Interesting electoral facts

[Philip Davies]

2010 was the first post war election where the turnout in England was higher than in Wales.

[mboy]

That is indeed interesting. Given that turnout tends to be lower in Labour areas, and given Wales is more Labour than England, this seems an unlikely fact.

[iainbhx]

May 19, 2013 19:16:08 GMT mboy said:

That is indeed interesting. Given that turnout tends to be lower in Labour areas, and given Wales is more Labour than England, this seems an unlikely fact.

Wales is one of those areas which has always had high turnouts, Leicestershire (outside the City of Leicester) is another one I have spotted.

[Crimson King]

is there such a thing as an uninteresting electoral fact?

[johnloony]

Of the six main political parties in England, four have leaders whose names begin with N.
Nick Clegg (LD)
Nigel Farage (UKIP)
Nick Griffin (BNP)
Natalie Bennett (Green)

Which stimulates two further questions:

(1) When (in, say, the last 100 years or so) has there been a similar degree of uniformity in the main party leaders' initials (first names and/or surnames)?

(2) What, at various different times in the last few decades, would have been considered to be "the 6 (or 5, or 4) main parties in England"?

The question is further complicated if one includes the regional/national parties such as SNP, PC, DUP, UUP, SDLP, Sinn Fein, etc.

Now, the "six main parties" are fairly obviously the "three main parties" plus UKIP, BNP and Green.
In the 1970s, they would have been NF, CPGB, and (probably) WRP.

The answers to these questions (and the interaction between them) would probably be multivariously fuzzy and clear at different times.

[innocentabroad]

May 20, 2013 5:37:49 GMT johnloony said:

Of the six main political parties in England, four have leaders whose names begin with N.
Nick Clegg (LD)
Nigel Farage (UKIP)
Nick Griffin (BNP)
Natalie Bennett (Green)

Which stimulates two further questions:

(1) When (in, say, the last 100 years or so) has there been a similar degree of uniformity in the main party leaders' initials (first names and/or surnames)?

(2) What, at various different times in the last few decades, would have been considered to be "the 6 (or 5, or 4) main parties in England"?

The question is further complicated if one includes the regional/national parties such as SNP, PC, DUP, UUP, SDLP, Sinn Fein, etc.

Now, the "six main parties" are fairly obviously the "three main parties" plus UKIP, BNP and Green.
In the 1970s, they would have been NF, CPGB, and (probably) WRP.

The answers to these questions (and the interaction between them) would probably be multivariously fuzzy and clear at different times.

Thank you for answering CK's post.

[Deleted]

I think question 2 is quite interesting.

[froome]

May 19, 2013 19:18:51 GMT iainbhx said:

May 19, 2013 19:16:08 GMT mboy said:

That is indeed interesting. Given that turnout tends to be lower in Labour areas, and given Wales is more Labour than England, this seems an unlikely fact.

Wales is one of those areas which has always had high turnouts, Leicestershire (outside the City of Leicester) is another one I have spotted.

Anglesey had a turnout of over 50% in this year's local elections, far higher AFAIK than that recorded in any English counties.

[Pete Whitehead]

I don't think I would count the BNP anymore as one of the six main parties. Certainly not once Griffin loses his European parliament seat next year as they will hold virtually no elected offices then. Not that there is any other party that can claim the status, so I would say there are now five main parties (but Respect probably has a greater claim now and even TUSC tends to have more candidates and win more votes these days)

[The Bishop]

Not sure about the "winning more votes" bit......

[Pete Whitehead]

I haven't lookd in a lot of detail but the BNP got comedy votes in the two seats in Herts where they stood this year including one where they'd won in 2009. TUSC got fairly pathetic votes where they stood, but not quite as low. English Democrats for that matter did better

[keithn]

The last time a general election was won by someone who was, shall we say, rather balding over someone who was not was in 1900 when Lord Salisbury won a majority.

Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee won three elections between them - but only against each other.

When a bald person has come up against someone who is not, they lose (1935, 1955, 1964, 1987, 1992, 2001, 2005).

France have not got such a problem - since 1959, every President except one (Sarkozy) has been thin on top.

[Deleted]

May 20, 2013 12:22:13 GMT keithn said:

The last time a general election was won by someone who was, shall we say, rather balding over someone who was not was in 1900 when Lord Salisbury won a majority.

Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee won three elections between them - but only against each other.

When a bald person has come up against someone who is not, they lose (1935, 1955, 1964, 1987, 1992, 2001, 2005).

France have not got such a problem - since 1959, every President except one (Sarkozy) has been thin on top.

When the exit poll for the 1981 presidential election was declared, an image of Mitterand, as the winner, was gradually revealed on screen. It started with the top of his head and it wasn't until it got down to his eyes that the presenter of the programme could be sure it wasn't Valery Giscard D'Estaing (0:39 onwards on this video):

[johnloony]

Chronological Transferable Vote:
Croydon Central, 2010

Round 1:
Gavin Barwell (Conservative) 19657
Gerry Ryan (Labour) 16688
Peter Lambell (Lib Dem) 6553
Andrew Pelling (Independent) 3239
Cliff Le May (BNP) 1448
Ralph Atkinson (UKIP) 997
Bernice Golberg (Green) 581
James Gitau (Christian Party) 264
John Cartwright (OMRLP) 192
Michael Castle (Independent) 138
Conservative majority 2969

Round 2: Defection of Michael Castle to Conservative:
Conservative = 19657 + 138 = 19795
Labour 16688
Conservative majority 3107

Round 2: Defection of Andrew Pelling to Labour:
Labour = 16688 + 3239 = 19927
Conservative = 19795
Labour majority 132

Round 3: Defection of John Cartwright to Conservative:
Conservative = 19795 + 192 = 19987
Labour = 19927
Conservative majority 60

[mboy]

[Pete Whitehead]

I think we gain Great Grimsby on this system

[Deleted]

General election facts - (some gaps, you can help!) - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election_records

By-election facts - (ditto) - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_by-election_records

[johnloony]

May 25, 2013 7:29:07 GMT @boogieeck said:

How do we define major party? I would suggest that if a party has a vote which exceeds all combined Independents, then it is a major.

Someone probably has the spread sheets to hand. My guess is that the UK majors are C, L, LD, UKIP, SNP. No others. PC, DUP and SF qualify locally.

I would define "main party" as having a significant proportion of the votes or seats in a significant number or range of elections. The BNP qualifies as "main" because it got 6% of the votes in the European Parliament election, and got 2 seats, as well as dozens of councillors. Next time, those three qualifications will probably all be gone, and so it won't be a main party any more.

[tricky]

Was it in the other place that someone came up with the idea that we have 2 major majors, 1 minor major and that there was then a discussion about major minors and minor minors?

I would suggest that in this classification UKIP is now the most major minor but it would need to maintain that over a period of time to become a minor major.

[Andrew_S]

In 1979 the total number of Labour votes increased from 11,457,079 to 11,532,218. Their percentage decreased from 39.2% to 36.9%:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1979

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_October_1974