Talk:United Kingdom general election, 2005

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In an effort to reduce the length of this talk page, the sections which appear to have been resolved prior to the election have been moved into this archive.

More issues that seem to have been resolved have been moved into another archive here.


Contents

[edit] Tasks for after the election

It strikes me that there will be rather a lot of tasks that will need to be performed after the results come in to keep the encyclopedia up to date. For example there will be (1) a bunch of news pages to make for new MPs, (2) notes on 659 pages about people being re-elected, not standing or not being re-elected, (3) there will proberbly be a reshuffle, (4) this page will need updating. Should we start planning for this? If so where? Andreww 08:19, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Tasks to be completed after the count:
    1. Update wikipedia page MPs elected in the UK general election, 2005
    2. Move some sections from this page into Pre-election day events of the United Kingdom general election, 2005 - in particular the opinion polls and target seats section.
    3. General check that all linked pages have the future tense changed to past tense (e.g. will be held on 5 May -> was held on 5 May etc). ChrisUK 17:04, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    4. Ensure that all manifestos are archived on wikisource (subject to copyright etc - see earlier discussions) since the links on here won't be guaranteed to work for ever.

I would suggest that an appeal be put out for on the UK noticeboard for British editors to update the election results for their local constituencies. Some sort of checklist could be maintained. Jooler 17:06, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikinews is encouraging coordination of live updating of election results over IRC at #wikinews (international channel) and #wikinews-en (english edition channel). - Amgine/talk

[edit] Staffordshire South

Voting in this constituency is being variously reported as postponed, abandoned and rescheduled. A quick search of google news shows reports that this constituency is no longer part of the general election, and a by-election will be held in a month. The opposite information is displayed in this article. Does anyone have a definitive source for what is happening here? nick 17:02, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

  • I asked Dbiv this when he initially added it to the article; see his talk page. Talrias (t | e | c) 17:05, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Ok. Though it seems odd that every national news agency is reporting this wrongly. nick 17:22, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
      • They're getting better - see, for example, this evening's PM interview with the (former) Tory MP of the constituency. It's not really that odd - this part of electoral law was last used over 50 years ago. James F. (talk) 19:35, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
      • The national news agencies may be reporting this wrongly. Wikinews isn't. It even gives a link directly to the relevant election procedures. Uncle G 10:48, 2005 May 6 (UTC)
      • This was NOT a by-election, simply a posponment of the poll in that one seat***

Is this why the Wikipedia figure for Labour seats disagrees with the reference from the Elecoral Commission? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.89.101.147 (talk) 23:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Split

I appreciate all the good info we've got, and what a good job people have been doing with this page, but it's too long. It's 110KB and my computer freezes for about 5 seconds every time I try to load it. I would say, split all the detailed individual constituency results off into a subarticle, and then we should have plenty of space. Everyking 11:26, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Now that the election is over, or for the pedants ("essentially over")

..this article needs some refactoring. In many places the article reads just like it did before the election, apart from the tense. I will do my best but of course welcome efforts from others. Pcb21| Pete 09:33, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

I've started a section on next steps to round off the article and explain what happend next. It needs a bit more detail and a few links adding. I also deleted the composition section and merged another one to make the article more readable from a historic perspective ChrisUK 21:53, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gains and Losses

..Have put one gain on the Labour table, Leicester South turned Lib Dem in a by-election last year, but returned to Labour at the general election. User: pdburgin

Well, this depends on whether we are doing the results changing since the 2001 election, or changing since the dissolution of Parliament. The BBC's data is change since the 2001 election. Talrias (t | e | c) 20:02, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

It's normal to count changes based on one general election to another, not on the state at dissolution. Practice has however changed over the years. Dbiv 20:14, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

We really need two additional results boxes to handle by-election - one for "Party hold (regain from Other Party by-election win)" or something and "Party gain (after by-election win)", if only to avoid confusion. Timrollpickering 07:24, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Images

This page looks pretty great and it would be even better with more well chosen pictures. Can anyone add any? --Liberlogos 03:10, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Adding percentages to the table

