Welcome to The Westminster System! This is my fourth interactive AAR following on from 'Let the Ruling Class Tremble', 'Vive la République!' and the recently completed 'Blood and Iron'. We've through France and Germany (twice), now its Britain's turn. If you have followed any of these previous IAARs then the general formula of this AAR will be familiar, despite the crucial differences in the voting system that will be described below.
I had been planning on doing a British Interactive AAR starting in 1945 for some time now, with the cancellation of EvW I considered abandoning those plans before deciding to use the NWO2 mod for Darkest Hour, having done some test runs I feel satisfied that this is an excellent mod with which to write this AAR.
Beginning with the 1945 British General Election, this AAR will attempt to model British politics - so elections should take place roughly every 4 or 5 years, but could be far more frequent depending on the voting habits of the readership.
There will be a bolded section at the end of each election update giving specific instructions on how to place your vote and also details of when the polls close. I will post in the thread, RL allowing, when the polls are closed and after that no further votes will be counted.
When you do vote I ask that you either place it in an entirely separate post or bold it to make it easier for me to tally them.
General Rules
- I as host reserve the right to veto any action any player wishes to undertake: To consolidate the stability of the AAR, to stop interference with the normal functioning of the thread or simply because I feel like it.
- You may not create your own political parties, militias, rebel groups or anything else. The only such groups that exist within the AAR are the ones I present.
- I ask that roleplaying is limited and that people use their own forum nicknames in the thread so as to avoid confusion.
- Campaigning outside the thread is forbidden.
- Refrain for spamming, inciting hate or otherwise harassing people within the thread.
- If you want to contact me I would prefer if you used my profile visitor message board rather than PM me, I usually have quite a full PM box.
- By taking part in this thread I assume you have read these rules. If I feel that these rules are being broken I will first post a warning in this thread, if the offending behaviour continues I shall not hesitate to inform a moderator.
- Vote switching is forbidden, your first vote will always count
The Westminster System
In this AAR I will attempt to, as best as I can, simulate the United Kingdom’s FPTP parliamentary electoral system – a system that produces very different results from the PR systems employed in my previous IAARs. I will call this ‘the Westminster System’ and its rules are as follows. Any additional rules included at a later date will be added in this post.
Thresholds and Weighting
The most important aspect of the Westminster System will be the use of thresholds to decide how heavily a vote is weighted. Essentially, this means that all votes are not equal – parties that are able to secure a very large share of the total number of votes shall see those votes weighted much more heavily. The system is designed to make it easier to produce absolute majorities, encourage something more akin to a two party system (although with leeway for smaller parties) and generally model the British political system far better than a simple use of PR ever could. Now, on with the details.
The Thresholds will be as follows:
<5% - 0
(If a party fails to secure a minimum of 5% of the vote it shall gain no parliamentary representation.)
5-10% - 0.25
10-15% - 0.5
15-25% - 1
25-35% - 2
35-45% - 3
>45% - 4
I have done a large number of tests to see what results different voting combinations would produce, and have attached a small sample of three different tests in order to give readers a better idea of what effect these thresholds would have in practise.
The two columns closest to the party names (these names were really mainly placeholders for my test, don’t read too much into them) mark out the number of in AAR votes (a total of 50 in all tests) and the corresponding percentage. The two further away columns show the number of votes each party had after weighting has been applied and then what share of parliamentary seats this tally earns each individual party.
I’ve have given a selection of different electoral results above, the first of which shows a classic two-party system. Both Labour and the Conservatives achieve a very high share of the vote with other parties being largely inconsequential. In the second example there are a number of medium sized parties, but no truly dominant one – yet Labour is able to achieve an absolute majority courtesy of being the only party to cross the 25% threshold. In the final example we see the effect of splitting the vote on one side of the political spectrum but not the other. Here the parties of the right and centre secure 60% of the vote overall – but as the left’s votes are concentrated around a single party Labour is able to storm to an enormous majority.
It is therefore clear that thresholds and vote weighting can have a tremendous impact upon the outcome of elections, creating a very different political system than we have seen in previous IAARs.
What About Northern Ireland, and Regionalists?
Northern Ireland provides a predictable thorn in the side of my attempts to model British politics, simply because its political system (especially during this period) is largely separate from the rest of Britain’s with very different concerns motivating voters. The election of Northern Irish MPs shall therefore be handled in a similar way to how minority votes were in Blood and Iron, with a set number of seats set aside for Northern Ireland (based upon the region’s historical contribution) and the division of those seats being decided by me.
Regionalists, more specifically Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, are a major part of modern British politics – but this was much less the case in the early part of the Cold War. As of yet I have decided not to include them in this AAR, but their inclusion is not ruled out permanently if a method of adding them into the Westminster System could be found.
No Vote Switching!
Single votes will have a much larger effect on this AAR than previous IAARs; it is therefore likely that what was once a nuisance could become endemic. I am therefore banning all vote switching from this AAR. Your first vote counts, any attempts to alter it will be ignored. Some might find it easier to hold off voting until later if they are inclined to be heavily influence by the way the election is going – but this is a matter of personal preference. I will place a reminder that vote switching is banned in each election update.
Electoral Pacts
Electoral Pacts will be a rarely used, but potentially extremely potent device. Realistically, an Electoral Pact will be scarcely a step behind the unification of a party, a very significant step.
The effect of such a Pact is to unite two parties’ share of the vote when calculating thresholds. For example, if the Tories and National Liberals entered into an Electoral Pact with the Tories gaining 34% of the vote and the National Liberals 13% of the vote then the effects would be as follows: whereas without the Pact every National Liberal vote would be weighted by 0.5 and every Tory vote by 2 – now both parties see their vote weighted by 4. This would double the Conservative share of parliamentary seats and see the National’s Liberals share of seats increase eightfold! The potency of such an agreement is very clear indeed. But, as mentioned previously, it will also be very rare.
If a Pact is agreed then both parties will stand on independent platforms, with their own section in the election, as normal with the Pact prominently mentioned in their party descriptions. Its effect will primarily be within the system of vote weighting.
Factions
Similar but crucially different to Electoral Pacts are Factions. Like Pacts, Factions will not appear in every election and will be relatively uncommon – but they are liable to rise to the fore at crucial times in the histories of their respective parties.
If ‘Factions’ appear in elections then there will be two separate slates for a single party, for example in the 1950s separate radical and moderate Labour Party factions might appear with different policies. Votes for either faction would count towards the Labour Party’s overall vote (acting in a similar way to an Electoral Pact between parties), ensuring that the separate Factions have a lesser direct impact on electoral results. However, a strong showing for one faction and a weak showing for another will lead to the victory of that faction in the ongoing internal party conflicts. Only the largest parties will be affected by factions, and as mentioned this is not something that will occur in every election but only when there is a major dispute. The Factions system is designed to give readers the ability to have a greater impact on politics within an electoral system that is less flexible than PR.
Amendments to the Westminster System
None
- This AAR has been approved by Qorten.
