General Election 2015: General: (5) - More alternatives

Final post on this subject, promise.

CURRENT FPTP SYSTEM by country (NI excluded as always):

Wales (total 40 seats)

Conservatives 407,813 votes (27.2%) - Actual seats won:  11

Labour 552,473 votes (36.9%) - Actual seats won:  25

Plaid Cymru 181,704 votes (12.1%) - Actual seats won:  3

Lib Dem 97,783 votes (6.5%) - Actual seats won:  1

UKIP 204,330 votes (13.6%) - Actual seats won:  0

Green 38,344 (3.6%) - Actual seats won 0

Scotland (total 59 seats)

SNP 1,454,436 votes (50.0%) - Actual seats won:  56

Conservatives 449,264 votes (15.4%) - Actual seats won:  1

Labour 691,980 votes (23.8%) - Actual seats won:  1

Lib Dem 219,675 votes (7.6%) - Actual seats won:  1

UKIP 47.078 votes (1.6%) - Actual seats won:  0

Green 39,205 (1.4%) - Actual seats won 0

England (total 533 seats)

Conservatives 10,483,321 votes (41.0%) - Actual seats won:  319

Labour 8.087.164 votes (31.7%) - Actual seats won:  206

Lib Dem 2,089,404 votes (8.2%) - Actual seats won:  6

UKIP 3,611,260 votes (14.1%) - Actual seats won:  1

Green 1,073,260 (4.2%) - Actual seats won 1

FPTP Overall (total 632 seats)

Conservative 331 - Labour 232 - SNP 56 - Lib Dem 8 - Plaid 3 - UKIP 1 - Green 1

PURE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION by country

Wales (total 40 seats)

Conservatives 407,813 votes (27.2%) - Seats won under PR:  11

Labour 552,473 votes (36.9%) - Seats won under PR:  15

Plaid Cymru 181,704 votes (12.1%) - Seats won under PR:  5

Lib Dem 97,783 votes (6.5%) - Seats won under PR:  3

UKIP 204,330 votes (13.6%) - Seats won under PR:  5

Green 38,344 (3.6%) - Seats won under PR:  1

Scotland (total 59 seats)

SNP 1,454,436 votes (50.0%) - Seats won under PR:  30

Conservatives 449,264 votes (15.4%) - Seats won under PR:  9

Labour 691,980 votes (23.8%) - Seats won under PR:  14

Lib Dem 219,675 votes (7.6%) - Seats won under PR:  4

UKIP 47.078 votes (1.6%) - Seats won under PR:  1

Green 39,205 (1.4%) - Seats won under PR:  1

England (total 533 seats)

Conservatives 10,483,321 votes (41.0%) - Seats won under PR:  219

Labour 8.087.164 votes (31.7%) - Seats won under PR:  169

Lib Dem 2,089,404 votes (8.2%) - Seats won under PR:  45

UKIP 3,611,260 votes (14.1%) - Seats won under PR:  76

Green 1,073,260 (4.2%) - Seats won under PR:  23

TUSC/Left Unity (0.1%) - Seats won under PR:  1

There is a slight skewing in the England results due to the large number of spoilt ballots (under a pure PR system, spoilt ballots would have two seats of their own).  TUSC strictly speaking would only be entitled to 0.69 of a seat, so I rounded this up, the other went to the Lib Dems as they would be next closest to gaining another (well, they had to go somewhere).

Pure PR Overall (total 632 seats)

Conservative 239 - Labour 198 - SNP 30 - Lib Dem 52 - Plaid 5 - UKIP 82 - Green 25 - TUSC 1

The above two systems restrain the total number of English/Welsh/Scottish MPs to 632, but alternative systems could be used. As it would be guesswork to try to predict a result under AV, the only other obvious thing to look at is a system that generated MPs according to minimum percentage of the vote by constituency, This would reflect more honestly the views of the electorate, but would necessitate an increase in the number of MPs; most seats would have one MP, but a good number would have two and possibly even three (although this would be a bit of a freak result).

