464 And vice versa with LibDem voters switching to Labour in other districts. This amplifies both the highs and the lows for both parties.
@@stevieinselby- considering Reform had only 6 weeks to get organised that’s not surprising. But then again, yes it is.
Sorry Count Binface didn't win
Binface for the president
That's what happens when you run against the contents of a bin
The Candalorian
Yet from the vote announcement the count gives... count them... two victory hand gestures. To me, the real winner here
The Reform vs LibDems plot is so good. Shows so clearly how the different strategies were borne out and how they affected the results.
Thank you for dedicating your time and effort to the process of democracy!
Congratulations! You are the only commentator I've heard making the pointbthat you can only evaluate results in the terms under which the election was conducted.
As a non-Brit, I was shocked to learn that your new PM took office the day after the election. I genuinely did not think that kind of speed was possible.
29 hours or so from poles open to new PM :D
The executive here has a lot less bureaucracy around them, and the opposition already has a cabinet formed, so there's not that much to do for them to start running the show.
That works because the PM is not the head of state. The PM represents Parliament to the head of state.
@@teebob21 While it is technically correct (the best kind of correct!) that the PM is not the head of state of the UK, they kind-of *are* the head of state in every way which matters. (By convention, the monarch never exercises any of their theoretical powers and does not have any part in the day-to-day running of the country.) If a different party is elected, the entire political side of the government has to change during those ~29 hours. (As opposed to the non-politically-appointed administrators, who are permanent employees and don't lose their jobs immediately after an election.) And I think it's reasonable to say that that's impressively fast (and/or chaotic) compared to other countries.
The snail-like pace of the election system across the pond never ceases to amaze me. 🤦
World’s richest and most hitech economy and it often takes a month to determine a binding result for a seat.
I have been a "Count Agent" in Australia several times. We call them "Scrutineers" here. Our preferential system means there's a lot more to look at. Sometimes a party's observers want to tally not vote totals but the preference flow rate from parties that will be excluded.
While I think your point on "Reform wouldn't necessarily win more seats than Lib Dem under a different system" is true I would make the point that the current UK system is quite strange. It would be better if the system incentivised parties to treat all votes as equally valuable rather than votes in winnable/marginal constituencies being very high value whereas everywhere else is basically only for show. PR could help improve party politics.
I live in Australia. We do preferential voting. You number all the boxes with your preferences 1 to 5 or however many candidates are running.
Unfortunately Australia has compulsory voting which means that you have to use all 4 or 5 preferences even if you cannot stand some of the parties. Consequently you are obliged by law to vote for people you detest. If they dropped the compulsion then Australia would have a very good system.
@@telhudson863 yeah, if you don't use all those preferences, your vote is considered invalid
@@erkinalp That unfortunately is the point. I've used preferential voting many times (my political party uses it for internal elections) and the rules always were, "Give preference until you don't care and then stop." Most people don't use all their votes and it is very important that they are allowed to do this. Forcing people to give even a fifth preference to someone they don't want simply means that they lose respect for the political process.
The other effect of compulsion is the Aaron Aardvark vote, when voters simply write 1,2,3,.. down the ballot without reading it.
@@telhudson863 Don't you get some satisfaction from giving the party you "detest" the lowest number? Personally I try not to detest anyone, but I enjoy writing a number 1 next to the candidate I like and putting those I disagree with at the end of the numbering.
In theory ranked preference is a more expressive ballot. In practice it is a complicated mess.
I favor Approval Voting. Mark each candidate you approve of, candidate approved by the most voters wins.
You answered pretty much all of the random questions I had while watching the election counting. Always good to see how the process works at the ground level.
It's worth saying that as a longer-standing party with a local infrastructure in place, the lib dems were much more equipped to fight elections on a constituency basis than Reform did - Reform did put a lot of effort into the constituencies they had a chance of winning, but because of the way their support is distributed that wasn't very many
The vast majority of Reform candidates were "paper candidates" where they found virtually anonymous people (usually not from the constituency) and got them on the ballot with almost zero campaigning. Their only major pushes were in constituencies with candidates who were part of the inner circle of Farage PLC (aka Reform UK).
So their support was pretty shallow across the country but mostly consistent, whereas the Lib Dems had huge support in some seats, but almost nil in most of the others... which is a far better strategy for FPTP.
How does a new party know where it has a chance of winning? Market research?
@@eugenetswongAside from that, there is also polling and "reform" isn't completely new, will likely have old data from brexit party etc.
