I’m sick of this.<\/p>\n
I’m sick of this excuse for not taking part in an election.<\/p>\n
I’m sick of this method people use for shirking responsibility in the democratic process.<\/p>\n
I’m sick of this when people are shocked that extremists succeed when the majority do not vote.<\/p>\n
So here’s a breakdown on the amount needed to make a change in the European Elections in the UK, by region.<\/p>\n
Bit of background first – the d’Hondt method is used to allocate seats. You allocate a seat to the highest vote, and then divide the total vote for each party by the number of seats they have already been awarded, plus one. You then allocate a seat to the highest according to this ranking, divide by seats plus one and re-rank. This continues until all the seats have been allocated.<\/p>\n
You want to know what your vote could have meant? Here we go, this is what would have made a difference in the last round.<\/p>\n
East Midlands <\/strong>(5 seats, 3,312,944 in the electorate – 37.07% turn out of 1,228,065)<\/p>\n 45,110 more votes for the BNP would have had them taking a seat instead of the Liberal Democrats. This is 1.36% of the electorate, roughly the capacity of Blundell Park<\/a> and Pride Park<\/a>.<\/p>\n East Of England<\/strong> (7 seats, 4,252,669 in the electorate – 37.70% turn out of 1,603,340)<\/p>\n 15,945 more votes for the Greens would have had them taking a seat instead of the UK Independence Party. This is 0.37% of the electorate, roughly the capacity of the Melbourne Stadium<\/a> and Roots Hall<\/a>.<\/p>\n London <\/strong>(8 seats, 5,257,624 in the electorate – 33.30% turn out of 1,751,026)<\/p>\n 79,202 more votes for the Liberal Democrats would have had them taking a seat instead of the Conservatives. This is 1.51% of the electorate, roughly the capacity of Stamford Bridge<\/a> and White Hart Lane<\/a>.<\/p>\n North East <\/strong>(3 seats, 1,939,709 in the electorate – 30.41% turn out of 589,862)<\/p>\n 12,945 more votes for the UK Independence Party would have had them taking a seat instead of the Liberal Democrats. This is 0.67% of the electorate, roughly 1,000 more than the capacity of Gateshead International Stadium<\/a>.<\/p>\n North West<\/strong> (8 seats, 5,206,474 in the electorate – 31.73% turn out of 1,651,825)<\/p>\n 2,448 more votes for the UK Independence Party would have had them taking a seat instead of the BNP. This is 0.05% of the electorate, roughly the capacity of Woodlands Memorial Ground<\/a>.<\/p>\n South East <\/strong>(10 seats, 6,231,875 in the electorate – 37.47% turn out of 2,334,858)<\/p>\n 13,563 more votes for the Conservatives would have had them taking a seat instead of the Liberal Democrats. This is 0.22% of the electorate, roughly the capacity of The Brighton Centre<\/a> and Adams Park<\/a>.<\/p>\n South West <\/strong>(6 seats, 3,998,479 in the electorate – 38.76% turn out of 1,549,708)<\/p>\n 12,068 more votes for the Greens would have had them taking a seat instead of the Conservatives. This is 0.30% of the electorate, roughly the capacity of the Memorial Stadium<\/a>.<\/p>\n West Midlands<\/strong> (6 seats, 4,056,370 in the electorate – 34.83% turn out of 1,413,036)<\/p>\n 28,269 more votes for the BNP would have had them taking a seat instead of the UK Independence Party. This is 0.70% of the electorate, roughly the capacity of Molineux<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yorkshire And The Humber <\/strong>(6 seats, 3,792,415 in the electorate – 32.33% turn out of 3,792,415)<\/p>\n 10,269 more votes for Labour would have had them taking a seat instead of the BNP. This is 0.27% of the electorate, roughly the capacity of Belle Vue<\/a>.<\/p>\n So in 7 of the 9 regions, less than 1% of the electorate needed to vote for a party to make a difference. In each region the number of people needed to vote is less than a couple of sports grounds in that region, in one case less than the capacity of a third division rugby league ground. 219,849 people could have meant 9 different MEPs being elected, less than 100,000 would have meant 7 different MEPs.<\/p>\n Your vote does count. If you don’t use it, don’t complain if other people don’t vote how you would like them to vote.<\/p>\n Capacities from World Stadiums<\/a>. I’m sick of this. I’m sick of this excuse for not taking part in an election. I’m sick of this method people use for shirking responsibility in the democratic process. I’m sick of this when people are shocked that extremists succeed when the majority do not vote. So here’s a breakdown on the amount needed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pAkBY-L","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":484,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=484","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":0},"title":"Coalitions, and the mandate.","author":"MattWPBS","date":"May 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"There's talk in the opinion pages about the possibilities of coalitions between parties in Parliament, some of which are quite disturbing. 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\nElection results from BBC<\/a>.
\nd’Hondt method here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"