2010-04-12

Something fishy



So what happens if 25% of the vote goes to each major UK party and to independents? It appears that the Labor Party ends up with 9 seats short of a majority, independents gain no more seats than they had when they had 8% of the votes, the Tories lose 4 seats and the Lib Dems win 38.

So either the UK electoral system is simply awful, or the BBC's Election Seat Calculator is simply awful.

2 comments:

Ron said...

I would think this pertinent
"This assumes that for every seat in the country, each party's vote share changes by the same amount. So this is a crude model - in reality every seat is unique. "

Some seats just are strong for one party perhaps the maths of swing allows for that.

A long time since I sat through a UK election night.

So I think BBC estimates by each seat are more likely

I looked at Billericay which I remember as one of earliest seats in and the experts could give you the country results based on this one seat because it is a sort of swinging seat.


Anyhow 2005 Labour won with 43% see text on right of map box and the chart at bottom of page headed 2005 result says 46% to Tory. (I've posted to BBC that it appears this should read 2010 Forecast.) 2005 Tory 36% that is 10 points swing in one seat

The next seat Brentwood Tory are from 50% up to 54%.

210 seats in 2005 I'd say Tory could be in with 328.
That many Gordon Brown email jokes must mean something. I've even had Kevin jokes which are obviously re-worded from Gordon

The UK system works best with 2 parties - LD confuses

Ron said...

I had a very quick reply to from the BBC

Dear Mr Lankshear,

Many thanks for your message, and interest in the site.

The constituency is a new seat, so the 2005 result given is a notional
result, based on what would have happened if the constituency had been
configured then as it is now.

The text refers to the actual 2005 result in the old Basildon seat.

With regard to the problem scrolling, I will forward your comment to our
technical team for them to look into.

Regards,

BBC Election 2010 Team