Entitlement and the electoral system

[andrewducker]

Very interesting graphs here showing that the safer an MPs seat was the more likely they were to be implicated in the current expenses scandal.



Where the "top 25%" are the people in the top quartile when we break them down by how large their majority is.

i.e. if you believe that you have a totally safe seat then you are more likely to take advantage of this.

cheers to miss_s_b for the link.

Comments

[matgb]

Mark, been meaning to email you, but parents visiting and am swamped. I've been working on a similar thing using similar datasets for ages, but on turnout compared to seat safety—clear correlation there as well, marginal seats have high turnout, etc.

Can you mail me your sheet so far and I'll send mine back when I'm online?

matbowles at gmail dot com

@Andrew: agree completely with what Mark's said above on STV—yes, parties can chose to limit their candidates to just what they're likely to win, in which case they can't expand their number of MPs, and can lose them, in addition, party splits and smaller parties are more likely in STV, but that doesn't happen in Ireland for historic reasons (although it did for awhile with the PDs, which wrapped themselves up recently).