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

[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.

[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%….)