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UK Elections 2015

Ivysaur

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  • The important news so far: we got Lord Ashdown saying he'll eat his hat and Alaistair Campbell betting his kilt for breakfast if the BBC exit poll turns out to be right.
     

    Ivysaur

    Grass dinosaur extraordinaire
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  • Or it might not be necessary after all. Conservatives nearing a majority, and the Lib-Dems facing almost total wipeout.
     

    Her

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    I honestly have no understanding of the British election system so like.... who won? How does one win?
     

    Ivysaur

    Grass dinosaur extraordinaire
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  • I honestly have no understanding of the British election system so like.... who won? How does one win?

    Every constituency elects a member of parliament- the candidate who gets the most votes in each district gets elected. After all MPs are elected, the House of Commons convenes and votes on the party leader with the most seats- majority in the House is 326 seats. It seems it was, indeed, a Con-Lab tossup in vote share, but the system caused many more Lab votes to be wasted, meaning it will most likely be a healthy Con plurality- if not an exact majority.
     

    Crunch Punch

    fire > ice
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  • Well, after so much Conservative are gonna take it home with a slim but still majority win. Labour got crushed :/

    Well goodbye Europe!!
     

    Ivysaur

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  • Now the question is how will Cameron maneuver around an EU-exit referendum that he needs to lose for the good of the country while keeping the ever-growing English nationalists happy without alienating Scotland decisively.

    All of that with a waffer-thin majority that has been locked in for five years thanks to the Fixed Parliaments Act (except for by-elections, of course).

    This is going to be an amazing thing.
     

    pkmin3033

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    Well, on the plus side, a lot of very awful politicians have resigned as a result of this, so maybe by the time the next election rolls around we'll have candidates worth voting for...although I won't hold my breath. I can't say I'm happy with the way things turned out, but it's going to be interesting, at the very least.
     
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  • Interesting note if Lib Dems had have had their way with Proportional representation they would have done even worse than they did under FPTP. Also SNP would have done quite badly and UKIP would have come in third.

    So what I have taken from this election:

    The Labour party is a Northern Party is in some ways a myth, much of the North (larger more rural areas) voted Conservative (In pure numbers more people may have voted Labour however). In reality I would say the Labour party is a Urban Party rather than being more successful in certain regions as a whole.

    The Liberal democrat vote was always a protest vote rather than voters agreeing with their ideology , most of its voters in England opted for Conservative option instead (Lib Dems are ideological closer to Labour, so you would have thought voters would have gone to Labour as alternative).

    SNP have done really well, but not all Scotland is convinced Shetland and Orkney didn't buy into them nor did Clydesdale, Dumfrieshire and Tweedsdale and Edinburgh South.

    Plaid Cymru couldn't repeat what SNP did in Scotland.

    UKIP are a real threat to Labour, they did well or at least ok all over UK bar London and Scotland.

    Greens can't match UKIP in terms of universal appeal, despite their name they are very much an urban party.

    Labour really are dependent on the Scottish vote, made gains in England but still didn't do well over all.
     

    Ivysaur

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  • Incidentally, I want to congratulate James Duddridge MP, who held his seat with 20,241 votes and a 46.4% of the vote.

    That was truly a successful Erection Day for him.

    Interesting note if Lib Dems had have had their way with Proportional representation they would have done even worse than they did under FPTP. Also SNP would have done quite badly and UKIP would have come in third.

    8% votes

    1% of the House is 6.5 seats

    8 x 6.5 = 52

    Lib Dem under FPTP = 8 seats
    Lib Dem under (hypotetical) PR = 52 seats

    Clearly 52 seats would have been such a much worse results than the 8 seats they have now.
     