@@eugenetswong they also know who their target demographics are and then look where they live
@@eugenetswong the seats they were targeting are all seats where UKIP did particularly well, areas that voted heavily for Brexit, and largely ones the Tories held, as the Tories were expected to do badly so there were potentially more votes to take off them
A cheeky little Sunak sighting in there. Did he just...deflate as the evening progressed, or did he not stay long?
There's no way you could have access to all the apparatus of the State and not know you were going to lose that massively. Sunak knew he was going to lose before he even called the election.
But your assumption he'd "deflate" because of that is wrong, you're assuming he wanted to become Prime Minister, but instead it is more often the case these people become Prime Minister because they wanted to do something else afterwards, either the ego of doing it or what it leads to later on, such as vastly better paid positions. Although for Sunak it would actually be one of the first times a British person took a pay cut to become Prime Minister as previous leaders have generally worked their way up through Politics.
And for what it is worth I didn't see anything in the Media suggesting he slinked off at any point (besides presumably having to still answer the phone occasionally as he was still Prime Minister that night and stuff)
@@esmeecampbell7396 all of your points are well-taken, if ill-made.
@@HighKingTurgon I never claimed to be a professor of fancy language.
I'm just saying he definitely knew he was going to lose and this was never about that, either he wanted to do it to say he'd been PM and get his name in the history books or feel the power or whatever, or he was interested in how much more money he could make once leaving and he realised he'd been PM long enough to set up whatever that is.
I'm not talking tin foil hat conspiracy, I just mean all ex Prime Ministers tend to leave to become director of some American company and earn millions per year year if not month, hell even Nick Clegg got a job at Facebook...
@@esmeecampbell7396pretty sure you don't need to be fancy to understand that what you wrote sounds incredibly rude. But you do you man
Thankyou, for both a peak behind the curtain into (arguably) the most important part of our election process and a measured, sensible response to the proportional representation question
Part of me doesn't want to comment because there happens to be 615 comments right now, but oh well.
There's something really fitting about Count Binface's counting agent doing vote verification on random scraps of pentagon
Some people get to live in the future.
Fascinating stuff, Matt! Would love to see you do this again next year for the Australian Federal Election too! Maybe even try get Antony Green on as a guest to talk about the formulas he uses to always call the election first?
all that Count - count jokes... reminds me at the fourth Doctor saying "You can't count, Count!"
Damn, good times.
I'm so excited that you got a Count Binface rosette to wear the night of. I wasn't expecting it, and it really made me happy in your video.
Even if this is a result of campaigns accounting for regional representation instead of proportional representation, this is still strong evidence that regional rep is garbage and should be replaced by proportional rep for future elections.
In the US, the Electoral College forces candidates for President to campaign in many different places. If it didn't exist, candidates would only have to campaign in a few key cities. And the rest of us would be left wondering how we get some love.
@@major__kong Well yeah, those few key cities hold more population and worth than all the less developed regions. Why should they have a lesser say than rural folks? Regional representation is a joke and the UK is the only civilized country that still holds on to it. Although one could argue about the civilized part considering last 15 years.
Love the implication that the US isn't a civilized country. Probably true what with all the bonkers supreme court rulings lately.
@@major__kongBetter than electoral college where they only campaign in swing states. Texas, California, and New York (for example) get 0 attention but comprise a huge portion of the population. Making all votes equal is the best way to ensure candidates will try to campaign towards as many people as possible rather than just a small group that can swing the election.
Major cities aren't enough to win a popular, especially since campaigning in a city won't get you all the votes. If one candidate does as you say and the other campaigns widely, the second candidate has the advantage.
In fact, I think a popular vote would end the paradigm of campaigning for specific localities at all. Rather than focusing on regional issues, they would focus on national issues (which is desirable for a national position) and campaign primarily via mass channels (internet, television, radio) rather than local venues.
You can do both. MMP has a local representative as well as an overall proportional result. Or you can do STV and have _multiple_ local representatives (usually 3-6) in a relatively (but less-perfectly) proportional manner.
Interesting. In Norway we have a pre-voting, which can be done in any election district (mostly meant for students or people who are working away from home, but about 50% of those eligible to vote choose to do this) from about 2 months prior to the election day, up until two days before the election day. The preliminary results from this pre-election are released just after voting closes on the election day, and from then on, real time counting metrics are broadcast on the state broadcasting channel - and released realtime by the actual department of elections.
