Every year we have a look through the stats to see which of our articles were the most popular with readers in the year coming to a close. So if you missed them the first time round, here are our top 5 most-read articles of 2021
Published just five days into 2021 is our analysis of last year’s American presidential election. In 2016, Hillary Clinton received nearly three million more votes than Donald Trump, yet lost the election due to the First Past the Post style Electoral College system. Joe Biden more than doubled the margin of victory over Trump, to just over seven million votes, yet his victory in the all-important Electoral College was still far from comfortable.
Creating alternative elections models is always a difficult exercise. Under a different voting system, parties and voters would likely behave differently and different governments may have been formed, enacting different policies. But, they do help people see the major impact Westminster’s voting system has, something hidden by reports of election results. This year we have been lucky to have a series of guest posts from Dylan Difford on party and electoral systems, the first of which was his widely read model of STV applied to every post-war election.
In September, the government leaked plans to the Telegraph which would see the current preference-based Supplementary Vote method used to elect Mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners removed, and First Past the Post imposed. But rather than forming part of the bill that was debated in the House of Commons, during its first and second reading, the plans were sneaked into the Elections Bill at Committee Stage to avoid scrutiny from MPs.
It’s certainly a question that gets raised whenever hereditary peers pop up to block any attempt at reforming their position. In March, Federico Scolari, a placement student working at the ERS, looked at the issue of hereditary peers.
It does sometimes feel that the government make up arguments for imposing ID checks at polling stations as they go along. But, in July we got to see how they really work, as the government accepted the validity of our arguments for something they didn’t want to do, while simultaneously, and outrageously, rejecting them for things they wanted to do.
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