Changing to FPTP won the Tories up to a dozen PCC elections

Writing on University College London's The Constitution Unit Blog, Alan Renwick examines how the change to the first past the post system in May's mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections affected the results.

He concludes it made no difference to the mayoral elections, where Labour won nine out of ten contests. But it was a very different position in the PCC elections:

The shift in voting rules had a big impact. While it did not change the outcomes in any mayoral elections, it switched at least four PCC races, probably seven, and conceivably as many as 10 or 12. That is a remarkably large effect from a simple tweak to the rules.  

Furthermore, because the left in British politics is currently more fragmented than the right, the switch from SV [supplementary vote] to FPTP favoured the Conservatives over Labour and other left or centre-left parties. By changing the voting system, the Conservatives significantly reduced their losses.

In a second post, Renwick examined the government's rationale for this change and concluded:

SV is clearly more democratic than FPTP for single executive offices. All the major parties – including the Conservatives – seem to recognise that by using transferable vote systems (or closely related multi-round systems) to elect their leaders. The change to FPTP harmed democracy.

If the incoming Labour government is going to retain police and crime commissioners - I hope it won't - the it should restore the supplementary vote for the ballots that elect them. 

It should do the same for mayoral elections, which it certainly will retain, but I have no confidence that it will.