Tories were so close to winning

[CanNeverDecide]

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7120733.ece

Only 16,000 votes short of a majority. That's really very close, how annoying for them.

Also, how unfair is this - if Labour had got the same share of the vote as the Tories in this election, 36%, they would have returned with a majority of 46 seats.

Their gerrymandering over the last 13 years has effectively rigged the electoral system making it hard for anyone else to win an election. Given that, they did astonishingly poorly to not have come back with more seats.

My opinion of Labour has just sunk even further. If they need to rig the voting system to keep themselves in power, they must be really bad and know it!

how on earth have they rigged a system that has been in place for decades?

There are many inequalities in the electoral system, such as the relative small size of Scottish constituencies compared to English ones. This delivers many undeserved seats for Labour.

There are also far more seats than there used to be. I recall 635 seats, and now there are 650.

that isn't very many is it?

that was to the OP

I read an analysis yesterday showing that the Tories failed to win 21 marginal seats where they would have won if all the UKIP voters had voted Tory. These seats were a matter of needing 500 - 200 extra votes to make the Tory candidate a winner.

It was UKIP plus the gerimandered system what did it. If DC gets in and manages to remove the gerimandered seats by makin them all equal size, cleans up postal voting and persuades UKIP voters to come over he will win with a 50 seat majority at the next general election.

it isn't the case that a great deal of Labour support is in cities? So the different parties supporters are spread around differently, Conservative voters are more evenly spread so they get fewer seats for their vote.

Don't think it is a Labour fiddle (in this case

Not quite unfair as winning an absolute majority of seats on what? 37% of the votes would it be?

You can't apply a PR mentality to a FPP system, FM.

And you should look at the converse.

I'm now wondering about one of the stats quoted inthe OP.

"if Labour had got the same share of the vote as the Tories in this election, 36%, they would have returned with a majority of 46 seats."

Surely that depends where the votes were (FPP mentality...)?