The UK election thread

[The Red Fox]

Found something interesting. If you take Saturday's YouGov stats and put them into the BBC's "swing-o-meter" you can get a vague idea of how many seats each party would with those percentages.

Labour 28% = 275 seats
Conservative 33% = 245 seats
Lib Dem 30% = 99 seats

I makes me think if the Soviet Union had adopted such a quasi-democratic system they'd probably still be around today.

Goes to show why the Labourservatives would never introduce a proportional representation system, it would complete destroy their dominance over British politics.

Progress is bound to be slow in this country. We didn't even get universal suffrage until 1929.

[RuleBritannia]

I knew it was bad - but that's crazy.

Edit:
Democracy!

So the Tories, Lib Dems and "others" with a combined 75% of the vote would still only have 22 more seats than Labour.

[AshtonBlack]

It's bonkers mad.

[ficklefiend]

Someone care to explain? I always thought this was to do with the number of votes per mp being different in different constituencies- am I barking up the wrong tree there?

[Rum]

This is quite cool I think. A 'video wall'. Don't know if you can get this outside the UK though.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/ ... 602143.stm

[RuleBritannia]

Someone care to explain? I always thought this was to do with the number of votes per mp being different in different constituencies- am I barking up the wrong tree there?

It's to with how First Past The Post works in combination with how the constituencies are drawn up.

Labour tend to win most of their seats in urban areas where there can be 5 or 6 candidates for each constituency, thus you usually win the seat with a smaller amount of the vote. While the Tories win most of their seats in rural areas where there are less candidates for each constituency, thus the winning candidate will get a higher percentage of the vote.

Labour will get fewer votes in rural areas and the Tories will get fewer in urban areas.

This is in combination with the fact that there are more people living in each rural constituency (rural areas include small towns), yet there are more constituencies in urban areas.

Support for the Lib Dems on the other hand isn't particularly concentrated in either urban or rural areas, and they tend to do pretty well in most constituencies but not enough to win many of them, thus the Lib Dems are getting a high percentage of the national vote but spread across the whole country, mean while Labour and the Tories get only a slightly higher percentage of the national vote, but it's concentrated in certain areas thus winning them seats.

[Rum]

To elaborate further, the first past the post system works like this. The following is a simplified model.

Say you have 100 constituencies (one MP per constituency). Each of those has, for the sake of argument three contenders (in reality there are loads more usually including those with absolutely no hope - doing it for a laugh).

Let's say there are 100 votes per constituency.

Constituency one: 70 people vote for labour, 20 for Conservative and ten for Liberal
Constituency two: 50 vote labour 30 vote conservative and 20 Liberal. (Labour win the seat)

And so on.

The winner of each local constituency is the MP which goes to Parliament to represent the community.

If that pattern continues in all 100 constituencies you would end up, in the case about with all 100 MPs being labour and effectively 50% of the population not being represented at all.

Worse than this - governments can and usually do) end up with less than 50% of the vote - it can be as low as 30%.

By the way, for clarity usually the party with the most MPs becomes the next government, basically because they have the majority which will vote for their legislation in Parliament.

[RuleBritannia]

It's like a giant Rube Goldberg machine fucking Nick Clegg in the arse. It's doing a simple task (fucking him in the arse) but in a very complex way.

[PsychoSerenity]

Someone care to explain? I always thought this was to do with the number of votes per mp being different in different constituencies- am I barking up the wrong tree there?

It's to with how First Past The Post works in combination with how the constituencies are drawn up.

Labour tend to win most of their seats in urban areas where there can be 5 or 6 candidates for each constituency, thus you usually win the seat with a smaller amount of the vote. While the Tories win most of their seats in rural areas where there are less candidates for each constituency, thus the winning candidate will get a higher percentage of the vote.

Labour will get fewer votes in rural areas and the Tories will get fewer in urban areas.

This is in combination with the fact that there are more people living in each rural constituency (rural areas include small towns), yet there are more constituencies in urban areas.

