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

[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).