For softfruit

[ciphergoth]

Another diagram showing the fortunes of the Lib Dems - I had another go to see if I could show more of what's going on.

Again, the position in the diagram (and the percentages) indicate the share of major party vote that each party gets, and the pie charts indicate the proportion of seats that each gets.

Looking at those polls, the Lib Dems had better hope that Clegg is going to completely turn around the fortunes of the party, or they are facing total irrelevance, which is a long way from the bright hopes entertained after the 2005 elections.

Comments

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

Take the 1983 general election. Labour and the Alliance (LibDems) got almost the same share of the vote nationwide - 27% and 25% respectively.

Now, as a rule of thumb, you need about 40% of the vote in a constituency to win it and get the MP. Strictly you need 50.1% of course, but if the votes for the other parties are split you just need one more vote than the next most popular.

However, the Alliance vote was evenly distributed - they got about 25% everywhere, which meant a lot of second places (eg Lab 40%, All 25%, Con 25%, Others 10%) while Labour got a lot of 40% type votes in some areas and 10% type votes in others - so a lot of first places and a lot of third places, which average out to 27% but is much more concentrated in particular parts of the country.

Result: 203 Labour MPs, 23 Alliance, for almost the same number of votes.

Similarly, Plaid get hardly any votes at all, but almost all their voters live in four North & West Wales constituencies and so they get 3-4 MPs in most elections.