Support for the Lib Dems on the other hand isn't particularly concentrated in either urban or rural areas, and they tend to do pretty well in most constituencies but not enough to win many of them, thus the Lib Dems are getting a high percentage of the national vote but spread across the whole country, mean while Labour and the Tories get only a slightly higher percentage of the national vote, but it's concentrated in certain areas thus winning them seats.

Good explanation. Very helpful. Do you know if there is any sensible reason for this system though? Why was it set up like that? does it have any advantages over other systems?

[Rum]

Someone care to explain? I always thought this was to do with the number of votes per mp being different in different constituencies- am I barking up the wrong tree there?

It's to with how First Past The Post works in combination with how the constituencies are drawn up.

Labour tend to win most of their seats in urban areas where there can be 5 or 6 candidates for each constituency, thus you usually win the seat with a smaller amount of the vote. While the Tories win most of their seats in rural areas where there are less candidates for each constituency, thus the winning candidate will get a higher percentage of the vote.

Labour will get fewer votes in rural areas and the Tories will get fewer in urban areas.

This is in combination with the fact that there are more people living in each rural constituency (rural areas include small towns), yet there are more constituencies in urban areas.

Support for the Lib Dems on the other hand isn't particularly concentrated in either urban or rural areas, and they tend to do pretty well in most constituencies but not enough to win many of them, thus the Lib Dems are getting a high percentage of the national vote but spread across the whole country, mean while Labour and the Tories get only a slightly higher percentage of the national vote, but it's concentrated in certain areas thus winning them seats.

Good explanation. Very helpful. Do you know if there is any sensible reason for this system though? Why was it set up like that? does it have any advantages over other systems?

The numbers per constitency is only one factor. See my post for what is probably a more significant factor.

And yes - there is one big advantage (though some people see it as the opposite). This is that you usually end up with a government which can get its legislation through parliament with relative ease. This, the argument goes, leads to stronger and better leadership.

[Deep Sea Isopod]

It's a shame there's no member of the Monster Raving Loony party standing in my constituency.
Manifesto: Page 1
http://www.loonyparty.com/index.php?page=more-proposals
http://www.loonyparty.com/index.php?pag ... ere-s-more

Scary Terrorists
Ban all terrorists from having beards as they look scary.

Agriculture.
Green Vegetables shall be boiled in food colouring so that they are all bright red, because no-one likes greens

Environment
More trees should be planted to combat the rise in less trees.

Bullseye
In keeping with the Government trend of setting up league tables and stupid impossible targets, we have decided that we will follow their example. We will reduce crime & disorder by October..........2001


PeacePlan
To help the Israel/palestine problems, we should get rid of the old fashioned road map, and give them a sat nav instead.

The OAP jetset.
It is proposed to supply jetpacks for the elderly. This way they don't block the pavements and roads with those slow little machines that they have. This will reduce congestion so will be good for the environment. The elderly may have more fun in their life, more fun than bingo, and as there are no cars in the sky it will be much safer. Soon everyone will want jetpacks and the world will be a better place.

During the last elekshun, one of their proposals was to abolish gravity.

[Deep Sea Isopod]

The Looney party members...
http://www.rosalyn.me.uk/loonyarchive/histpeople.html

[RuleBritannia]

Tonight's YouGov opinion polls put the Lib Dems ahead of both Labour and the Tories (though still miles behind in seat numbers):

Conservative 32% (246 seats)
Labour 26% (241 seats)
Liberal Democrat 33% (134 seats)
Others 8% (29 seats)

[Geoff]

I'm in the same boat as Rum - this is a rock solid labour constituency, would take a massive and terribly unlikely swing to change that.

Hi Clinton! yep, same for me, you'll be surprised to hear...

It does have one advantage, in that you don't have to worry about "tactical voting" or wasting a vote (since any non-LAB vote is wasted anyway), so one can actually vote for the party closest to ones own views - UKIP in my case.

Labour has held the constituency of Wigan since 1918

Labour 58.1%
Conservative 19.0%
Liberal Democrat 16.9%
Others 6.0%

[ficklefiend]

Thanks for the further explanation guys, I had vague ideas along the same lines.

I can't see how a different method of voting would work though, would the vote for government and local mps be separate? Would you end up with the party in power having less seats than the opposition?