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Tuesday, June 09, 2009

How the votes are distributed in d'hondt 

Looking at how the system actually works on real data - and it is clear what a narrow squeak it was in the Southeast of England with our second seat. We came very close to a Tory gain from us. Doing some calculations with a higher vote share for us shows we would need to raise our vote by nearly 60% to get an extra seat if other parties stayed stable.


Table shows the calculation. Method: top line is actual votes cast for each party that got a seat. Second line of table is this actual vote divided by two. Third line is the original actual vote divided by three. And so on. There are ten seats in Southeast England so we need to list out the ten highest numers in this table. That gives the seats allocation.





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# posted by Edis @ 1:00 pm
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Sunday, June 07, 2009

Still a lottery for tonights counts 

The basic thing to remember about First Past The Post is that it is a ‘party list system’ with the number on the list limited to one. The crude and rigid proportional system we enjoy for the Euro elections has a serious defect. When it comes to determining the last seat, one competitive name left on each list, it becomes in effect ‘first past the post’ with the winner being the party ahead relative to the others. By this stage normally nobody will have a full quota of votes so it will be the residues that decide it.

Something to remember if we are biting our nails as to whether one of our champions gets the last seat going in any electoral area. If there is a lot of scattering of votes including solid but not spectacular success ‘minor’ parties not quite making up a quota it could become as much of a lottery as a multi-competitive Westminster seat.

The last seat in a larger region could go to a party with a pretty low level of support.

Of course this could be mitigated if we had a transferable system…

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# posted by Edis @ 10:03 am
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Thursday, June 04, 2009

Small steps in great matters 

One of the lessons I picked up from my parents life experiences is that if you don’t take a interest in what is going on around you, other people will make the decisions for you. And you may not like the result. So at 4am preparing for a Good Morning drop I remember Belsen (My Dad was one of the Liberators) and my mothers resistance unit blowing up the tracks of a railway in Nazi-occupied Lithuania so that the men in the train (who the Nazis wanted to form into SS Units) could escape into the forest. I remember my Dad landing in Normandy in the second wave of D-Day and how emotional he was when his only grandson was born on June 6th so many years later. Life on a day which had a memory of immense fear.

Delivering Good Mornings along the Ampthill Road in Bedford is a tiny thing but I am warmed by the thought I am supporting the Party least like either the Nazis or the Communists –both of which have a fundamental contempt for the individual as a free person of unique value. And as for Europe - I am proud to be a supporter of the Party upholding the immense changes for the good in our continent since my parents had to make their life decisions as young people.


And thanks to all of you out there doing your own tiny things.

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# posted by Edis @ 4:40 am
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Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Around Europe - how parties might fare country by country 

OK so nobody should take opinion polls as gospel. But this site which tries to analyse how the Euro-Election results will pan out across Europe has some interesting insights. In our UK Parish it suggests we are up to gain one seat (presumably in London) which matches our more realistically optimistic thoughts. Lest hope we can beat teh predictions though!

Elsewhere ALDE parties face a bit of a white water ride, some delegations (as in Germany) projected to increase, others to be wiped out entirely. In Poland for example the ALDE party in the last Parliament seems simply not to be standing this time, so goodbye four seats. The Dutch delegation may see one ALDE party (VVD) drop a seat and another (D66) gain. Which since VVD showed up in the Match Your Vote tests as one of the parties I would least likely vote for if I was a Dutchman is a bit pleasing for me.

See here for a country by country analysis.

On the Tories search for an Euro nest foul enough to attract them it looks like they will at least be spared the embarrassment of association with Tevzemei un Brivibai as that Latvian party is schedule to collapse and lose both its seats. On the other hand a couple of new embarrassingly awful Belgian parties may squeeze in and seek to embrace the Tories.

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# posted by Edis @ 9:52 am
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Monday, June 01, 2009

ALDE and debates elsewhere on the Continental elections 

In all our local excitements on expenses and so on, we sometimes forget that the LibDems are fighting the EuroElections as part of an International grouping, ALDE. Some people are actually looking at the policy positions presented by ALDE and commenting. Take a look for example at this comment on energy policies.

The Eurotrib site tends to equate Liberalism with neo-Liberal ‘market worship’ by the way, many contributors putting it in the same basket as the policies of the last US administration. The tone of some comments elsewhere can be gauged by another post on Eurotrib which says ‘when something is being pushed by an ALDE member using "competition" newspeak, I reflexively check my wallet to see if I'm being robbed.’

By the way are there any projections on how ALDE as a whole will emerge from this election?

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# posted by Edis @ 10:09 am
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Monday, May 11, 2009

The Parties of THE in alphabetical eurotangle 

On a council or Westminster ballot paper candidates are listed in alphabetical order of surnames. On the Euro Parliament ballot paper, in alphabetical order of part names, exactly as entered in the nomination papers.

This has had the following interesting result in the South-East Euro division where the Conservatives entered as Conservative (and appear alphabetically where you expect the letter ‘C’ and the LibDems entered as Liberal Democrats (and appear after the Js and before the Ns). Which leaves ‘The Green Party’ and ‘The Labour Party’ listed together, in that order, down alphabetically amongst the T’s.

I wonder if this will make a difference for any bemused voters scanning this list:

British National Party
Christian Party ‘Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship’
Conservative Party
English Democrats
Jury Team (who by the way do not have a full slate of candidates)
Liberal Democrats
No2EU Yes to Democracy
Pro Democracy: Libertas EU
Socialist Labour Party
The Green Party
The Labour Party
The Peace Party: Non-violence, Justice, Environment
The Roman Party: Ave!
United Kingdom First
United Kingdom Impotence Party

If ‘The’ Greens and ‘The’ Labour had got themselves listed as G and L they would have appeared as fifth and seventh on the list respectively, instead of at tenth and eleventh and pushed us down from sixth to eight in the list. Exactly in the middle of the paper.

How has the Alphabet played out in other regions?

The point about the Jury Team shortfall is that it suggests that everybody who applied for a Jury listing got in. Wonder what mixed bag is involved there.. And by the way I trust everyone spotted the one ‘Deliberate Mistake’ in the spelling of party names above…

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# posted by Edis @ 6:59 pm
Comments:
From a brief look elsewhere the Parties of THE seem pretty universal...
# posted by Blogger Edis : 7:22 pm, May 11, 2009
 
Deliberate mistake: Including the word "liberal" on the line that says "Liberal Democrats"?

:-)
# posted by Blogger Jock Coats : 10:30 pm, May 11, 2009
 
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