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Voter Power Index

saint_stevo

By saint_stevo,
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Wes Tender

Wes Tender

Posted
Posted
For Eastleigh-

 

http://www.voterpower.org.uk/eastleigh

 

Interesting. Ish

 

Yes. If it wasn't for UKIP last time around, Conservatives would have won. Perhaps those people who voted UKIP do not want Brown as PM and realise that voting UKIP was a waste and that if they do it again, they will in all probability still have Brown at Number 10.

 

Also worthy of note, is that there is a Liberal candidate, somebody disgruntled that Huhne had made a promise on something or other that he did not keep. Presumably they would also be taking votes away from Huhne.

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The9

The9

Posted
Posted (edited)

I looked at this yesterday, it's got some useful info but they way they choose to use the data is ridiculous, and as a tool for PR it doesn't really work because there's no effort to explain how PR would improve things.

 

For a start according to them NO-ONE'S vote is worth "1 vote", even in the most marginal constituency on the list. Clearly if there's a scale, either 1 needs to be the midpoint as the expected mean value of a vote, or to use their 0-1 scale, 0.5 needs to be the midpoint.

 

For instance in somewhere like Romsey & N Southampton which is expected to be a tight contest, the vote is only worth "0.981 of a vote". Every vote will be more important there, so the headline stat should be based on marginality alone : "Voters in Romsey & Southampton North have 3.88x more voting power than the UK average". THIS is the real stat that shows the value of a vote by constituency.

 

"The equivalent of 0.981 votes" is basically a garbage figure deliberately designed to imply no-one has a powerful vote, and it includes the barely relevant comparison of voters per constituency, which is only really a factor if turnout is 100% or there are massive fluctuations in constituency size - which there aren't.

 

Most bizarrely, the logical conclusion of the whole thing [for as long as the PR alternatives aren't discussed] is that if you don't want people to waste their votes, the best situation is to only have one candidate per constituency, or a form of totalitarian non-election. Blunkett's Sheffield Brightside support is 70%, so only 30% of votes are "wasted" there. Is this a GOOD thing ?

 

In a truly close 3-way contest won by a single vote, 66% of the votes will be "wasted", but each one of those is actually vitally important as if there was one more of them it would tip the balance. If there's only one candidate, there's no wasted vote. Utopia ?

Edited by The9
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Wes Tender

Wes Tender

Posted
Posted

 

Notice also that both Eastleigh and Arundel are both bigger than average constituencies. It takes nearly 5000 extra electors to produce a member of Parliament in Arundel and 6000 more in Eastleigh.

 

On the Isle of Wight, I think that the electorate is something like 108,000, making it the largest in the Country. Time that this inequality was addressed

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The9

The9

Posted
Posted
Notice also that both Eastleigh and Arundel are both bigger than average constituencies. It takes nearly 5000 extra electors to produce a member of Parliament in Arundel and 6000 more in Eastleigh.

 

On the Isle of Wight, I think that the electorate is something like 108,000, making it the largest in the Country. Time that this inequality was addressed

 

They've just addressed it as far as they're likely to, they've just redrawn the boundaries for 2010 (including Romsey now containing Bassett and Swaythling).

 

As far as the IoW goes, they're not going to split it to be two constituencies of 54,000 people as that's too few, and the wetness of the Solent and I dare say IoW island politics would pretty much prevent anyone on the mainland from being part of their constituency, so they're stuck with it.

 

If you want a real grizzle, have a look at the number of Scottish and Welsh constituencies compared to English... the provinces (lol) are massively over-represented in Westminster.

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Scummer

Scummer

Posted
Posted
I am in DC's constituency. There's really not much point in hauling my arse 100 metres down the road to the polling station tonight.

 

I guess the reason why individual votes are more important this time is that if there is a hung parliament there is going to be a lot of focus on how many votes each party got, not simply how many seats they gained.

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Wes Tender

Wes Tender

Posted
Posted
They've just addressed it as far as they're likely to, they've just redrawn the boundaries for 2010 (including Romsey now containing Bassett and Swaythling).

 

As far as the IoW goes, they're not going to split it to be two constituencies of 54,000 people as that's too few, and the wetness of the Solent and I dare say IoW island politics would pretty much prevent anyone on the mainland from being part of their constituency, so they're stuck with it.

 

If you want a real grizzle, have a look at the number of Scottish and Welsh constituencies compared to English... the provinces (lol) are massively over-represented in Westminster.

 

I don't see why an electorate of 54000 would be a problem, as the smallest constituency electorate is just 22000 in what was formerly the Western Isles.

 

I have already had a couple of good grizzles at the number of MPs representing Scotland and Wales, mostly Labour, when both those countries have their own Parliament/Assembly and yet also vote on English affairs, whereas we have no say in theirs.

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Ponty

Ponty

Posted
Posted
I'd go just to get his autograph.

I doubt he'd be at my particular polling station. There are only a few people in the village.

 

It would be amusing though.

 

The only reason I'll probably bother to go is if my lass decides she wants to vote against the Tories. Then I'd vote just to cancel her out, for a laugh.

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dune

dune

Posted
Posted
I doubt he'd be at my particular polling station. There are only a few people in the village.

 

It would be amusing though.

 

The only reason I'll probably bother to go is if my lass decides she wants to vote against the Tories. Then I'd vote just to cancel her out, for a laugh.

 

If you see Dave can you get me a signed photo please. He may well end up as big a hero as Mrs T and it'd take pride of place above the mantel piece.:p

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The9

The9

Posted
Posted
I don't see why an electorate of 54000 would be a problem, as the smallest constituency electorate is just 22000 in what was formerly the Western Isles.

 

I have already had a couple of good grizzles at the number of MPs representing Scotland and Wales, mostly Labour, when both those countries have their own Parliament/Assembly and yet also vote on English affairs, whereas we have no say in theirs.

 

I think you've answered your own question then. It's because it's in England.

 

FWIW, about the only thing I'm with the Tories on is Unionism, mainly because as an English-only speaking Newport-born British person it makes me sick to my stomach the amount of taxpayers' money wasted by artificial regional bodies, and the preposterous money wasted on crap like enforcing the Welsh Language Act. 2% of the population of my home town (now city) were "welsh speakers" when I was in school, yet the local train station (and all others in Wales) announces destinations in welsh before English.

 

Still, I got p1ssed off enough with it that I moved to England, the train station problem is solved anyway.

 

And don't get me started on the renaming Western Isles either, how many Gaelic Scots are there, FFS ? I haven't seen any of your rants on proportionality, but they sound like fair comment. At least England had the sense not to go with regional assemblies.

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Barry the Badger

Barry the Badger

Posted
Posted
I guess the reason why individual votes are more important this time is that if there is a hung parliament there is going to be a lot of focus on how many votes each party got, not simply how many seats they gained.

 

Good point, the national totals will receive a lot more focus this time due to the voting system being raised as an issue, particularly if the order of the parties is different in terms of total votes compared to seats won.

 

For this reason, a wasted vote won't be quite as wasted as usual this time around IMO.

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