MINIMUM PERCENTAGE VOTING by country

Wales (number of seats 40, number of MPs variable according to vote share)

27.5% requirement: Conservative 17 - Labour 33 - Lib Dem 3 - Plaid 5 - UKIP 0 - Green 0  (58 Welsh MPs)

30.0% requirement: Conservative 17 - Labour 30 - Lib Dem 1 - Plaid 4 - UKIP 0 - Green 0  (52 Welsh MPs)

32.5% requirement: Conservative 13 - Labour 28 - Lib Dem 1 - Plaid 3 - UKIP 0 - Green 0  (45 Welsh MPs)

Scotland (number of seats 59, number of MPs variable according to vote share)

27.5% requirement: Conservative 10 - Labour 31 - Lib Dem 9 - SNP 59 - UKIP 0 - Green 0  (109 Scottish MPs)

30.0% requirement: Conservative 5 - Labour 24 - Lib Dem 8 - SNP 59 - UKIP 0 - Green 0  (96 Scottish MPs)

32.5% requirement: Conservative 4 - Labour 10 - Lib Dem 6 - SNP 59 - UKIP 0 - Green 0  (79 Scottish MPs)

England (number of seats 533, number of MPs variable according to vote share)

27.5% requirement: Conservative 395 - Labour 292 - Lib Dem 30 - UKIP 11 - Green 1  (729 English MPs)

30.0% requirement: Conservative 380 - Labour 280 - Lib Dem 22 - UKIP 8 - Green 1  (691 English MPs)

32.5% requirement: Conservative 365 - Labour 267 - Lib Dem 18 - UKIP 2 - Green 1  (653 English MPs)

Overall (number of seats 632, number of MPs variable according to vote share)

27.5% requirement: Conservative 422 - Labour 356 - SNP 59 - Lib Dem 42 - UKIP 11 - Plaid 5  - Green 1  (896 MPs)

30.0% requirement: Conservative 402 - Labour 334 - SNP 59 - Lib Dem 31 - UKIP 8 - Plaid 4 - Green 1  (839 MPs)

32.5% requirement: Conservative 382 - Labour 305 - SNP 59 - Lib Dem 25 - Plaid 3 - UKIP 2 - Green 1  (777 MPs)

Interesting, eh? No.  Oh well.

General Election 2015: General: (4) - Micro-Parties

Uh?

What are they?

Why are they there?

What do they think they're doing?

Why do they think that we want to listen to them?

Should we?

Let's see.

For the purposes of this post, micro-parties and independents can easily be defined - strip out the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, UKIP, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru - i.e. the main defined political parties - and look at whatever remains.

Of the micro-parties, the left-wing Trade Union And Socialist Coalition (TUSC) fielded easily the most candidates; as sometimes they stood alongside Left Unity (LU) I've treated TUSC/LU as a single party, fielding 138 candidates and cumulatively receiving 36,945 votes (268 votes per candidate). Their top ten performing candidates (Dave Nellist's 3.91% in Coventry Northwest and Jenny Sutton's 3.11% in Tottenham were notable standouts, but 10th place on the list and support is down to 1.20%) all lost to Labour candidates.

From the right, the only party standing a semi-significant number of candidates were the English Democrats in 32 constituencies. They managed 6,531 votes (204 votes/candidate) and even their best-performing candidate only managed 1.30% of the vote.  Curiously, all their top candidates all lost to Labour too.

The usual suspects (Christian Party et al, Loonies and affiliates, regionalists) also stood, but as ever made no significant inroads.  Beyond that, the only others of significance were the National Health Action Party (12 candidates, 20,210 votes, but significantly down on the last election) and most intriguingly given current political manoeuvrings, CISTA.

CISTA campaign for the legalisation of cannabis and put up 28 candidates, accumulating 6,566 votes (235 votes/candidate). Whilst this might seem as feeble as the average independent or small party, for a brand new party without a history, this could well be significant. If there is no move by the government to change the classification of cannabis before the next election - and let's face it, politicians are so shit-scared of the issue that there will be no move - there would be enormous value for them to go all-out for the next one. Most people with a CISTA candidate standing in their constituency weren't aware until they saw the ballot paper; with prior name recognition, and another five years of Tory rule, this could be a party that could build a lot of popular support.

But for the first time for a while, no independents or representatives of small parties won any seats at all. Obviously this is an idiosyncracy of our broken voting system, but it's still a bit worrying.

Next...best performing independent candidates.

Things get complicated from herein...