Quite interesting that in these strained economic times that these parties chose to waste their money standing in constituencies where they had no chance. Though it might be something to do with them getting Political Broadcasts laid on depending ont he amount of constituencies they stand in... but I'm sure they could have got plenty of coverage for £100k+ if they'd paid direct.
For those who don't know, you need to pay a £500 deposit to stand in an election. If you get 5% of the vote then you get that deposit back.
thats crazy amounts of money though, but maybe you're right about the broadcasts they got out of it. i worked for a company once and they got an advert done and it costs loads to get it broadcast even on some shit channel when no ones watching.
also i thought ( and was hoping ) that more people from smaller parties would get in because of the expenses scandal - as it turned out we ended up with less than we did have.
luke wrote:
also i thought ( and was hoping ) that more people from smaller parties would get in because of the expenses scandal - as it turned out we ended up with less than we did have.
me too, a lot to do with the "debates". Gave the impression that there were only 3 choices in it.
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Adam Boulton losing it with Alisdair Campbell... for no real reason I reckon!
Colston wrote:How did they do that without people casting a 2nd preference?
I believe this is a calculation based purely on %-age of the popular vote. eg. Lib Dems 162 to Labour 207 = 23:29 (each party's %-age of the popular vote, respectively) For the Lib Dems this is much better than the FPTP (57).
Based on these figures, the two main parties received roughly 100 seats out of proportion to their popularity. For this reason, I can't see them willing to give up FPTP anytime soon. But perhaps that's just me being misanthropic...