More fools

From the comments below on "BNP Fools":

I don't think the university graduates of the SWP understood the system either. Their Left List put out a leaflet saying: "The proportional representation system means the only way to stop a minor party like the BNP getting elected is to vote for a progressive, left alternative. Under the PR system just piling up voted for New Labour will not block the BNP. But voting for the Left List can stop the fascists getting a seat on the London Assembly". I think I'm right in saying that this is just not true. The D'Hondt system favours the bigger parties, so piling up votes for New Labour, the Tories, the Liberals or the Greens would precisely have been the way to have blocked the BNP. In this respect a vote for the SWP/Left List or any other very minor party would have been a wasted vote. Am I right or do you need a Ph D in statistics to understand all this?

London Socialist is right.

In a sense what they are suggesting has some basis. In a PR system, every vote cast for a candidate other than the BNP does increase the chance of that party getting the seat instead of the BNP.

Further, with the 5% threshold, every vote cast changes absolutely the number of votes they would require in order to enter the assembly.

But, the d'Hondt system is superproportional for larger parties, and simply voting to big up the Labour vote would be more likely to help them snatch the seat to prevent the BNP from filling it.

The only way what the SWP were suggesting could work would be if there were large scale transfers from Labour to the Left List - this would be to take advantage of the additional member system, but if this had happened thoroughly, the SWP/Left List would have gained 8 seats with 650,000 votes, and the BNP would still have got in. Likewise, if the left did manage to pull of such a stunt, it's likely that the BNP would have been able to pull votes off the Tories.

As it is, the votes for the also rans (Christian Peoples Party, English Democrats, UKIP, Respect, Left List, One London) come to 228,214 - that represents about two seats, and probably represents, more or less, the super proportionality of the larger parties. The majority of these are right wing votes, and so would otherwise have fallen to the Tories. But, then, the aim is to keep the BNP out, so better Tories than fascists?

Mind, an extra 95,000 votes for Labour would have taken a seat off the Tories, which would in most terms mean a reduction in the potential voting weight of the BNP, since it would make it harder for them to act as the pivot on which a Tory majority could hang.

If you're going to play these games, at least play them right.

BNP fools

So, I was at the count listening to the BNP counting agent recounting why he thought he "mixed race" grandson he was raising should be entitled to join the BNP, because he is culturally British - though, he said, he understood it is important to protect the species.

I really didn't want to kick off, it was a count, and I was surrounded by them, so I let it go.

Their election agent later explained the election strategy to me - they weren't standing any constituency candidates, because if Labour and Conservatives got more of those, they';d be entitled to fewer list seats.

Clearly, they don't understand the additional member system and the d'Hondt rules.

In the GLA there are 25 seats. 14 are elected in single member constituencies under First Past the Post. 11 come from the list. As you can see, there are more FPTP seats than list, so the first thing to note is that a party can win more direct seats than their proportion of votes would allow. This is especially the case considering that plurality elections allow the biggest minority to win, so, say, a vote of 26-35% could be enough to take each seat.

Labour and Tories did split the 14 seats between them, 8 and 6 with 37% & 28% respectively. (that is 32% and 24% of the seats - a subproportional tally).

The way the d'Hondt works, is you take the total number of votes cast for the list, and divide it by one plus the number of seats gained.

Party	Con	Lab	Lib	Gre	BNP
# Votes	835,535	665,443	252,556	203,465	130,714
% Votes	34.05%	27.12%	11.22%	8.29%	5.3%
# Seats	11	8	3	2	1
% Seats	44%	32%	12%	8%	4%

As can be seen from this table, the parties who only received their d'Hondt votes basically got close to their proportional vote in representation (actually, the BNP are under represented, but, then, the whole problem here is one of rounding, and the rounding is only 1% in this instance.

Here's how the seats would have looked if the election had only been a d'Hondt list based one:

Party	Con	Lab	Lib	Gre	BNP
# Votes	835,535	665,443	252,556	203,465	130,714
% Votes	34.05%	27.12%	11.22%	8.29%	5.3%
# Seats	11	8	3	2	1
% Seats	44%	32%	12%	8%	4%

Look familiar? d'Hondt actually favours larger parties anyway. If we exclude the 15% of votes for parties that failed to get representation (i.e. only take our percentages from effective votes) we get the following table:

Party	Con	Lab	Lib	Gre	BNP
# Votes	835,535	665,443	252,556	203,465	130,714
% Votes	40.02%	31.87%	12.10%	9.75%	6.26%
# Seats	11	8	3	2	1
% Seats	44%	32%	12%	8%	4%

Which is, in effect, the percentages if these had been the only parties standing and voted for.

Now, you can manipulate the additional member system, if you stand as two parties, or, if you have a sister party standing in the FPTP seats you can swing a few constituencies to. But the BNP thinking was bunkum, they neither gained nor lost from not standing in any FPTP seats.

Just proof of stupidity.