Friday 2 May 2008

Proportional Representation in Hartlepool?

I can't help but play with numbers, it's just the way I am. That's why 1,000,000 visitors to the tall ships is giving me such a hard time and why Council tax increases always seem so hard to justify in real numbers. However, enough of that!

I've just played a little numbers game of "What if Hartlepool Council was elected on a proportional representation single basis".

Of course it's not an exact science since the number of wards contested by each party come come into play but based on the number of votes cast last night it needed only average of 865 votes to elect one of the 7 labour Councillors returned last night, 1,175 to elect one of the three successful Independents, 1,334 for each of the Lib-Dem, 2,121 for UKIP's success and 2,131 for each of the two Tories.

Translate that into proportional representation based on average votes cast per ward contested and then multiplied up to estimate the result for all 15 wards and the Proportional representation make up of the seats won changes to

Labour 3 Seats (Down 4),
Independents 4 Seats (up 1),
Liberal Democrats 2 (no Change),
UKIP 2 (up 1) and
Tories 3 (up 1).

The Tory figure is actually most suspect because although they stood in 11 Wards out of 15 they got almost half their total vote in just two wards (Park and Throston).

The other surprise is that the PR Calculation would have given the BNP a seat. Of course this is why demands for PR are resisted by the main three parties. Labour would loose seats but the Tories wouldn't necessarily gain them and the Lib-Dems remain the same so none of those three would benefit by a fairer election system and so it will never happen!

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