Dungeon Master Forum

You may have noticed a bit of chat recently about a little old election this Thursday.

Whichever way you vote, you might first want to find out a bit more about how little your vote really counts, using this site: http://www.voterpower.org.uk/. I knew my vote was largely ineffective, but I didn't realise by how much!:

http://www.voterpower.org.uk/croydon-north

If your voting power is slim, and you were intending to vote against your current safe incumbent, you might think there's no point voting. There still is! Don't waste your vote!

http://blog.voterpower.org.uk/2010/05/e ... -thursday/

Hey, it's like the electoral college!

Not sure what you mean, but it seems like you're taking the piss? Sorry for caring about what happens to my country!

Sorry, I was pointing out something similar in the US. I probably should've explained more; I'm not sure how much of our odd electoral system is known to the world at large and how much isn't.

The simplified version is: In US presidential elections, the people don't directly elect the president, something called the electoral college does. Each state has a certain number of electoral votes, determined by population. The candidate that wins a majority in each state wins all of that state's electoral votes. Winning a close race will get them all of that state's electoral votes, whereas getting that exact same number of votes in a more secure state does absolutely nothing. This means that if you live in a state that isn't very hotly contested, a state with few electoral votes, or both, you're not likely to see much campaigning. On the other hand, hotly-contested battleground states that either party could win and have a good number of electoral votes, like Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc., get the lion's share of the campaigns' attention.

This seems similar. It kind of sucks!

Sophia wrote: The candidate that wins a majority in each state wins all of that state's electoral votes.

Except Maine and Nebraska.

Gambit37 wrote:http://www.voterpower.org.uk/croydon-north

Wow! That looks fascinating! Thanks for posting this, Gambit, really! I'm definitely going to use it when explaining the UK election system - and the election systems in general - to my students! Very cool!

@Sophia: UK and Us are very similar using the First Past the Post system: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=54

Most people recognise that, while simple, this system has deep flaws. Many of the electorate would seem to now favour moving to proportional representation. I can't pretend I know much about it, but the more I learn, the more it's clear that the system in the UK is junk.

By the way, I wonder how much of the whole society in Britain actually goes to elections? is this below or above 60%? (In Poland it`s about a half I think).

61.4% at the last general election (2005). And much lower at recent local elections (over the last 2 years).

It's pretty shameful, but it does show the mood of the country pretty well. http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm

Roquen wrote:Except Maine and Nebraska.

Yeah, I know. I left it out of my simplified version because, unfortunately, this sort of system is in place only in place where it doesn't matter all that much. I mean, great that candidates will divide up all four of Maine's and all five of Nebraska's electoral votes, but it would be much more interesting to see how this would work somewhere like California. I'll leave it at that because I don't want to hijack Gambit's rant about the UK electoral system with a rant about the US electoral system.

Whoa, 61.4%? In Germany, the last general election had something like 76% and it was the lowest turnout ever. Local elections go down to sometimes even below 60%, but 61.4% for a general election is pretty low in my mind.

Just a short, oversimplified information how it works in Germany: You have two votes. The first goes to a candidate in your local district, and the second goes to a political party in general. The candidates who win in their district go to parliament directly, and the parties get an amount of seats in parliament that is proportionate to the second votes. A party can only enter parliament if they get at least 5% of all votes (currently, there are five parties there).

In Poland, in parliamentary elections 2005 we had 40% turnout, but usually it`s about 50%, sometimes even 60. (I`m talking about parliamentary and presidencial elections here, not local and european, which has always about 20-30% turnout). In 2005 presidencial elections, we had turnout below 50%, the same (below 50%) with 1997 parliamentary elections, and many others.
Over 60% would be very good as for polish standards.

Soon be time to tune in for some blow by blow counting!

First seat declared: Houghton & Sunderland remains Labour.

This could be a long night!

Yes, they did say the ballot boxes were fuller than expected. Long, long night.

Might go to sleep but leave the iplayer on so can check up over the evening. So tired!

Edit: I see Washington and Sunderland West just declared for Labour. 2 down 648 to go.

Yeah, just saw that. Couldn't believe the BNP candidate got more than the UKIP woman!!! This country is so messed up!

And woke up to it still going on. NIck Clegg just got his seat, but lib dems seems to have a poor show. Conservatives will seem to get what was predicted, but can't see them getting 326 now.

The new Parliament is considerably well hung. I'm relieved, sort of, but now it's going to be even more painful. I'm very worried.

Nick Clegg has just said he thinks the party with the most seats (ie the conservatives) should form the new government... so he's either not wanting to form a minority coalition government with labour, or is gettign their attention so he can leverage alot.

beowuuf wrote:Nick Clegg has just said he thinks the party with the most seats (ie the conservatives) should form the new government...

I think I've read on the BBC that it's the tradition that if there's a hung parliament in the UK then the former PM (i.e. Gordon Brown) should be asked by the Queen to form the Government.

I'm watching these elections very closely, I think I'll have one lecture for my students focused on it, discussing also advantages and disadvantages of various election systems.

Indeed, I'm pointing out the way Labour would do that is effectively hinting at not supporting the current government's efforts.

Wow, so the results are pretty interesting, but the future will be even much more interesting! The only viable option is to form a Conservative - Liberal government.

The regional "pattern" of the results is particularly interesting for me (as a geographer), with Labout party taking mostly London and the "old industrial" cities of England, the North of England and Scotland; the Conservatives most of England out of the mentioned large cities; and the Liberal Democrats the most remote parts of Scotland and Cornwall. This is very interesting. Does anyone from the UK here have an idea why the Liberal Democrats suceeded there?

The 65% turnout wasn't that bad, I think.

It's been a fascinating election. I'm pleased that John Denham is still my MP as I respect him greatly. Unfortunately I think the likely new PM, David Cameron, is a useless upper-class twit who I wouldn't trust to organise a coffee morning at Starbucks

F*CK.

F*ck what? Your new government? Why?

Losing net last night, didn't hear about the new government until today.

Some people say the coalition will be "Progressive". I say give it six months for infighting to completely halt any 'progressiveness'. And I didn't vote Lib Dem to have them go over to the dark side -- and George Osbourne as Chancellor of the Exchequer -- what a bloody joke! The bottom line is that while all the nicey-nicey talks that are currently going on, it won't take long for the differences between the two parties to start causing problems.

We're utterly doomed to do this all again pretty soon; I hope!

Well - you'll see. We'll see. Good luck with your new government, anyway!

The Czech Republic hasn't had a stable government since 1997 - all the coalition governments were very unstable, weak, undecisive, occupied with their own problems and internal politics. Our proportional political system simply hasn't created a working coalition with a significant parliamentary majority for 13 years. We have parliamentary elections coming at the end of this May - and I'm afraid that the undecisive situation will be repeated again - no party or coalition seems to have a decisive majority - or perhaps only the social democrats + commies - and this is what I call doom!

Interesting to hear it from the other perspective. People here are calling for change to a proportionately representative system, but it can obviously have negative consequences too.