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May 08, 2008

How our view of the North is distorted

Martin Wainwright in CiF writes:

"Like Liberals during the 1950s, the Conservative faithful shrank very low in many parts of the north during the past decade, but not as desperately as the often-recited data suggests. They may have had no councillors at all in Liverpool and Manchester, but they had plenty of votes. Without proportional representation (PR), the winner takes all, and commentators are usually more interested in winners than votes cast."

"The European Parliament elections, which use PR, have given the North-West four Tories, compared to three Labour MEPs and one apiece for the Liberals and Ukip. Conservative and Labour have two MEPs each in Yorkshire and the Humber (plus one Lib Dem and one UKIP) and the North-East has one MEP each from the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems."

Posted by malcolmclark on May 08, 2008

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