Poll: *** 2010 General Election Result & Discussion ***

Who did you vote for?

  • Labour

    Votes: 137 13.9%

  • Conservative

    Votes: 378 38.4%

  • Liberal Democrats

    Votes: 304 30.9%

  • UK Independence Party

    Votes: 27 2.7%

  • Green Party

    Votes: 2 0.2%

  • Scottish National Party

    Votes: 10 1.0%

  • British National Party

    Votes: 20 2.0%

  • Plaid Cymru

    Votes: 1 0.1%

  • DUP

    Votes: 4 0.4%

  • UUP

    Votes: 1 0.1%

  • Sinn Fein

    Votes: 2 0.2%

  • SDLP

    Votes: 3 0.3%

  • Other

    Votes: 16 1.6%

  • Abstain

    Votes: 80 8.1%
  • Total voters
    985
  • Poll closed .
Greebo said:
But equally people would have to accept the BNP would have 13 seats.

That may not rest too well with some people.
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That said you have to consider whether so many would freely throw protest votes at the BNP if they thought there was a danger it may actually get them power. A lot of their votes no doubt come as a result of protests in the knowledge they 'make a statement' but it won't result in any actual seats.
 
A good picture showing how this is going to work..

47788852electionoutcome.gif
 
Evangelion said:
No, that's just your ignorance showing through.

Australia has enjoyed PR for almost 100 years and we're doing fine. Hung parliaments are rare, and strong governments are very common. You have no idea what you're talking about.
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Australia uses Alternative Vote and not PR. There has been 9 elections in those 100 years where the party with fewer votes have ended up with a majority of the seats so it throws out even more weird results than the first past the post system. Also the last two elections there have resulted in a hung parliament and coalitions haven't they?

Anyway in European countries using PR there has been 64% of parliaments since 1945 as hung compared to our one.

Therefore PR does increase the likelihood of a hung parliament. AV can also increase the chances of a hung parliament but equally you can have a party coming 2nd in the total of number of votes having a landslide majority as well.
 
bibalasvegas said:
Not true. You can simply have more MPs who do not represent a constituency to top-up the parties until the proportions are correct.
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Ah so keep the 650 seats and have an extra floating MP's with no constituencies of say 350 to make up the percentages. I see.
 
Greebo said:
The problems with PR is that you would have to accept that your local MP may not represent the majority of voters in that constituency. Ie perfectly possible to have a 80% labour voting area to end up with a Lib Dem MP. And that won't go down too well with voters as MP's are meant to represent your area, not just who you want as a Government otherwise you would just have the choice of parties on your ballot papers.

We would still have had a hung parliament:

Conservative: 235 seats
Labour: 190 seats
Lib Dem: 150 seats

But equally people would have to accept the BNP would have 13 seats.

That may not rest too well with some people.
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This is why other more proportional systems are being proposed that maintain the constituency link, the system proposed by the Jenkins commission in 1998 AV+ would fit our needs, and is an acceptable compromise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Vote_Top-up
 
sldsmkd said:
This is why other more proportional systems are being proposed that maintain the constituency link, the system proposed by the Jenkins commission in 1998 AV+ would fit our needs, and is an acceptable compromise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Vote_Top-up
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Not bad. Fixes some of the problems of the Australian AV system.

I reckon it would still have resulted in a hung parliament on these results though.
 
Greebo said:
Not bad. Fixes some of the problems of the Australian AV system.

I reckon it would still have resulted in a hung parliament on these results though.
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Of course. Any movement towards proportional representation, causes more* hung parliaments on average, not less.

*except for in very wierd cases where it would be mathematically be possible for the opposite to happen.
 
Greebo said:
Australia uses Alternative Vote and not PR.
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You're half-right: Australia actually uses both. We use AV (known as "Preferential Voting" down here) for the House of Representatives, and PR for the Senate.

There has been 9 elections in those 100 years where the party with fewer votes have ended up with a majority of the seats so it throws out even more weird results than the first past the post system. Also the last two elections there have resulted in a hung parliament and coalitions haven't they?
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No they haven't. The 2007 general election saw a strong victory for Labor, while the 2004 general election saw a narrow victory for the Liberal party. This year's state election in Tasmania has resulted in a hung parliament, which might be what you're referring to. South Australia's state election was also held this year, but fears of a hung parliament proved unfounded in that case.

PR is perhaps more likely to produce a hung parliament, but it doesn't churn out "lots and lots of hung parliaments", as britboy claimed. The frequency of hung parliaments in European nations is also due to the fact that they have many small parties rather than two or three large ones; it's not purely a result of PR.
 
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the below is a fair-point.

From BBC:

There is "not very much happiness among Conservative ranks" about the election result and there are mutterings that the campaign actually reduced support, Spectator editor Fraser Nelson says.
 
easyrider said:
So all the LIB DEB surge was all just Media Hype!

:p

They actually lost seats!
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But more people voted for them than before and they got a higher percentage of the votes than before. The fact that they actually lost seats shows the problems with the current system.
 
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