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Politics

Ignoring the other parties - can anyone explain the numbers to me?

13 replies

Katymac · 08/05/2010 15:45

Conservative got 10.7 million votes & 306 seat
Labour got 8.6 million votes & 258 seats
LibDem got 6.8 million votes & got 57 seats

Mathematically that makes no sense

figures from here

I know that is why 'they' want PR - but irrespective of how they fix it those numbers are bizarre

OP posts:
FrakkinTheReturningOfficer · 08/05/2010 15:47

Because some constituencies are bigger than others, some have a higher voter turnout than others.

If Cons get 20,000 votes,
Labour get 19,00
Lib Dem get 18,00

Conservatives win the seat.

Cons 1
Labour 0
Lib Dem 0

That basically happened all over the country.

nancy75 · 08/05/2010 15:49

i dont really understand, do you mean how did lib dems get so many votes but so few seats?
i would guess its because their votes are pretty evenly spread across the seats, so althought a good amount of people voted for them in each area it was not enough to actualy win the seat

Chil1234 · 08/05/2010 15:57

It has to do with the size of consituencies and number of people in them. the average consituency is about 68,000 but The Isle of Wight, for example, has an electorate over 100,000 and some are much, much smaller. So the Tories won the IoW this time with 33,000 votes but it only counts as 1 seat.

The Lib Dems tend to poll second or third in most constituencies and first in very few. Using the IoW example again they polled 22,000 votes but came second. Labour won their seat in Slough with 22,000 votes. So the Lib Dems get quite a lot of votes but relatively few seats.

Katymac · 08/05/2010 16:00

So 621 seats & 26.1 million votes

Assuming only those people vote as the maths is too complicated

The cons got 49% of seats but 40% of votes
The lab got 41% of seat but 33% of votes
The libdem got 9% of seat but 26% of votes

Mathematically it makes no sense - if it happened on Britains got Talent or whatever there would be an outcry

OP posts:
FrakkinTheReturningOfficer · 08/05/2010 16:05

The numbers aren't that bizarre if you look constituency by consituency using the BBC tool here

FrakkinTheReturningOfficer · 08/05/2010 16:08

Or think of it this way:

The grade boundary is 400/500 for an A.

I do 3 papers and get 401, 399 and 404. I get my A with 401.3 overall.

My friend does 3 papers and gets 401, 398 and 397. She gets a B with 398.6 overall.

LostArtOfKeepingASecret · 08/05/2010 16:18

Isn't it more to do with the fact that the LD tend to come second place in a lot of seats. That is, in tradional tory and labour areas they may loose by only a few votes. These second place votes soon add up, but don't translate into seats.

FrakkinTheReturningOfficer · 08/05/2010 16:27

Exactly. Their votes don't mean they win constituencies.

Their support is grass roots based, in the 18-35 age group and dispersed all through the country, which is why you tend to see pockets of blue/red but random islands of yellow.

MmeTrueBlueberry · 08/05/2010 16:31

You can't extrapolate First-Past-the-Post (FPP) results to a proportional representation.

The reason the Liberals didn't pick up so many seats is because their support is mediocre and spread fairly thinly across the whole country. They are not 'loved' in many constituencies, and many of their voters do so because they don't want to vote for either Conservative or Labour, rather than a positive vote for the Liberals. There is not a big concept of a Liberal 'safe seat' - they have to fight hard for every one. The Conservatives and Labour have loads of safe seats, so in those places, a lot of people, both supporters and opponents, choose not to vote because they don't feel that their individual vote will make much difference when there is a majority of 10,000.

If there were a system of proportional representation, then more people in safe seats would vote for both Conservative and Labour, and the Liberal share would go down. There would also be votes for 'nutter' parties.

We have an adversarial form of parliamentary democracy which would not work with PR. Having a strong opposition means that rough edges get knocked off laws and they end up working. If you look at one where the government circumvented the system by enacting the Parliament Act - the Fox hunting bill - you have a law that just doesn't work. Having a system of concensus will pass too many wishy washy laws, full of loopholes, and largely ignored by the populace, and you end up with a corrupt society.

LostArtOfKeepingASecret · 08/05/2010 17:04

I have just come back to this thread to apologise for my appalling loose/lose error.

Also, to agree with MmeTrue. It is difficult to know how many votes LD would attract with PR. It is assumed that a lot of their votes are a negative vote to try and remove Cons/Lab from a seat, rather than a vote for the party themselves. Also, if 'every vote counted', many voters in safe seats, who normally wouldn't bother to vote would, increasing the Lab/cons share of the vote.

FrozenFlowers · 08/05/2010 17:39

The Liberal Democrats do have some safe seats. Orkney & Shetland, for example, has been a Liberal/Liberal Democrat seat continuously since 1950, and actually for most of the time before that as well. There aren't very many, and they tend to be in rural areas and the north of Scotland, but they do exist.

Also, the Parliament Act had to be enacted to pass the Fox Hunting Bill because it was rejected by the House of Lords, not by the Commons. The House of Lords isn't elected by anyone, using any system. The Bill passed fairly easily in the House of Commons because Labour were able to get it through with their large working majority. The same one they got because of FPTP.

MmeTrueBlueberry · 08/05/2010 20:41

And enacting the Parliament Act, and ignoring the normal procedures, meant that they ended up with a law that isn't working.

FrozenFlowers · 08/05/2010 21:59

The Parliament Act is only a distraction, and it doesn't have anything to do with the electoral system, or the composition of the House of Commons at all.

Your argument appears to be:

  1. We have an adversarial style of government, and that is a good thing.
  1. FPTP is necessary because only that system produces results conducive to that style. It apparently produces a strong opposition (in the Commons) which can knock the corners off proposed bills and make them better.
  1. PR would require a consensual style and this produces "wishy washy" bad law.
  1. The Fox Hunting Bill was an example of this wishy washy bad law.

But...

The Fox Hunting Bill didn't have any rough edges smoothed off by a strong opposition in the House of Commons. There was, of course, opposition to the Bill from the Conservative Party (and even from a few Labour members, I believe). However, the Bill was able to pass these stages fairly easily because the Labour Party had an enormous majority of MPs, and so any opposition was effectively fruitless. This big majority was a direct result of the FPTP voting system.

The Bill was rejected by the House of Lords, an unelected chamber where, in fact, there is not a strong majority of any particular party. Using the Parliament Act to override this is perhaps questionable, and may have been a wrong move on the part of the government. But in the context of a discussion about whether PR or FPTP produce a better style of politics in the House of Commons, it is basically irrelevant.

If anything, your example of the Fox Hunting Bill actually disproves your case: it is an example of a bad law that was allowed to pass in the Commons because of FPTP. Had there been a coalition or minority government, it may well have been the case that such a law would not have passed, as negotiation with other parties would have been necessary to gain a majority on the vote. The absence of a Labour majority in the House of Lords is probably why it didn't pass there.

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