I just tried to add the percentages of the seats in parliament to the results table. But that didn't work - I just messed up the table. And because at the moment there will still be many people who want to look that up I quickly reverted the change. The problem is that, as I understand it, before seeing the preview in this page, the Template:Election_Summary_Party first needs to be changed - really changed, not just a preview. What I did was add

align="right" | {{{%}}} |

after

align="center" | {{{seats}}} |

Then I changed the entries in the table, for example for the first one (Labour) I added

|% = 55.2

after the seats-entry (see below for a more complete example (that one's for an extra row)). But that didn't work. I suppose I need to alter another template, but I don't know how and I don't have the time now to research this. Hopefully someone else can do this in a whiffy. Or is there an easy explanation? Here are the percentages:

Labour Party (UK) 55.2

Conservative Party (UK) 30.5

Liberal Democrats (UK) 9.6

United Kingdom Independence Party 0

Scottish National Party 0.9

Green Party of England and Wales 0

Democratic Unionist Party 1.4

British National Party 0

Plaid Cymru 0.5

Sinn Féin 0.8

Ulster Unionist Party 0.2

Social Democratic and Labour Party 0.5

RESPECT The Unity Coalition 0.2

Scottish Socialist Party 0

Veritas (political party) 0

Alliance Party of Northern Ireland 0

Scottish Green Party 0

Peter Law 0.2

Socialist Labour Party (UK) 0

Liberal Party (UK, 1989) 0

Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern 0.2

Socialist Green Unity Coalition 0

Notice that the discrepancies between the percentages for number of votes and number of seats is often quite substantial. For example, the Labour party got 35 % of the votes but 55 % of the seats (mostly at the expense of the Liberal Democrats). Quite a difference! Especially since this means an absolute majority in parliament. That is what I was mostly interrested in when I came to this article. But that info wasn't there, so I had to do the calculations myself. And having done that I thought I might as well add it to the table. It is too important a thing not to point out.

To do the calculations I had to add the figures up. Having done that I thought I might as well add that to the table too, but I already got stuck with the first bit. Only the totals for the number of seats and votes make sense, but what I had in mind was this:

 |party      = TOTAL
 |seats      = 645
 |%          = 100
 |gain       = -
 |loss       = -
 |net        = -
 |votes      = 26,913,618
 |%          = 100
 |plus/minus = -

DirkvdM 12:08, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

Aha, I understand now. You're going to have two rows with the same name if you use that syntax, perhaps the percentage seats should be changed to "seatpercent" or something. After you've done that, the template needs to be edited to include an extra column. If you want help with this, I'd be glad to assist. Thanks also for explaining it! Talrias (t | e | c) 14:15, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

I just tried that, but that didn't work either. To be more complete this time, I changed the template to:

|-
! style="background-color: white; width: 3px;" |  
| style="width: 130px" | {{{party}}}
| align="center" | {{{seats}}}
| align="center" | {{{seat %}}}
| align="right" | {{{gain}}}
| align="right" | {{{loss}}}
| align="right" | {{{net}}}
| align="right" | {{{votes}}}
| align="right" | {{{vote %}}}
| align="right" | {{{plus/minus}}}
|-

So I used different names, like you said. And then I changed the table, for example the first party:

 |party      = Labour Party (UK)
 |seats      = 356
 |seat %     = 55.2
 |gain       = 0
 |loss       = 47
 |net        = -47
 |votes      = 9,556,183
 |vote %     = 35.2
 |plus/minus = -5.5%

Now, what am I dong wrong?

DirkvdM 19:20, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

I don't see your new column in the results table, or in fact the edits to {{Election Summary Party}}. Talrias (t | e | c) 11:55, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, I reverted those changes, because I wasn't sure what I was doing and what effects they might have. But now I discovered that there are two different templates. The first time I used 'Election Summary Party', which is the right one (but had the wrong effect). The second time I made the right changes but somehow ended up using 'Election Summary'. Which of course didn't have any effect.

But just now I used the first one and voila, it works. Except that there's also 'Election Summary Begin', which sets the header. Which of course also needed to be changed.

