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July 21, 2008
UAF analysis on London elections
In the London Assembly elections the BNP controversially gained one seat. They shared 5.33% of vote thus crossing the 5% threshold required to get elected.
Unite Against Facism's analysis of the LA elections states that "The BNP only got elected because such a small percentage (5%) is required in the top up list section". If this is the case then what is an appropriate threshold? If the BNP achieved 7.6% of the vote just narrowly surpassing a threshold of 7.5% would we have to raise the threshold again? If this wasnt the BNP but a less offensive, less extreme minority party would we be asking these questions? Probably not.
It is not the threshold we need to address but the reasons why 130,174 people voted for BNP?
Posted by robrankin on July 21, 2008
Comments
Would hope that systems could be devised which are tailored to the individual needs of the area-say- raise the threshold in London to 10%- but keep it at 5% in Scotland where they are weak
The overall solution however should be to ban these nazi criminals from standing at all
Posted by: Antifascist at July 22, 2008 08:55 AM
The answer is STV which tends to shut out extremist parties because the only votes they get are first preference and not enough to give them a quota.
Posted by: Joe Patterson at July 22, 2008 04:01 PM
Antifascist - it sounds like you are trying to gerrymander the system to conceal the support the BNP have been picking up. I don't like this any more than you do, but isn't it more important to ask why they're getting that support in the first place? Joe makes the valid point, that STV allows people to demonstrate more clearly not only which parties they support the most, but also which parties they like least. And it would stop situations like that in Stoke, where a ward is now exclusively represented by BNP councillors, despite them never having polled more than 35% in any election.
Posted by: Michael Calderbank at July 23, 2008 05:13 PM
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