UK Election Thread

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
Is it very likely when the boundary commision redraws constituencies it will be made so the distribution of seats better reflects the vote? In this election Labour only got 3% more votes then the Tories but got over 150 more seats.

Very doubful since that isn't really the boundary commision's fault since Conservative votes are much more bunched and Labour votes are much more spread out, which means that first past the post really hurts the conservatives.

[Drogue]

Actually, I'm not so sure. Labour control the cities, and Tories the country, as a rule of thumb. That's why most of the country looks blue on a map, but Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff (etc.) and most of London are red. This seems to suggest Labour voters are more bunched.

However there is the counter that within those boundaries, Tory voters seem to be more bunched, as the rich areas are usually villiages in the country or certain small districts in cities. I'm not sure how it evens out.

[CerberusIV]

The system for deciding constituency boundaries in the UK doesn't really take much notice of which way people vote. Basically the boundary commission reviews the boundaries every few years. The criteria are mainly that all parliamentary constituencies have about the same number of voters (around 85,000), that they don't cross local government boundaries if possible and that they represent "communities of interest" - basically the main shopping and employment centres in an area.

After draft proposals are drawn up the local party organisations, amongst others, comment and ask for changes they think will favour them. Sometimes they get those changes, sometimes they don't. The Secretary of State decides whether to implement the final recommendations and usually does so - if he makes obviously biased changes he risks being dragged off to the High Court for a judicial review of his decision.

So there isn't much political bias. Part of the reason Tories aren't doing well because most seats are really between 2 of the 3 main parties (3 way marginals get a lot of attention precisely because they are quite rare) and the Lib Dems and Labour won a lot of seats where the Tories came second.

[Solly]

A policy of castrating paedophiles would get the turnout up to 90% I'm sure. And get the party elected who promised this.

[Drogue]

Yeh Because people really want corporal punishment back.

Hole. Back. Crawl. In.

[Solly]

It is surprisingly popular.

Bring back the cane too.

[Provost Harrison]

Look who's back