Dodgy Electoral Analysis

[andrewducker]

Chatting about the electoral results, I was wondering how much skew was produced by the country being polled in regions, rather than as a whole.

Party	Percentage	Potential MEPs	Actual MEPs	Unearned MEPs
Conservative	27.7	19.1	25	5.9
UKIP	16.5	11.4	13	1.6
Labour	15.7	10.8	13	2.2
Liberal Democrat	13.7	9.4	11	1.6
Green	8.6	5.9	2	-3.9
BNP	6.2	4.3	2	-2.3
SNP	2.1	1.4	2	0.6
Plaid Cymru	0.8	0.6	1	0.4
English Democrat	1.8	1.2	0	-1.2
Christian	1.6	1.1	0	-1.1
Socialist Labour	1.1	0.8	0	-0.8

What's interesting is that Plaid Cymru (the Welsh nationalist party) only got their seat because Wales was polled as a seperate region, and it's clear that this system does allow small regional parties more clout, but minor national parties (the Greens, BNP, English Democrats, Christian People's Alliance and Socialist Labour) do worse out of it.

Not sure how I feel about that...

Edit to Add:
8.5% of people voted for a party that got no MEPs at all. That's a lot of disgruntles people, I'd imagine.

Comments

[e-halmac.livejournal.com]

Hmmm yeah that is a little odd. And worrying but I'm only saying that because it seems to have enabled the BNP to get seats and I think they are bad news.

Out of interest, how does this system compare to the one in Scotland? I think we vote for local candidates and regional party list (or is it national?). Meaning it should (?!) be more representative of the vote overall. But have never checked in realation to the figures as you have done.

[andrewducker]

It's better, I believe, but still favours larger parties, because the top-up is based off of lists.

And the BNP would have got 2 _more_ seats under a fairer system.

[matgb]

Scottish Parliament for Holyrood uses AMS, and it's regional.

But within each region, top up seats are allocated in exactly the same way as for the Euros, divide total votes cast by seats held, then share out the extras, etc.

I really don't like lists, top up or otherwise, but they achieve proportionality, at the cost of voter empowerment, and favour larger parties over independents, etc.