Saturday 14 February 2015

Is FPTP Killing Democracy?

So you are a Conservative voter living in Liverpool Walton or a Labour supporter living in Chesham & Amersham. Well you wouldn't stand a chance because you would be living in the safest seats for your opposite party.

Now in the day of 2 and 3 party elections FPTP is more than adequate. But now with up to 7 parties and at least 6 main choices when a voter goes to the ballot box. A winner of the election May actually get less than 15% of the total electorate available.

Is the thought of why bother to vote being the biggest killer of Democracy would proportional representation give people the faith that their vote can count.

Liverpool Walton an electorate of 62,612

The Labour candidate got 24,709 which was 72% of those who voted but only 39.5% of those who could vote. Now who is to say if everyone had voted then the Labour candidate may have got more. But what if you are not a Labour supporter? Would you feel, what is the point?

Chesham & Amersham an electorate of 70,333

The Conservative candidate got 31,658 which was 60.4% of those who voted but only 45% of the total electorate.

Now when looking at turnouts the safest Labour seats had turnouts of around 50% where as the safest Conservative seats had 68%. This was at a time when Gordon Brown was on course to lose the election and so Labour voters were least likely to vote and Conservative voters on high more likely to vote.

So what about the marginals?

Hampstead & Kilburn 79,713 electorate, has only a 42 vote majority for Glenda Jackson the Labour MP

Who got 17,332 votes 32.8% of the vote

Which is 21.7% of the electorate meaning 78.3% of the electorate did not vote for their MP.

So what could change the thought of why vote?

Proportional voting? I think it would help so why not leave your suggestions of how we could change our electoral system, so that every vote counts.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comment is open to all feel free to link to this blog.