    Last edited:
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    • Seen Mar 21, 2016
    Am I the only one thinking our voting system needs a massive change... How the SNP can obtain 56 seats from 1.4M votes whilst UKIP only obtain 1 seat from 3.7M votes... I hardly doubt it will change soon either as the current system is massively in favor of the Conservatives

    Going to be interesting to see SNP with complete control of the Scottish seats but no power in the actual parliment I see a split coming
     
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  • Am I the only one thinking our voting system needs a massive change... How the SNP can obtain 56 seats from 1.4M votes whilst UKIP only obtain 1 seat from 3.7M votes... I hardly doubt it will change soon either as the current system is massively in favor of the Conservatives

    Going to be interesting to see SNP with complete control of the Scottish seats but no power in the actual parliment I see a split coming

    They only fought for 59 seats and came first in 56 of them.
    Not sure how many seats UKIP stood for, but I assume it's a lot more than that? Basically UKIP are getting wasted votes, while in SNP's case most of the votes they got counted towards a win. Remember a lot of candidates stand for each constituency and it's only the ones who come first that count.

    This system may sometimes give distorted results, and actually getting majority of the votes will win you a ridiculously large number of seats, as seen in the recent Delhi elections, where AAP with 56% of the votes got 67 of the 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly while BJP with 34% odd votes got the other 3.
     
    10,078
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    • UK
    • Seen Oct 17, 2023
    Am I the only one thinking our voting system needs a massive change... How the SNP can obtain 56 seats from 1.4M votes whilst UKIP only obtain 1 seat from 3.7M votes... I hardly doubt it will change soon either as the current system is massively in favor of the Conservatives.

    Would you rather UKIP had 50+ seats?...

    Honestly, conservatives hanging on is probably the best outcome for the country. Labour's leadership was shocking, and having someone so weak as PM can't be a good thing. A LabourxSNP coalition would have been pretty odd, so I'm glad we're not in that boat right now.

    Plaid Cymru and the Greens need to step up their game a bit, it would be nice to see them taking home a few more constituencies next time. Unfortunately they lack the aggressive, militant attitudes of the more successful parties.
     
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  • We have always needed a voting reform, but I will back up a little FPTP by saying at least it actually did reach its primary purpose yesterday unlike in 2010. The real case for reform was then and unfortunately people did not back it a year later. The chance has been missed.
     

    Nihilego

    [color=#95b4d4]ユービーゼロイチ パラサイト[/color]
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  • Honestly, conservatives hanging on is probably the best outcome for the country. Labour's leadership was shocking, and having someone so weak as PM can't be a good thing.

    Despite being highly anti-Tory and fairly pro-Labour myself I do think you make a pretty good point here, and I've definitely agreed throughout recent events - while Labour is sound as a party Miliband was an absolute joke. I know that we're voting for more than one person when we vote for a party but a party led by someone that you can't take seriously is one that it's hard to put any faith into when it comes to filling out your ballot. And I'm not talking about the speech impediment or Wallace & Gromit comparisons or baconsandwichgate here - just his general demeanour (as highlighted by the stone tablet incident that I keep whacking on about) isn't nearly serious enough for me to think that he could run a country. I get that he was trying to be a bit quirky and a bit different and put a bit of life into politics maybe but when you're going for such an important position that backfires hard. Miliband absolutely screams of "private school kid" to me, more so than the other leaders, and I really feel like he was largely responsible for Labour's defeat. If anything good has come out of today for Labour, it's his resignation - he held them back.

    Plaid Cymru and the Greens need to step up their game a bit, it would be nice to see them taking home a few more constituencies next time. Unfortunately they lack the aggressive, militant attitudes of the more successful parties.

    I anything I think the Greens were too aggressive - definitely too ambitious - or at least, their supporters are. Maybe it's because I live in a relatively left-wing area surrounded by, unsurprisingly, left-wing students but for the past month or so I've barely been able to mention politics without a Green jumping down my throat promising the world and honestly, it's really off-putting. I think the Greens need to dial back on a lot of their policies, look at what's actually feasible and beneficial rather than promising everything that looks good on paper, and make a more believable pitch to next election's voters.

    LabourxSNP

    otp i ship this so hard
     
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