Which coalitions would have the greatest support from the electorate?
Time for some amateur psephology regarding the imminent UK general election. British voters have probably seen many, many graphs like this one which shows the projected share of the vote:
Data from electionforecast.co.uk
However, these type of graphs don't always reflect the picture among the entire electorate. That's because a sizable chunk of eligible voters do not vote. In the previous 2010 election, voter turnout was 65.1% and this is pretty close to the average from the last four elections (average turnout 64.1%). So let's assume that turnout on Thursday will be about the same, and I'll arbitrarily set it at 65%. This means that the 34.5% of people who are projected to vote Conservative are really drawn from the 65% of people who might actually vote. I.e. the percentage of the electorate who might vote Conservative is only 22.4%. So the most popular party — in terms of share of the vote — may only have the backing of fewer than 1-in-4 possible voters. Let's see how things look if we plot the support for each party based on the percentage of the electorate who might vote for them:
Of course, it's possible that the third or so of people who don't vote may all have strong leanings towards the Conservatives, or towards Labour, or it may be that the 35% contains a representative mix of supporters of all of the parties. I'm not sure if anyone has any good insight into political allegiances of this group of non-voters.
There is already a lot of speculation as to which coalition might end up coming together to form a workable government (there are a lot of permutations). So I'm curious about how well possible coalitions might reflect support from the electorate as a whole vs the combined number of seats they would amass as a voting block. To gain an absolute majority, any coalition would ideally need 325 of the 650 seats.
The following graph plots the number of seats that various Conservative and Labour coalitions might achieve vs the possible percentage of the electorate that might back such a coalition. I've also included separate data points for Conservative and Labour as potential minority governments (circles and squares indicate Conservative/Labour coalitions respectively):
So what does all of this mean? First let's look at the situation for the Conservatives:
- Another Conservative/Liberal Democrats coalition would have 307 combined seats, but would only have the backing of 30% of the electorate.
- Combining with the UK Independence Party (UKIP) might only give the Conservatives 1 more seat, but it adds a sizable chunk of electoral support (rising from 22.4% to 29.6%)
- If the Conservative could combine with the Lib Dems, UKIP, and the Democratic Unionists Party — a party from Northern Island who have often allied with the Conservatives in the past — then they would still only have 316 seats, and this would reflect potential backing of 37.6% of the electorate.
- It's hard to imagine any other party supporting the Conservatives, except for maybe on a vote-by-vote basis.
And for Labour:
- Support from the Scottish National Party (SNP) would add a huge number of seats to a potential coalition (which has already been ruled out), but would hardly change the national backing from the electorate. The SNP only run candidates in Scotland and despite potentially winning almost every Scottish seat, this may only reflect 2.5% of the electorate voting for them.
- In contrast, a Labour/Lib Dems coalition would gain fewer seats than a Labour/SNP deal (293 vs 318) but would end up reflecting much more support from the electorate.
- Labour have more potential coalition partners than the Conservatives, and could possibly form some sort of union with the SNP — yes, I know that I've already said that this has been ruled out but you know…politics — as well as the Lib Dems, the Greens, Plaid Cymru, and the SDLP (the Social Democratic Labour Party of Northern Ireland). If they all joined forces, they could amass 352 seats with backing from 34.7% of the electorate.
Conclusions
So in the unlikely scenario of grand Conservative or Labour coalitions, you still end up with a situation where less than 40% of the electorate would have voted for them. Only if Labour can unite with the SNP, will they have a chance of an absolute majority (>325 seats). The best they can do otherwise might be about 300 seats or so.
I find it interesting that the slice of the electorate who probably won't vote is larger than any single party, and larger than all of the potential coalitions listed above bar one (the grand Conservative coalition).
Whatever happens on Thursday — and over the following days and weeks — it will probably be true that any resulting coalition is going to be unpopular with most of the electorate.
How to accidentally apply for a job without realizing it
Image from http://flickr.com/photos/jeepersmedia/
A few months ago I received an email inviting me to give a talk at a company that will remain anonymous — let's just say that it is a Bay Area company that has an interest in genomics (so that narrows it down to a few hundred or so).
I will stress that the original email simply asked, in very general terms, if I would be interested in visiting to give a talk. There was some back-and-forth email as we tried confirming a date and one email clarified that I could give a talk, have lunch, and then "perhaps" have some one-on-one meetings.
