Unused votes in English Local Government Elections: Effects and Explanations

Examination of ward‐level aggregate data for English local council elections that employ a form of block voting demonstrates that 7–15% of total potential votes are unused. We test two possible explanations for this phenomenon. Firstly, unused votes occur when electors have a restricted choice of candidates, principally when parties fail to field as many candidates as there are available seats. Secondly, unused votes stem from a misunderstanding of the voting procedure. We find that both sources make statistically significant contributions to the explanation of the level of unused votes. The number of unused votes does decrease when more candidates stand for election. However, we also find that within each party’s slate of candidates those placed higher on the ballot paper have a clear advantage over those lower in the alphabetic order and hence lower in ballot paper order. Moreover, the level of educational attainment of a ward’s population is a statistically significant predictor of unused votes, suggesting perhaps that some voters are failing to understand the voting system. This analysis raises issues concerning voter awareness of block voting procedures and whether ballot paper order should be randomized in such cases in order to eradicate alphabetic bias.