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An electoral swing analysis (or swing) shows the extent of change in voter support, typically from one
election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operat ...
to another, expressed as a positive or negative percentage. A multi-party swing is an indicator of a change in the electorate's preference between candidates or parties, often between major parties in a
two-party system A two-party system is a political party system in which two major political parties consistently dominate the political landscape. At any point in time, one of the two parties typically holds a majority in the legislature and is usually refe ...
. A swing can be calculated for the electorate as a whole, for a given electoral district or for a particular demographic. A swing is particularly useful for analysing change in voter support over time, or as a tool for predicting the outcome of elections in
constituency An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger state (a country, administrative region, or other poli ...
-based systems. Swing is also usefully deployed when analysing the shift in voter intentions revealed by (political)
opinion poll An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll (although strictly a poll is an actual election) is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinion ...
s or to compare polls concisely which may rely on differing samples and on markedly different swings and therefore predict extraneous results.


Calculation

A swing is calculated by comparing the percentage of the vote in a particular election to the percentage of the vote belonging to the same party or candidate at the previous election. One-party swing (in
percentage point A percentage point or percent point is the unit for the arithmetic difference between two percentages. For example, moving up from 40 percent to 44 percent is an increase of 4 percentage points, but a 10-percent increase in the quantity being m ...
s) = Percentage of vote (current election) − percentage of vote (previous election).


Example

Labor Party 51% (this year) less Labor Party 41% (four years ago) means the Labor Party saw a swing of 10 points (this implies in their favour and can also be published as +10 points). Examples include the comparison between the
2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro votes to declare independence from Serbia; The 2006 ...
and 2007 Ukrainian Parliamentary elections. The above charts show the change in voter support for each of the six major political parties by electoral district and nationwide vote results.


Two-party swing

In many nation states' media, including in
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
and the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
, swing is normally expressed in terms of two parties. This practice is most useful where most governments tend to be from an existing
two-party system A two-party system is a political party system in which two major political parties consistently dominate the political landscape. At any point in time, one of the two parties typically holds a majority in the legislature and is usually refe ...
but other candidates do sometimes run, and is used to predict the outcome of elections in constituency-based systems where different
seat A seat is a place to sit. The term may encompass additional features, such as back, armrest, head restraint but also headquarters in a wider sense. Types of seat The following are examples of different kinds of seat: * Armchair, a chair ...
s are held with different previous levels of support. An assumption underlies extrapolated national calculations: that all districts will experience the same swing as shown in a poll or in a place's results. The advantage of this swing is the fact that the loss of support for one party will in most cases be accompanied by smaller or bigger gain in support for the other, but both figures are averaged into one. Employing the two assumptions allows the analyst to compute an electoral pendulum, predicting how many (and which) seats will change hands given a particular swing, and what size uniform swing would therefore bring about a change of government.


Australia

In
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
, the term "swing" refers to the change in the performance of a political party or candidate in an
election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operat ...
or opinion poll. As Australia uses the preferential voting system, swing can be expressed in terms of the primary vote (first preference vote), or in terms of the two-party-preferred or two-candidate-preferred result, which may represent significantly different values due to preference flows; i.e. a 5% primary vote swing does not necessarily represent an equivalent swing in TPP or TCP terms.


United Kingdom

In the UK, a two-party swing (averaged model) is generally used, which adds one party's increase in share of the vote (expressed as a percentage point) to the percentage-point fall of another party, and divides the total by two. Thus, if Party One's vote rises by 4 points and Party Two's vote falls 5 points, the swing is 4.5 points (Party 2 to Party 1). For disambiguation, suffixes such as: (Con to Lab) (Lab to Lib Dem) (Lib Dem to Con) must be added where three parties stand. Otherwise, a problem when deciding which swing is meant and which swing is best to publish arises where a lower party takes first or second, or where a party loses one of the top two places. Originating as a mathematical calculation for comparing the results of two constituencies, any of these figures can be used as an indication of the scale of voter change between any two political parties, as shown below for the
2010 United Kingdom general election The 2010 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 6 May 2010, with 45,597,461 registered voters entitled to vote to elect members to the House of Commons. The election took place in 650 constituencies across the United Kingdom und ...
: Image:2010UKElectionLabConSwing.svg, Labour to Conservative swing Image:2010UKElectionLDConSwing.svg, Liberal Democrat to Conservative swing Image:2010UKElectionLabLDSwing.svg, Labour to Liberal Democrat swing


United States

Swing in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
can refer to
swing state In American politics, the term swing state (also known as battleground state or purple state) refers to any state that could reasonably be won by either the Democratic or Republican candidate in a statewide election, most often referring to pres ...
, those states that are known to shift an outcome between Democrats and Republican Parties, equivalent on a local level to
marginal seat A marginal seat or swing seat is a constituency held with a small majority in a legislative election, generally one conducted under a single-winner voting system. In Canada, they may be known as target ridings. The opposite is a safe seat. The ...
s. By contrast, a non-swing state is the direct equivalent of a
safe seat A safe seat is an electoral district (constituency) in a legislative body (e.g. Congress, Parliament, City Council) which is regarded as fully secure, for either a certain political party, or the incumbent representative personally or a combina ...
, as it rarely changes in outcome. The extent of change in political outcome is heavily influenced by the
voting system An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections m ...
in use.


Three party swing or greater

Some websites provide a
pie chart A pie chart (or a circle chart) is a circular statistical graphic, which is divided into slices to illustrate numerical proportion. In a pie chart, the arc length of each slice (and consequently its central angle and area) is proportional t ...
based or column-based multi party swingometer where ± x%, ± x%, ± x% and so on is displayed or can be input for three parties (or more in more plural
democracies Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose go ...
). This tool or illustration provides likely outcomes wherever more than two
political parties A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...
have a significant influence on which politicians are elected.Guardian Swingometer
/ref> In multiparty systems exit polls frequently include a question as to voting behavior in the last applicable election. Based on those exit polls "voter migration" (where vote gains for a specific party came from and losses of another went to) analyses are published and discussed in election coverage.


See also

*
Swing vote A swing vote is a vote that is seen as potentially going to any of a number of candidates in an election, or, in a two-party system, may go to either of the two dominant political parties. Such votes are usually sought after in election campaign ...
* Swingometer


Notes and references

;Notes ;References {{DEFAULTSORT:Swing (Politics) Elections Elections in Australia Elections in the United Kingdom Elections in the United States Psephology