djm4_lj | (no subject)

Entry tags:

no privacy

(no subject)

Last year, America elected its first black president. This year, Britain elected its first two BNP MEPs. Way to respond, my country.

I don't want to get up today. In London, Jonathan Fryer was only 8000 votes off being elected, too.

Edit: ...or so his Twitter said, but I guess in the small hours of the morning he miscounted, or mistakenly saw the margin to Labour. He'd actually have needed just under 80,000.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

13 UKIP so far as well, and they're not much better than the BNP in my view.

Ugh!

No, they ain't. In some less obvious ways I reckon they're actually worse, particularly as most people see them as perfectly respectable. I know lots of people who voted for them.

This may mean that I don't understand D'Hondt after all, and I don't know if it makes you feel better or worse, but I get that he was 79202 votes off being elected. FWIW, I voted LD in the end; looks like I was right in thinking that that was where my vote might make the most difference.

So far, doesn't look like much happened last night to feel good about.

I'm in a hurry so doing it in my head, but I think djm's maths is right.

I can't claim any credit for the figure, which I got from Jonathan's Twitter. It's certainly possible that it dropped a zero somewhere.

My calculation show that the last seat was won by the Tories, setting the quota at 479037/3 = 159679 votes per seat, so the LDs needed 2*159679 - 240156 votes to get another seat - is that wrong?

Edited 2009-06-08 09:31 (UTC)

It's not entirely clear what counts as the 'majority', i.e. the margin of victory.

After 7 MEPs had been elected, I reckon the 'count' would have looked like:

Tories 159,679
Labour 124,197
LibDem 120,078
UKIP 95,295
Green 94,220
BNP 86,420
Xian 51,336

.. so the Tories got the last of the eight (and their third) by 65,459 votes over the Greens (and 73,259 over the BNP and rather less over Labour).

The nineth MEP would have been Labour, the tenth LibDem (just), and the eleventh Tory. Then it would have been really tight, with yet another Tory, LibDem, and the second Green coming on round 14.

The BNP would have got one on round 16, after another Labour MEP.

The question I'm trying to answer is "how many people who stayed at home would need to have voted LD for them to win an extra seat?"

See below: just under 80k, I think.

Oops, he's a LibDem, isn't he?

So 39,601 votes short by that point = about eighty thousand short because Sarah Ludford was elected in round three halving the figure for subsequent rounds.

That matches the figure I started the thread with. Simpler D'Hondt: everyone gets floor(v/t) seats for some t chosen such that the right total number of seats is allocated.

Doing this shows up some of the flaws with the system. Had there been nine MEPs for the area, Labour would have had three times as many MEPs as the LibDems and Greens despite having only 55% more votes than the LibDems and less than twice the votes of the Greens.

Yes indeed. This is why I cannot embrace PR - wherever it applies it advantages the far Right.

Er, no. Particularly if you include, say, Thatcher in that category. And as the council elections show, you can get BNP winners with first past the post too.

The system picked for these elections (in England, Wales and Scotland) was chosen to increase the power of the parties (and give the Returning Officer an easy job) and not to be 'PR'.

If the votes had been level across the regions, in a first past the post election we'd have three Labour MEPs, six SNP and all the rest would be Tories. That certainly keeps out the BNP (and indeed UKIP) but cannot in any sense be said to reflect the wishes of the electorate.

Yes, I know the arguments thanks, I just dont agree. I would prefer the scenario of 3 Labour MEP's etc in any event and dont understand why anyone would prefer the present scenario.

It is a widely, though clearly not universally, held belief that the outcome of elections should reflect the wishes of the voters.

First past the post is spectacularly bad at this, delivering absolute power to parties with the support of a minority of the electorate, and reducing the number of people whose votes actually count to remarkably small levels.

I don't think I (or anyone else) is saying that the present scenario is 'good'. On the other hand, had we had the badly flawed voting system it used for General Elections, we would have been spared the excesses of both Thatcher and Blair, both of whom used their artificial majorities to push through things opposed by other parties.

I said I know the arguments. It is a pity you could not resist the opportunity to snark.

You said you didn't understand why people would prefer the present scenario. I suggest, admittedly with something that could be interpreted as a snark, that most people do for a very good reason.

I can understand some objections to fair voting systems. Self interest is the biggest one: many Tory and Labour MPs are happy to lose power at some elections in exchange for the chance to win absolute power at other elections. This is David Cameron's real objection, not the 'oh, you might get a BNP MP elected'.

But I do not understand why you prefer a system where your General Election vote is irrelevant and means you have - despite the wishes of a majority of your fellow constituents - an MP who has voted strongly against a transparent Parliament, strongly for introducing ID cards, very strongly for introducing foundation hospitals, strongly for introducing student top-up fees, very strongly for Labour's anti-terrorism laws, very strongly for the Iraq war, very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war, and very strongly for replacing Trident.

It seems an excessively high price to reduce the chances of the BNP getting an MP.

I think, though I'm not sure, that this is the best you can do with one-X ballots. Obviously ranked ballots would be a massive improvement.

I think 73260, with the Tories' third seat being the one up for grabs.

How did you arrive at that number?

Same mistake as

lovingboth, not checking which party Jonathan Fryer was in. And then adding 1 to break the tie between Tory and BNP.

Yes, I'm guessing Jonathan mistakenly looked at his margin to Labour, not the Tories. In a way, that makes me feel less bad - it would have been frustrating to be that close and not get him in.

*feels the same*

Ugh, I'm so sorry.

I was also somewhat disheartened when I saw the news this morning. I'm in a resolutely Blue area (my MP's got one of the safest seats in the country), so I did take some comfort from Labour being a minority party in the county council.

Yes indeed, a day to pull the blankets over your head and give up on life. However, I would expect some kind of backlash vote in the US soon as well, and perhaps all this is the last thrashing death throes of a dying monster?

Was the last decade our Weimar republic? Short of making Griffin poo flags and talking, I have no idea what to do now. I desperately want something to do.

excuse my ignorance, but what is a BNPMEP?

A Member of the European Parliament for a strong contender for the UK's least lovable political party, the British National Party.

Wikipedia will have more on both.

Thanks. The vegetable soup gets to me sometimes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only