At first I put the percentages after the absolute numbers, but that put them too far apart for a comfortable comparison. So now I've put them side by side, in the process providing a clearer separation the two sections. DirkvdM 07:41, 2005 May 16 (UTC)

Now for the next thing (though that isn't as important). I wanted to add a row for the totals at the bottom, using a rearranged version of what I put hereabove. But this renders with the word TOTAL in brackets. Which doesn't look neat. DirkvdM 07:57, 2005 May 16 (UTC)

[edit] Ordering of results

I think that seats won rather popular vote-share ought to take precedence when ordering parties in the results table on this page. I can think of no other election article where vote share is used as the primary measure, especially in a FPTP election. -23:29, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

the problem is that put reasonably sized parties like UKIP and the greens at the bottom of the list.

I agree that the present ordering is more correct. This can be seen as a political statement against first past the post elections. To this end I added the vote-percentages column, so people can see how dishonest this system is. I've never heard a good excuse for this system, so it may be a political statement, but it's a correct one. So when it comes to the table, I'd say that in a (proper) democracy the votes count more than how these are used in seat-distribution. DirkvdM 10:07, 2005 May 23 (UTC)

That's dangerously close to POV ordering. Can you cite another election where the Wikipedia page takes the vote ordering rather than the seats where this makes a difference? We should have consistency across the board. Timrollpickering 11:01, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
All of the UK general election results are order by number of votes. It would seem odd to have UKIP below Health Concern - and even stranger situations can crop up. For instance, in the 1924 UK general election to have Sinn Fein (37,000 votes but no seats) behind the Irish Nationalist (0 votes but one seat). Either manner of ordering could be seen as a political statement; I'm not sure of the purpose of the percentage of seats column. If it is to illustrate the discussion about proportional representation then a column showing votes per seat might make it clearer. The discussion must of course be NPOV.
I'm not peachey-keen on FPTP myself, but elections are about selecting governments, and presently in the UK vote-share plays zero role in selecting the government. Much as as fair conclusions about the relative sizes of party's support-base can be drawn from vote share, in the context of an election it's ultimately an academic statistic--no different than ranking parties by the percentage of female MPs they elected or by the number of raw seat gains in the election. Every media outlet ranked parties in its results tables by seats, not vote-share. This wasn't because of some mainstream media conspiracy against PR, it was because that was the story of the election that mattered. -The Tom 19:53, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Well, that's debatable. Are elections about selecting governments or about finding out what the people want? After all, it's supposed to be democratic, and that means 'rule by the people'. They're the ones that count, who actually get to represent them is of second order importance.
From a different angle; for daily politics the seat distribution is what matters, so that's what the newspapers will focus on. But in an encyclopedia it's the historic event that counts, and the event is the vote (only later, when it comes to actual decisions made, can the distribution of seats be more important). At the moment it may still be 'hot' news, but ultimately this article will have to solidify into an account of an historic event.
DirkvdM 05:59, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

[edit] Still outstanding

The lead says one result is still outstanding at this late date. Is that correct or does it need updating? PedanticallySpeaking 18:20, May 28, 2005 (UTC)

That's correct. It's South Staffordshire which polls on June 23, having been delayed by the death of a candidate. David | Talk 18:42, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
see South Staffordshire (constituency). Thryduulf 18:54, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Critics of FPTP

I'm from Poland and i cant believe that British people are criticizing FPTP.. We in Poland are trying for 15 years to incorporate your electoral system as the unreachible model. In Poland we have prop. lists, and:
- 4 years of minority governments during last 8 years
- 11 Prime Ministers during 15 years
- 2, 3, and even 4 party coalitions
- no reforms, because each party has different view on everything, they throw off responsibility for fails on each other
- corruption (party bosses are arranging party lists with their stupid soldiers as they want, no one knows those people, how they are selected, etc.)
- etc..
Just as in Italy we are trying to fight that proportional Utopia. Here is site of polish FPTP movement: http://www.jow.pl/ns/index_e.html
I am amazed that many wiki sites has hidden critics of FPTP. For example on this site, on site with description of FPTP (about that electoral reform was promised but then postponed..). I cant believe that you are not respecting this treasure that you have.

