Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 1384
Warning: preg_match_all(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 700
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 707
Warning: preg_match_all(): Compilation failed: invalid range in character class at offset 4 in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 700
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /homepages/28/d791771663/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/classes/shd.class.php on line 707
It’s been eighteen months since 555 & Counting was updated. The main explanation is things cropping up to hinder plans and create delays. That’s topical! All the same, the untypical voting pattern in 2017, out of alignment with the UK’s four previous elections, did have an influence in knocking us slightly off course. As did the Brexit imbroglio, too omnipresent to be prevented from silencing all arguments needing to be advanced for electoral reform.
The myth abounded even among eminent scholars that UK politics had bounced back to rude health. They claimed 2017 to be a massive return to two-party politics and ‘a big turn out’. Both were statistically untrue, as this website was pointing out in 2017 (see last para here) and (fourth para here). But real facts find traction in the public mind hard to come by. Factoids, truisms and positive sounding spins always get in the way.
As if to prove the point, I recently spoke to one of the country’s most celebrated and sought after election analysts after he’d given a presentation. He seemed slightly irritated that an evidently unqualified non-entity had stepped up to present him with the reality of those parliamentary seat distribution statistics. He dismissed them with disdainful waves of the hand and a comment something like ‘Oh, you always get that.’ Afterwards, I thought, had he been pressed or tired, he could have invited me to email him with the data.
This is the up-date of our European general election participation table that records the impressive improvement by Spain in its election held at the end of April 2019:
Sweden and Italy held elections in 2018. It’s doubtful even young readers will live to see the UK achieve Sweden’s 87.2%. But when comparing ourselves to the three European economies roughly our size, including Italy, we fall well short of them.
Now we fall well short of Spain too. If our 2017 election had seen the same turnout rate as Spain’s this year, an additional 3.3 million Brits would have gone to the polls. We continue to accumulate evidence that first-past-the-post electoral systems suppress turnout. The US uses it and their last election got a turnout of 55.5%. The most powerful head of state in the world was elected with the support of about one in four of his electorate. Something can’t be right, can it?
Our FPTP Turnout table analyses turnout rates in countries across the world that still hold to first-past-the-post systems. Forgive the spoiler but you probably won’t be surprised to learn that the turnout rates are not at all impressive.
The limitations and warts of first-past-the-post have become all too apparent as well during the Brexit deadlock. It has made it clearer to a wider audience that our two-party system is demonstrably in deep malaise. Electoral reform is now even more urgent. We’ll go into what should be learnt from Brexit in more detail in subsequent posts on this website.