The Conservative Party Conference seems to have been well-received by the Press, although that is probably to be expected. According to Andrew Rawnsley, and I have seen the figure repeated in several papers, Mr Cameron will need to gain 117 seats simply to have a majority of 1. Apparently, that sort of landslide has not happened since 1931.
The General Election is probably six months away. I wonder if a hung Parliament might be the most likely outcome.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-conservativesThis is about tone. It is also about maths. Labour losing the election is not the same thing at all as the Conservatives winning it. Only a very modest swing to the Tories is needed to deprive Labour of office. A much bigger swing is required to place power securely in the hands of the Conservatives. To win a parliamentary majority of one, the Tories must gain 117 seats. A shift of that magnitude has not been achieved since the very extraordinary circumstances of the election of 1931.
A Neil Kinnock demonstrated in 92, telling people how you will take money off them if elected, can lead to surprises for pollsters.
It's more about the swing needed to achieve that. If it were Labour who were 117 short it would take a lesser swing for them to win.Originally Posted by bindeweede
Purely based on the figures a hung Parliament is fairly unlikely.
Dave, I'm afraid I don't understand how if Labour needed to win 117 seats, that would be easier than if the Cons needed to win the same.
Confused of Herts.
This issue is caused by the way in which party support is distributed across the country. A party which has its support base concentrated in particular areas rather than dispersed will win more seats for any given number of votes. It just so happens that the relationship to party support and the way in which constituency boundaries cut across this favours the Labour Party.
This is a quote I prepared earlier concerning the vagaries of our first-past-the-post system:
To take a theoretical example, in a two-party system, one party might have 49% of the vote in every single constituency, yet would not get a single member elected, since the party with 51% support would win 100% of the seats. OTOH, a party which has all of its vote concentrated in 51% of the seats, in each of which it has 51% of the vote, would win the election outright with 51% of the seats, while only getting 26% of the total vote. This effect favours locally-based parties like the Welsh and Scottish nationalists, but counts against small national parties, who have little chance of winning any seats even though they may have a lot more total support than the nationalists.
Last edited by Tony Williams; 10th October 2009 at 08:28 AM.
Which particular parliamentarians would you like to be hung?
What is the best way to swing an MP when hanging them?
Do you swing Tories to the right and Labour to the left? What about Lib Dems
What Tony said. It's basically about boundary changes and who they benefit in any one 2-3 decade period. At the moment it's Labour but in the 80s it was the Tories.
At least 542 of them ;-)
Libs to the left, Labour to the right and Tories just round and round.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8300686.stm
Tears as in "rip" not tears as in "cry"
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