And while I'm on the subject

[sesquipedality]

Political polls during the election have indicated that the split in the vote is something like as follows. Labour: 40%, Conservatives: 25%, Liberals: 20%, Others 15%. Now as far as I can see that means that the Tories have about as much support in this country as the Liberals. Yet in all the election coverage I've seen, the Lib Dems are treated as "also-rans". The perception of the Lib Dems as a minority party is an illusory one, created by our rather bizarre electoral system by sustained in a large part by the media. Unfortunately this perception loses them votes from people who think there's "no point in voting for a party that won't win".

Comments

[calseris.livejournal.com]

yes and no

how many people is 5% of the electorte?

It's also more due to teh Tories making themselves more and more unelecatble as the dya sgo by

They're like labour in the 80's

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

It's always been true of the LibDems, though, that they have higher showings in the polls, and greater support in the actual vote, than their share of seats would suggest.

Of course, I may be biased :

[keirf.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember that in 1983 the SDP/Lib group actually got about 26%, a percent or so more than Labour. They still ended up with about a tenth the number of seats that Labour did though.

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

I worked out this from the BBC's news site for the 2001 election results:
Lib Dems got roughly 20% of the votes, and roughly 8% of the seats.
I worked out Labours as well, but can't remember the figures (it may have been 45% votes to 65% seats).

[jonnyargles.livejournal.com]

The trouble is, though, that their vote is concentrated as runner-up parties in many constituencies with healthy majorities. Cynics could say that this explains their relentless pursuit of proportional representation.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I don't think that thought is restricted to cynics :)

Can you blame 'em?

[sparrowsion]

Um, you've been seeing very different polls to the ones I have, then, which have been more like 37%/33%/21%/9% . Of course, the point still stands that this nothing like reflects the number of seats gained.

(The Independent ran an interesting poll of the form "If you thought the Liberal Democrats could form a government, who would you vote for?" and the LibDem share went to 39%….)