European Parliament and Local Council elections on 22nd May

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Likely outcomes under the D'Hondt method

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method

The basic way the seats are allocated is: divide the parties votes by (number of seats the party has won + 1) and compare with the other parties ; then repeat until all seats are allocated. So the 1st round is just 'compare the votes all parties have; highest gets the seat'. next round is 'divide that party's votes by 2, while keeping the others the same - see who comes on top now', and so on.

How this works out, and whether your vote is likely to affect the outcome, depends on the number of seats in the region. Taking the smallest - North East England (for which we have some UK DUers), with 3 seats, we see the 2009 result was:
Labour: 25.0%
Con: 19.8%
LibDem: 17.6%
UKIP: 15.4%
(others)

I'd say this is almost certain to end up this time with 1 Lab, 1 Con and 1 UKIP MEP; for any party to get 2 seats, they have to get more than twice as many votes as the 3rd place party, and I don't think that's going to happen. It won't take much of a swing for UKIP to beat the LibDems, and that looks very likely given the overall feeling since 2009. Who beats whom of Labour, Tory and UKIP doesn't really matter in the end - it's the race for 3rd place that matters. If you're a LibDem supporter, it's worth turning out, just in case they could hang on; if you're Labour, you might consider lending your vote to LibDem for the day, just to fuck with UKIP, because Labour should be pretty safe is retaining their one seat.

South East England (for me, and others here) is the largest region - 10 seats. While the eventual threshold for the last seat in North East England was about 17%, in SE England it was about 7%:
Con: 34.8% 4 seats (last won with 34.8/4 = 8.7%; next seat would have had 34.8/5=6.96%)
UKIP: 18.8% 2 seats (last won with 18.8/2 = 9.4%)
LibDem: 14.1% 2 seats (last won with 14.1/2 = 7.05%)
Green: 11.6% 1 seat
Labour 8.2% 1 seat

So we see that the LibDems just got their 2nd seat over the Tories getting a 5th one. This time round, I'd guess the LibDems will drop below the level needed for 2 seats, so will lose 1; I doubt the Greens or Labour will be able to get above that level, so they'll remain on 1; so I think there will be 7 seats to divide up between Tory and UKIP, with the one that comes 1st getting 4, and the other 3. My suspicion is that will still be the Conservatives, but it could be UKIP - in 2009, the national split between them was Tory 27.7%, UKIP 16.5% - Tory lead 11.2%, and current polls show roughly Tory 22%, UKIP 28%. Going by those polls, I suppose there should be a chance of Labour picking up a 2nd seat too - if their national Euro vote is really going to go from 15.7% in 2009 to around 30% this time, they might be able to change that 8.2% into 14 or 15%.

But this means there's more chance of your vote affecting the result in SE England than in a smaller region - whatever the parties you might feel able to vote for.

The good news is the BNP vote has collapsed, so Griffin's gravy train is coming to an end - I don't think they'll get anywhere near a seat in any region. The country has finally agreed on something - We Hate The BNP.