I recently had the chance to supervise a recount in a local election. My side had won by 37 votes out of over 6000. That's close, but not nearly close enough for the expense of a hand recount to make sense. But the other side had the right to demand it, so I oversaw the process as an observer from my side while the other side had their observers as well.
It was interesting watching how the votes were stored, tabulated, tracked, etc. In the end, there was a stack of about 16 votes that accidentally never went through the machine. Those split along the same trend as the rest of that precinct, so my side picked up a few votes. WAY too few to change anything even if they had gone the other way. Only a couple of other votes wete changed. 1 ballot was challenged (we won that, they double voted but wrote a note explaining it and the explanation made it clearly a yes). 1 ballot somehow got lost. Otherwise, only 1 or 2 that had been read blank by the machine were counted by hand.
Now if they did a machine recount with a hand count of only the ones read blank by the machine, it would have had the same result at a fraction of the cost. Modern machines are way too accurate for anything more than that to make sense unless you're down to just a handful of votes different in a election of that size.
In the end, we increased to 44 votes, meaning we get to fully find the schools. We increased from a large plurality of the electorate (after accounting for blanks) to a small majority. And the town wasted 10s of thousands of dollars.
Good luck finding those schools. They must be surprisingly easy to misplace.
If the result of a recount is that the people trusts the result, it's clearly worth it. Why does it cost so much to do a recount of 6000 votes anyway?
I remember the first 2 elections I was part of - lost by 32 and then by 11. When it's been your life for the last 6 weeks and your friends for the last 4 years, truat me 32 votes is worth a recount.
@@jonathancullis9155 The main reason it costs more for a full manual recount is that you're paying a load of people by the hour.
On the count that I was working on, with about 30,000 votes cast, we had 7 tables each with 8 counting staff and 2 supervisors, plus I don't know how many on the central accounting table. For verification, sorting and counting that lot, we took about 6 hours. Sure, for a recount, you don't have to go back to square 1 and verify them all again, but you're still looking at a lot of work.
No money was wasted. Election integrity is critical.
So pleased you learnt to pronounce Northallerton properly before you got there! 😀 Fascinating video, as ever, always wondered about the details of how this worked.
This was the most fun politics related video Ive watched in a long time, thank you so much Matt! All Hail Count Binface~
Its also made me feel way more confident in how our elections work, this does feel like a very good system~ I do wonder why we vote with pencils and not pens, though having count officers for every candidate and a checking of every spoiled ballot seems to do a great job of detering tempering
I think it is quite appropriate for an agent of the count would write on polygon shaped paper. Probabky the standard shape from the planet he is from.
"I'm a professional counter" sounds more expressional than to say "I'm a mathematician".
count binface sounds like it could be a villain for a kids show
hello checkmark guy
He used to run as Lord Buckethead, but had to change because he got hit with copyright issues because that _is_ a villain from a kids show.
There’s a candidate in my area running for President (USA) by the name of Vermin Supreme. No joke. Has a youtube channel and everything.
@@ahettinger525 Hyperspace (or Gremloids in the UK) was classified as PG by the British Board of Film Classification. Lord Buckethead ran against Count Binface in a receptacle-to-receptacle clash in 2019, in which Count Binface was utterly defeated.
Did not expect to see you here lol
It's really great to see people from different political affiliations coexisting, working together, and celebrating democracy. I'm sure November in the US will be the same.
"putting more effort into a smaller number of constituencies" is a perfect summary of politics in the UK
Very lucky prediction, given the small sample size.
Presumably (although after the fact) you could calculate a “confidence level” for your “back of the pentagon” estimate - in fact, I’m surprised that you haven’t… surely an ideal opportunity to get normal distribution curves and standard deviations out of the toolbox :-)
The reason that parties like to get people in to observe the count is (as I understand it) less to do with predicting the outcome before it is announced and more to do with obtaining data at a more granular level than that which is released to the public. By having observers tally the number of votes for their candidate from each ballot box they can obtain data which is useful for campaigning at the next election - achieving electoral success is a long game. Unfortunately this makes things even more unfair for new small parties because they find it hard to get enough people to observe all the counting tables so they are generally working with less data than their bigger/richer/more established rivals.
This is an interesting contrast for me, because in my country the data is published for each polling station's area, not just for each electoral district. The largest district is over a million people but the polling stations are usually 1000-3000 people I think, with only very few larger than that.
So that granular data at the level of a neighbourhood or part of a neighbourhood and down to each party and the (in my district) usually tens of candidates per party is all available publicly here.
