How non-voters could swing election result

ELECTORS WHO DON’T TURN OUT HOLDING THE BALANCE OF POWER

IF you want a reason to vote in the upcoming general election, consider this: nonvoters ‘won’ a third of Greater Manchester seats the last time we went to the polls.

In 10 of the 27 seats in the city-region, the number of people who could have voted in 2017 – but didn’t – was bigger than the number of people who voted for the eventual winner.

For example: Labour won Heywood and Middleton with 26,578 votes. But the seat had a turnout of just 62.4 per cent – meaning 29,939 electors didn’t put an ‘x’ in any box.

That number doesn’t include the 97 people who spoiled their ballot paper or filled it in wrongly.

Stalybridge and Hyde saw 26,578 people vote for Labour – who won – but 29,939 people not vote at all.

Apathy also ‘won’ the constituencies of Worsley and Eccles, Leigh, Ashton-UnderLyne, Bolton South East, Denton and Reddish, Wythenshawe and Sale East, Blackley and Broughton – and even Manchester Central.

There, Labour won with an enormous 38,490 votes. But a turnout of just 55.1 per cent meant the number of non-voters (40,391) was even higher.

The figures are an illustration of what election-watchers have long known: when it comes to elections, the most powerful voters are those who don’t bother.

That is even more clear when we look at seats contested in 2017 where the number of non-voters was bigger than the winner’s majority.

In Heywood and Middleton, as we know, there were 29,939 non-voters.

Labour ended up winning the seat by 7,617 votes.

It turns out that in all but two of Greater Manchester’s 27 seats, the number of nonvoters was higher than the winner’s majority.

The only exceptions were Manchester Withington (there were 20,918 non-voters, and Labour won by 29,875 votes) and Manchester Gorton (there were 29,264 non-voters, and Labour won by 31,730 votes).

Nationally, the figures are stark. There are 650 seats across the UK. In 558 of those, the number of adults who didn’t vote was bigger than the winner’s majority.

In 157 constituencies, the number of non-voters exceeded the number of people who voted for the eventual winner.

If every non-voter in 2017 had instead decided to vote for (say) the Liberal Democrats, the Lib Dems would have won 250 out of 650 seats. If they had all voted for the Greens, they would have won 168 seats.

Either Labour (576 seats) or the Conservatives (599 seats) would have won an unprecedented majority had they harnessed every non-voter in the country.