Poor Liberal Democrats (UK) - 23% of popular vote, only 9% of seats!

[HughMoran]

Talk about a system that seems to have a fundamental flaw in it.

Party______Seats__Votes____%
Conservative 306 10,706,647 36.1
Labour 258 8,604,358 29.0
Liberal Democrat 57 6,827,938 23.0

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/election2010/results/

[Jennicut]

1. And they want electoral reform because of it.

Labour and the Conservative parties are dangling it in front of the Lib Dems but would either party really act on it?

[pinto]

7. There's talk of proportional seating, right?

:shrug:

[HughMoran]

13. It would be better for liberals - see table within...

[T Wolf]

2. as compared to the US where we Dems could have 51% of the presidential vote and NO

POTUS.

Or 53% of the vote for Congress and virtually no representation.

Politics, like everything in this world, is run by the elite for the elite.

[villager]

4. +1

n/t

[aquart]

12. I really appreciate such a useful addition to the discourse.

[Tesha]

3. Then again, in 2000, we got 51% of the vote but none of the White House seats. (NT)

[SemiCharmedQuark]

9. lol

:thumbsup:

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

5. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

[HughMoran]

14. Yeah right! You could be from the USA and have the Representatives on the 'left'

& still not get the left policy that you'd like!

;)

[pinto]

6. If I read this correctly, Nat'l vote doesn't equate to # of seats.

MP seats are determined by the local vote, in each MP district, not based on an overall national %.

i.e. That would be like comparing national House of Rep vote totals / % by party, with the number of seats won or lost. The two don't correlate.

[HughMoran]

8. Right.

It just seems like having only 9% of representation when you have 23% of the popular vote (especially in a parliamentarian system where coalitions are key) is inherently unfair.

[The Magistrate]

10. Exactly, Sir: 'First Past the Post' In Each District

There are no 'party lists' in Great Britain.

[jody]

11. That's not a flaw, it happens when a population group is not uniformly distributed across districts.

[damntexdem]

15. Then there's what would happen to a third party in the U.S.:

if it got 23% of votes, it would likely get ............... 0% of seats.