Matt I got my copy of Love Triangle just last week (and having a signed book from you is awesome and so is the sydler print!) and I must say, you're just a treasure. Just please keep making stuff as long as you can stand it. I love your writing, I love your videos. Keep it up.
I think witnessing an election count is a really positive and interesting experience that really informs my views on our democracy. It's amazing to see hundreds and hundreds of people working together to make it happen, and then extrapolating that out across the country to realise tens of thousands of people are involved - and the result is a peaceful transition of power from one group to another. It shows what we can achieve when we all work together in a society.
Literally Communist Party members and Reform Party members in the same room, respecting and trusting the process and agreeing to abide by the results. It's this amazing piece of common ground that everyone buys in to and allows people with really strong, really different views to all sit in the same room together and agree on an outcome.
Presenting the difference in vote share between libdems and reform as just party strategy ignores that audiences have different patterns all by themselves.
While of course we do not have those stats it wouldn't surprise me that large amounts of libdem voters voted for labor just because they themselves know the odds in their district.
Reform voters on the other hand might not know about the win chances, not care or a bunch of their votes may have come from people who only voted for them because they considered it a lost seat.
Yeah I think that’s what he was referring to when he was talking about judging a FPTP election results through PR eyes. The FPTP system already affected the results
Very good points there. Tactical voting and a split right could also explain lib dem seat gains, despite having a lower overall percentage than reform.
Not to mention the ridiculously poor voter turnout. Only 52%! It's possible that on average, people who *did* vote held stronger, more polarised political views. Effectively creating a self-selection sampling bias.
In my country we don't have a centralised counting facility per constituency. Each constituency is subdivided into several polling stations (a neighbourhood or, in rural areas, one village or a collection of smaller villages) and the counting is done in each individual polling station. And if the polling station has enough registered voters, it may even be subdivided into two or more polling booths, each with their officials (3 people, plus observers nominated by the candidates). So, in the end, each team of counting officials has a maximum of votes to count that should not surpass 1,000 and, due to absenteeism, is usually under 700. It's really quick, with a few exceptions here and there.
Where do you live?
@@timowagner1329 Portugal.
In my country the polling station is always just one polling station, not subdivided into booths. But I think most are between 1000-3000 voters. But also roughly half of all votes are cast in advance, and those are counted centrally (on election day, with results published after polling stations closed). So the final amount of work at each polling station is pretty similar to what you described, I guess.
Your analysis of the "Abov the par" line for a seat in parliament in the UK was so good! Now I need you to do the US voting system so I can finally understand the difference between the majority vote and the electoral vote! 😅😅
Wow, there is so much interest in watching the count there! I was an election helper once and absolutely nobody came to watch. My parents have done it a couple times and I am pretty sure nobody came there, either.
Worth pointing out that the LDs using council election results for their tactical vote messaging goes a bit deeper. Their entire strategy at this election was target constituencies where they already had a strong council presence, as this correlates with robust local party infrastructure. This contrasts with their 2019 strategy, where they chased gains suggested by MRP polling and which ended in disaster.
MRP?
@@therehn en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilevel_regression_with_poststratification It's basically a fairly new statistical model for predicting elections that has been hyped a lot in the media
Important political context for the lib dem result:
1. The lib dems are not over-represented in parliament. They got 11% of the votes and 12% of the seats, which is the closest vote to seat percentage of any party. This is also the first election ever where they have been correctly represented. Up until now the lib dems have always been under-represented in parliament because as a smaller party they also suffer under first past the post. The parties over-represented in Westminster are Labour and the Conservatives.
2. It isn't possible to know how many votes labour, the lib dems, and the greens, would have got if we had proportional representation. All three parties are to the left of centre, and have overlaps and similarities in their policies. They are different parties in terms of political philosophy, and if you're a member of one of them you care about the differences, but most voters see them as similar. There are some areas of the country where the lib dems historically do much better than labour. People in areas where the lib dems do better than labour often vote lib dem even if they actually want a labour government, because under first past the post the lib dems have a better chance of winning the seat. Similarly in most of the country, labour have a much better chance of winning than the lib dems, so people who prefer the lib dems still vote labour because labour is close enough to what they want and has a much better chance of winning.
However, as you can see from Matt's data, some people still vote for the party they actually want even when that party is very unlikely to win. The Greens have very little chance of winning in most seats, and yet people continue to vote for them, even under first past the post, because they believe in the Greens policies, or because they want to protest about labour not being far enough left. If we had proportional representation, people would be free to vote for the party they actually want most. The results could be very different. The lib dems might get more votes if we actually had PR, or they might get fewer votes. We don't know.
