We in the U.S. probably pay much more attention to the United Kingdom than it merits.  The advantage of having a mostly shared language, the British Broadcasting Corporation being one of the premier news organizations, the cultural ties , and the history of U.S. news companies basing their foreign desk in London means that it Americans get a lot of international news out of the United Kingdom and much less from other countries.

Today, the United Kingdom will cast ballots to elect a new House of Commons.  As the name suggests, the House of Lords is not a fully-democratic body (although recent changes have created an electoral process in which only some of the hereditary nobility hold seats in the House of Lords with the heredity nobility choosing who gets to fill those seats).    And membership in the House of Lords is for life (except those, like the bishops of the Church of England, who hold a seat by virtue of their office).  So the election is only for the House of Commons.  But in the U.K.’s current political system, almost all of the power rests with the House of Commons.  The House of Lords has the right to propose amendments to legislation passed by the Commons, but, ultimately, the Lords are expected to go along with whatever the Commons ultimately passes after the back and forth over amendments.

The House of Commons is composed of 650 members.  Like in the U.S., the seats are distributed to the different regions of the country based on population.  The rules are not quite as strict as in the U.S. in terms of the permitted variation, and there are some remote districts which are “protected” by law, but the general principle of “one person, one vote” remains.  The district lines, since the 1940s, are drawn by nonpartisan boundary commissions (one for each of the four “nations” — England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales — which comprise the United Kingdom.)  As such, the first step in drawing the lines is determining how many seats each nation gets (and within England, the seats are further allocated by region).  The process is somewhat drawn out with multiple rounds of maps being published and the public getting to comment on it.  While the review starts every eight years, it has to be completed before the next election or the process stars over after the next election.  As a result, this election features the first new maps since the 2010 election.  In discussing the likely swing in this election, you have three different baselines: 1) the number of seats actually held at the end of parliament; 2) the number of seats won in 2019 (as there are usually multiple vacancies during the five-year term of a parliament with the by-elections — what we could call special elections — having a different result than the last general election and sometimes members change parties); and 3) “notional” seats (a guess at what the results would have been in 2019 under the new lines). Continue Reading...