After we confirmed the date, I received an email that included my itinerary for the day. A few alarm bells rang when I saw that the file attachment was named 'Interview schedule'. In addition to giving a talk and having lunch I was now scheduled to have seven separate interviews with people at the company.
At this point I noticed from their company's website that they were actively recruiting, but I double checked all of our earlier email communications and confirmed that at no point had any employment opportunities been mentioned. So maybe 'interviews' was their name for informal one-on-ones?
Then a few days ago I received another confusing email that asked me to sign the company's NDA and complete the the employment application form. Hmm, it was decidedly looking like they were under the impression that I was being interviewed for a job. Not wanting to waste anyone's time I clarified that I thought I was just giving a talk. This no doubt has caused an equal measure of confusion at their end, and they swiftly suggested we cancel the whole thing.
So I'm no longer giving a talk this week, though as I have made many new slides I may well put the talk online anyway. It still kind of amazes me that this company could get so far along the recruitment process without realizing that the person that they wanted to interview hadn't actually applied for anything.
Bad restaurant marketing in Davis: a sign of the times?
There is a relatively new Japanese restaurant in Davis. Like all restaurants, and most places of business, it has signage that displays the name of the restaurant. Here is how that sign looks when looking at it directly from about 20 feet away:
If you were driving past this establishment, you'd be another 20 feet or so away from the sign. I suspect that many of you might not be able to clearly read the first word. Here's a close up:
The shadows that you can see hint at the problem that I'm about to raise. This signage is 3-dimensional, with the letters being raised several inches from the wall. So what happens when you have such a sign and you try looking at it from anything other than directly head on?
Doesn't seem great from a marketing perspective if the name of your business can only be read when looking at your sign from one particular angle! It's a little better at night as the white backing to the letters is illuminated. Here is a close up that more clearly shows the 3-dimensional nature of the sign:
Did no-one check this at any point and ask the simple question "Wait, can you actually read those words?"
change.org is full of pointless petitions, so I have launched a pointless petition to change change.org
There really is an awful lot of pointless rubbish on change.org. So I was curious whether they would let me create a petition calling for change to change.org. Specifically, to stop all of these pointless petitions from being added in the first place.
The fact that they allowed me to create such a petition perfectly illustrate my case regarding a need for some sort of curation. My petition is now live:
Join with me and together we can rule the Galaxy as father and son…er, I mean we can make a difference. In the immortal words of Mr. David Robert Jones: "Time to make a change".
Sketches of Science: a must-see exhibition in Davis
This weekend we managed to catch the Sketches of Science exhibition at the Mondavi Center (also see the official website). I thoroughly recommend that people catch this free exhibition before it finishes on 28th January.
Photographer Volker Steger has met with many Nobel prize winners and asked them to make a poster (using crayons) that represents their nobel-prize-winning science. He then photographs them with their poster and some of the posters are also accompanied by audio interviews.
There is a lot of humor, beauty, and fun that emerges from this experience. Some scientists go for a simple representation of their work, others pack a lot into the poster (including a poem in one instance). Well worth seeing if you get a chance. I believe that this is the only place in the USA where this exhibit is being shown at the moment.
Martie Chalfie, one of many folks to win the nobel prize for their work on Caenorhabditis elegans
Bob Horvitz, another C. elegans researcher to feature in the exhibition
Decade
This Saturday marked by 10th year at UC Davis (also my 10th year of living in the USA). This is kind of incredible since the plan was only ever to stay for a year or two! Since arriving here in 2005, I have become a husband, a father, and settled down to a wonderful family life.
However, all good things come to an end and so we are planning to move back across the pond. We don't yet know where we will go (probably the UK, but possibly Western Europe), we don't know yet know what we we will do (probably something related to science), and we don't yet know when we will go (probably early 2016).
The USA, and Davis in particuar, has been very good to us both professionally and personally. Our careers have flourished, but more importantly we have made some wonderful friends who we expect to keep in close contact with wherever we end up.
I thought that this would be a fitting time to relaunch my website and blog as I plan to write more regarding what will be the next big chapter in our lives. The idea of not knowing where you will be in a year's time, or what you will be doing, is exciting and scary in equal measure.
I'm looking forward to what the future brings us.