Lib dems are as left of centre as the Tories are 😂
@@0w784g let's have a guess, do you live in an area where it's mostly a contest between Labour and the Conservatives?
@@SomeoneBeginingWithIthe biggest problem with proportional representation is clearly shown in your post. You mention several times about voting for ideas, or political parties and outlooks but fail to mention the person representing you in parliament.
And that is what PR does, it fundamentally disconnects the voter from their representative. If the lib dems get 11% of the vote in my area and so get some of the seats in parliament who is actually representing me.
Changing to PR is not just a way to make the system fairer, it fundamentally changes the way we have been represented for hundreds of years and breaks the system.
At that point it would be better to go to a system where individuals can vote directly for or against specific laws
@@randommusic4567 You can easily have local MPs for individual constituencies and a proportional parliament with something like MMP, where 50% of MPs are directly elected from constituencies and the remaining 50% are allocated in order to get the mix of representatives as close as possible to proportionally representing the vote totals.
@@randommusic4567 There are other ways to impliment PR. I totally agree with your reasons for disliking a "Party List" system. I would go with STV within each constituency, but there are many alternatives to FPTP which count as Proportional Representation, not just those two.
I love how, thanks to Count Binface and his entourage, it's very slightly hard to tell the difference between an official UK election count and a comic book convention.
It's good to see that you were down for the Count.
Count Binface for US President!
Imagine him as the candidate for Dem, it would be no contest!
Unfortunately, aliens are banned from running for President
See: Vermin Supreme
@@afaegfsgsdef even if the Simpsons have predicted it, Arnold Schwarzenegger can never be POTUS with the current laws.
Yeah, Trump's presidency started the same way, as some internet joke.
I say we stop doing these kinds of jokes now that people are stupid enough to make them reality...
9:50 - Sunak's double take on seeing Count Binface is one for the archives
"A dusty cupboard in the back of a sports hall" being a pivotal location to the democratic process is amazing.
I've been a counting agent at for a number of years, and I really enjoy it. Glad you had a good time. And thanks for the total count numbers, I couldn't find it yesterday when I wanted to calculate the short money.
“I didn’t have a clipboard and the only paper I had on me was some spare pentagons” classic
I covered a General Election count and let me tell you, they are bloody long. But necessary. Filmed something on it on my UA-cam channel.
It's also amazing to see the distain in counters' faces when one of the candidates disputes how the ballot papers are stacked.
Having worked as count staff on numerous occasions, I have absolutely no problem with having a mistake pointed out, or a polite check of they thought I had made a mistake even though I hadn't - the ones who get up our noses are the ones who are rude about it or who quibble over things that are irrelevant and don't affect the count. (Obviously, we're all people and different people may have a different experience!)
Hey, Matt! You clean up pretty good! Great video, thanks!
Hi Matt. In North Herefordshire we had a strong tactical vote for the Green party, this ousting the Tory. So unsurprising that they got this one wrong.
17:30 wtf is the sound effect you used for the numbers swooshing on/off the screen? I didn't realize the bass in my headphones was so good, it really sounded like my whole house shook from something massive being moved around downstairs.
damn ur right
Interesting! I hear nothing on my phone's speakers. No sound effect at all for the numbers at that point. It must be all bass.
Unless they're using some really advanced editing and camera tricks, there goes my theory that Matt and Count Binface are the same person.
Split-screen is easy and ancient SFX. Your theory yet still holds!
Absolutely fantastic video. Thanks, Matt
I am not joking when I say that the 2024 Lib Dem campaign might be one of the greatest in UK political history. That tight targeting is spectacular
I remember trying to explain to a non-US citizen the difference between Electoral and Popular votes and how someone that wins popular vote but could lose the election - which did happen. Don't think they fully understood it and why we do it - to be fair not sure I believe it in either!
Try explaining how the Labour Leader in 2019 led the party to it's "worst defeat since 1935" but received more votes nationally than the Labour Leader in 2024 with its "greatest landslide in history."
Strange they didn't get it. Presidents don't win because they win the "popular vote" (total individual votes) they win from electoral votes (which are stupid).
The thing I don't understand about the US electoral college is how they are allowed to vote for whomever they darn well please.
@@lazykbys Each candidate gets a slate of electors, same number for each no matter how many electors assigned to that state. Whichever candidate wins that state's popular vote wins those electors. They are required to vote for their party candidate. Maine and Nebraska use a proportional system, often resulting in some going to one candidate and some to another.
