23 people completed my AV survey last night in the space of two hours. Only people intending to vote Labour were invited to complete this short survey online. I offered this survey, as I have not made up my mind about AV. All respondents to the survey were given an explanation of what the AV system is. The United Kingdom Alternative Vote referendum is a planned UK referendum on whether to adopt the Alternative Vote (AV) electoral system for electing Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. The referendum is planned to take place on 5 May 2011, having been agreed as part of the Coalition, and put before parliament in July 2010 as part of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill.

The history behind this, for Labour, is that we have historically been in favour of AV, so any U-turn on this may be in danger of being interpreted as political opportunism. It was an election manifesto commitment of Labour in 2010, and Gordon Brown was in support of AV. Nick Clegg is obviously behind electoral reform in some form, but is famous for being an advocate of PR. At the time of writing, the Labour think-tanks, the Fabian Society, Compass and Progress support AV. They are supported by the Electoral Reform Group.

I have witnessed on Twitter approximately an equal number of people in favour of AV as those who are opposed. Complementary to this, there was an even split in my poll results; 52% before completing the survey said that they would say ‘YES to AV’, and this proportion remained unchanged at the end of the poll. Interestingly, a huge proportion (72%) said that they would not be influenced by any campaigning. However, 65% said that they felt that the AV referendum was not a top political priority given recent political events, albeit the survey did not state any provide any details of these events. 74% felt that any official party line by Labour would not influence the voting choice for the respondent. 52% would not be worried if AV encouraged a coalition-style of government, and indeed the vast majority (72%) believed that Britain should have a coalition-style of government. However, a very high proportion (82%) felt that ‘coalitions break promises’, but worrying over half of respondents would consider voting ‘NO to AV’ if Nick Clegg remained Leader of the Liberal Democrats.

67% of voters felt that AV did not penalize extremist parties, and about half of the sample agreed that it eliminated the need for tactical voting (52%). The voters did agree with two major reasons usually given for voting ‘YES to AV’ including ‘the Alternative Vote is a fairer and more democratic way of electing our parliament’ (62%), and ‘it retains the same constituencies, meaning no need to redraw boundaries, and no overt erosion of the constituency-MP link’ (71%), and, more importantly, they felt that these factors matter.

The outcome of this very small study amongst Labour voters is that they don’t feel that there should be an official party line on this, and that they wouldn’t be influenced by any campaigning in any case. There was about a 50/50 split in those in favour of AV, and people did agree with the traditional reasons given for voting ‘YES to AV’. Intriguingly, this small sample suggests the Labour HQ should allow a free vote amongst the MPs. This would make sense for three reasons: if the country votes NO and the Labour Party vote YES, it could look as if Labour is ‘out-of-touch’, Labour HQ should be seen to trust its MPs, and, perhaps most relevantly, this vote is not supposed to be a ‘political issue’. Interestingly Labour voters would be more inclined to vote ‘NO to AV’ if Nick Clegg remained as leader. This suggests perhaps that if the LDs want AV the should ditch Nick Clegg. How ironic would that be…