Comments on: The British Election http://www.kalyr.co.uk/weblog/uncategorized/the-british-election/ The blogs of Tim Hall Fri, 14 Apr 2017 23:35:42 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=3.7.41 By: Tim Hall http://www.kalyr.co.uk/weblog/uncategorized/the-british-election/comment-page-1/#comment-348 Sat, 07 May 2005 23:38:38 +0000 http://kalyr.co.uk/wordpress/?p=224#comment-348 Can’t think of any site that explains how it works, but it’s basically the same as (I think) the US house of representatives. The country is divided up into 600+ single-member constituencies, and whoever gets the most votes in each constituency takes the seat. All of them are supposed to represent the same number of voters, and the boundaries get redrawn every few years to take account of population changes. The last time this happened was several elections ago, and the next revision is overdue. The declining population in urban industrial areas, and increased population in surburban areas means the present boundaries favour Labour.

The system breaks down when there are more than two parties, which we’ve had for more than twenty years now. Third parties tend to get squeezed, and we’ve had plenty of elections where the right have won only because the left-of-centre vote was split between two parties.

]]> By: Amadan http://www.kalyr.co.uk/weblog/uncategorized/the-british-election/comment-page-1/#comment-347 Sat, 07 May 2005 23:05:43 +0000 http://kalyr.co.uk/wordpress/?p=224#comment-347 Where is there a good, brief tutorial on how the UK electoral system works, anyway?

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