@@nomenclature9373After a quick wiki check, I learned that (like so many laws in America) things differ from state to state. While electors are required to vote for their party candidate, there are states that still count votes by such faithless electors and some that don't have laws for it. It's a mess.
With such an amazing percentage increase in votes compared to other parties, I would have thought that even though Count Binface didn’t get a seat, he should have been given a pouffe.
Count Binface really did deserve a seat. Not in Parliament, but just in general; I imagine a rest is in order
I have worked as a vote returning officer for provincial and federal elections in British Columbia, Canada. We seem to use a very similar method.
And now I know what the count witnesses for the various parties are doing!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! for pointing out the rules of the game. It bothers me to no end that people not only focus on a measure that isn't relevant to determining the winner, like the overall vote count, but they then want to change the rules to make whatever statistic they do best in determine the winner, instead of changing their strategy to win within the rules.
As much as you can rightly argue the result of the vote is a result of the rules under which it happened in many ways that doesn't negate the problem the current system clearly has - yes the larger parties are going to focus on where they think they really can get first past the post, and it will pay off for them to some extent. But at the same time people don't vote with how many flyer you are bombarded with... Tactical voting is all well and good and clearly a few parties benefited there, but the whole point of democracy is supposed to be representing the will of the people, which when one party has 2/3rd the seats with only 1/3rd of the vote...
Also as a new party Reform not focusing anywhere really makes sense for them under the current system - this the market research phase in effect. Looking for all the places where the population actually likes them a bit to put more effort in next time, though with how flat your graph for them was I don't suppose it is going to help them that much.
As an Australian, you should know that non-FPTP doesn't change the campaigns much in that way - all the parties still target electorates that they're likely to win rather than "the whole country at once". Swing seats get much more attention and heartland seats get more ignored.
The data you're showing isn't "This is how campaigns are run in FPTP" as it could be explained by a number of other ways, including "Reform are a bunch of populists that don't have political maturity"
When they talk about "proportional voting", they aren't talking about our style of preference voting. But something like NZ, or closer to our Senate system.
I remember my first count. (I've been to dozens.) I was keen, enthusiastic and had my clipboard. I watched one ballot box being counted. I was happy with how it seemed to be going. A more experienced member of the party asked about my results and I told him that we had polled about 50% from ward x. He replied, ""We're funked. We need at least 65% from there."
He was right and my party lost heavily. Later I realised that it doesn't matter how you sample the votes, it doesn't change the result.
Since then I've only gone to counts to drink coffee, get the craic and talk to other oddballs who find that sort of thing interesting.
BTW, it is always friendly. People from every party talk to people from every other party. It doesn't matter how heated the campaign was - the count is always friendly.
It can be useful to see how your votes fall between polling stations, if your vote is better at polling station a, you'll spend more time getting out the vote than if no one votes for you at polling station b, and you can track how you do election to election
Matt, everything about your demeanor screams non-partisan. That is so rare! You are as refreshing as water from a cool stream!
Scantrons are the best. A physical audit trail with an unofficial electronic count.
Ah yes, voting in #2 pencil. Brilliant.
@@authenticallysuperficial9874 There are scantrons that work with ink.
@@authenticallysuperficial9874 You don't actually have to use a pencil on scantrons. Black ink works. They just aren't good for tests in school because you might need to erase.
The only reason they say number 2 pencil is that others may not mark dark enough.
@@authenticallysuperficial9874every scantron ballot I've seen says to use pen
@@authenticallysuperficial9874every scantron ballot I've seen requires pen
I just wanted it to be a massive stack of paper with the count from sesame street... "1 vote.. ah ha ha ha... 2 Votes.... Ah ha ha ha!.!....
As a French person it's interesting to see how votes are counted in the UK! Here, each candidate has their own printed ballot with their name, face and party which we put into an enveloppe when we vote, and for the count it's just regular people doing it. When you vote you ask if they need volunteers to count and they always do haha. I've counted votes a few times, it's fun!
It's also once voting is over. We count all the votes, put them in big enveloppes in groups of 100, and for the count itself we're in groups of 4 with one person opening votes, one reading out the result, and two people tallying the votes and calling out every time a candidate has 10 votes. There are also one or two officials looking over and signing blank/null votes.
It may seem less official since anyone can count the votes but also it means ANYONE can count the votes! It's harder to have stolen election rhetorics when literally anyone can come and see the count happen (and help out, preferably, it takes a while!)
Thanks Matt, helps a lot!