Tag Archives: make votes count

LDVideo – Nick, Nick and Nickers

Okay, I’ve bowed to popular opinion – the Hazel Blears-inspired title for our occasional video round-ups, YouTube ‘cos we want to, is no more. Instead you’re getting the drably named LDVideo. BUT just because you’ve made me drop my punning motif doesn’t mean the videos that follow are anything less than scintillating.

First up, we have Cassettboy’s Nick Griffin / BBC Question Time mash-up which was being re-tweeted like nobody’s business yesterday. Childish but fun:

Earlier this week, Nick Clegg pitched up on Absolute Radio to be interviewed by Christian O’Connell – here’s a little bit of what happened:

Posted in YouTube | Also tagged and | 2 Comments

How the Euro results prove PR works

The good folk at Make Votes Count have been rapidly number-crunching, and come up with the following analysis of the UK’s European election results…

1) MOST VOTES ELECTED AN MEP

At least 3 out of every 4 votes counted and elected an MEP. Because of the proportional system used for the European elections, a large majority of voters will be represented by an MEP whom they voted for. In most regions, that is the case for at least 75% of voters. In the South East, it is almost 9 in every 10 voters. However, there were some losers; in particular Green voters missed out narrowly in several regions from electing a Green MEP.

2) VOTERS EMBRACE CHOICE

Across Great Britain, 8 different parties have won seats in the European Parliament. This shows that voters respond positively when offered choice at the ballot box. With differences emerging between results at local and European level, it is also clear that voters can make sophisticated choices about who they best want representing them and how they can most effectively make their vote count.

3) INCREASE IN WOMEN MEPs

As things stand exactly one-third of MEPs elected in Great Britain are women. This figure will likely go down very slightly, to around 32%, when the Scottish result is announced. Even so, this would still be a marked improvement on the one-in-four elected in 2004.

4) TURNOUT PATTERNS

Overall (including the Scottish result still to come in), turnout is probably going to be just under 35% – so around 4% less than last time. The biggest drops in turnout were in Wales and in those regions which had all-postal ballots in 2004. Turnout actually went up slightly in 3 regions (South East, South West and Eastern), with Thursday’s county council elections in those areas probably boosting things a bit.

5) BNP ONLY NARROWLY GAINED REPRESENTATION

Posted in Europe / International and News | Also tagged and | 25 Comments

Compass want Lib Dems at its conference

As a visitor to LibDemVoice you may or may not be aware of the work of Compass – the influential pressure group that campaigns for a more democratic, equal and sustainable world. Compass is about building a broadly based Liberal Left politics and as a Liberal Democrat activist we wanted to introduce you to our important work and to invite you to attend our National Conference on Saturday 13 June.

We believe that both the Tory and Labour leaderships want to turn back as soon as possible to the failed politics of the pre-crash – both in terms of the old economy …

Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and | 14 Comments

Does the Israeli election result prove PR just doesn’t work?

Whenever electoral reform – ie, proportional representation or ‘fair votes’ – is debated, those who oppose it will almost inevitably use a variation on the following arguments:

• it produces coalition governments which are weak, divided and indecisive (far better, obviously, to have strong government regardless of whether a majority of people actually voted for it);
• coalition are created by political deals in “smoke-filled rooms” which the voters have no control over (unlike our Parliamentary system of whipping and Prime Ministerial patronage, of course);
• The government which emerges bears no relation to the individual parties most voters support (compared with …

Posted in Europe / International and News | Also tagged , , and | 4 Comments
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