Now that
the results are mostly in I have a few things I'd like to say about this UK two party fallacy.
I'm looking at the figures with two seats undecided, and we have:
Labour 9,539,730 votes (35.2 %)
Conservative 8,756,242 votes (32.3 %)
Lib Dem 5,977,043 votes (22.1 %)
For a start I think it's fairly ridiculous that we now get to be ruled for five years by a party that 64.8% of voters didn't vote for, but that's the way the system is and it's quite difficult to come up with viable alternatives. The really scary thing is when you realise those percentages are of people who actually voted rather than of actual voters - 38.7% of voters didn't vote at all, that's 17,000,000 people (approximately).
Now imagine that one in ten people didn't vote because they felt a vote that wasn't for either the Tories or Labour "wouldn't matter" - this isn't too far fetched when you consider that out of a sample of three non voters I know, 66% gave this reason. Let's also be cunning and assume that one in ten people who did vote voted tactically - ie. they didn't vote for the party they really like, they voted the way they did because they really didn't want to see either Labour or the Conservatives win a particular seat. In a very rough and ready way I'll just take 10% off each party a share that with the other two. This isn't excellent statistical analysis, but none of these assumptions are too outrageous I think, and gives the following figures:
Labour 8,884,609
Conservative 8,656,456
Lib Dem 8,004,550