  • FPTP is always criticized by those who gain less seats - under such a system - than they would have gained under a more PR system. But whilst it is true that there is an obvious injustice in this respect in FPTP, dont confuse the majority of Brits - who couldnt care less - with the moaners who regularly say thing like "Only 28% of those eligible to vote voted for Labour, so that gives them no mandate" and other such complaints. In fact, under the British system, that 28% is precisely that; a mandate to govern. Hence why they have a Labour government. C'est comme ça, as the French might say. Neither system is faultless. Marcus22 20:35, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Its obviously the case that, for example, 28% is a mandate to govern, because a mandate to govern is whatever the system defines it to be. That isn't really the problem, the problem is the often spouted rhetoric that the British electoral system is "democratic", when quite clearly it isn't. How can a party supported by just over one quarter of the voters claim to be the choice of the majority? Of course the other main problem with FPTP is that unless you happen to support the party that (a) wins in the constituency in which you live, and (b) wins the overall election, you are basically unrepresented. Say I vote Conservative, and the Labour party wins the seat, and subsequently wins the election - who represents my views? Nobody. And, of course, who represents the views of people who support the Lib Dems, the Greens, or any of the other smaller parties? Nobody. Yes, of course we have an "opposition", but the opposition can only voice disapproval of government policies (or in the case of the current Conservative party, agree with it) they cannot actually make any changes. At least with a PR based system you have a broad range of views and beliefs roughly in proportion with the number of voters. Yes, it probably does mean that it takes a lot longer to reach agreements on things. But what do you want? Everybody represented or an elected dictatorship? Or is preaching about "democracy" not fashionable this week? SimonUK (talk) 15:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] English Democrats

If recollection serves me, the English Democrats Party polled around 15 000 votes. Why aren't they on our scoreboard? --New Progressive 13:40, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

because you havn't inluded a source fory your claim.Geni 15:07, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Thats a somewhat ridiculous reason for the totals to have been constructed incorrectly in the first place, and it makes me wonder if other parts of that table are incorrect or incomplete. Nonetheless, if you simply count the votes for the English Democrats Party from the constituency pages, you will get the EDP on 15,149 votes.
A list of the constituencies that I am aware of having EDP candidacies can be found linked from here. I couldn't guarantee that its complete. --New Progressive 15:38, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Like every wikipedia page, the table in question is updated by volunteers. The English Democrats are listed in a wikicode comment above the scoreboard as having recieved over 1000 votes, and that it is a pending task for them to be added to the table. However, nobody as yet has choosen to update the total figure for the English Democrats. This is not a reflection upon the party per se, it is simply that nobody has choosen to process their election data, which having stood in 25 constituencies would require at least 10 to 15 minutes research.
Can I suggest that if you are interested about the party and willing to help, that you research the constituencies where the party stood, and enter the information yourself. If you are not aware of how to update the table in wikicode, then if you make a comment on this talk page I'm sure someone will be willing to help! Indeed, if you are confident that all 25 constituencies are in the total above I will add the party at the appropriate place. --Neo 17:34, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
My figure of 15,149 is based on 24 constituencies, which are as follows: Sevenoaks, Aldershot, Doncaster North, Chesterfield, Lancashire West, Needs NW, Wakefield, Grantham and Stamford, Bristol NW, Chatham and Aylesford, Southend West, Wantage, Norwich South, Saffron Walden, City of Chester, Copeland, Staffordshire South (June 23rd), Basildon, Epping Forest, Ipswich, Vauxhall, Greenwich and Woolwich, Reigate, and Hexham.
The 25th constituency does not appear to be linked to the English Democrats Party page, thus I am at a loss of how to easily find it short of a brute force approach.--New Progressive 18:25, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
According to UK-Elect (which takes it's data from the Electoral Commission), the English Democrats fielded 24 candidates in the following constituencies: Aldershot, Basildon, Bristol North West, Chatham and Aylesford, Chester City of, Chesterfield, Copeland, Doncaster North, Epping Forest, Grantham and Stamford, Greenwich and Woolwich, Hexham, Ipswich, Lancashire West, Leeds North West, Norwich South, Reigate, Saffron Walden, Sevenoaks, Southend West, Staffordshire South, Vauxhall, Wakefield, Wantage and polled 15,149 votes. Due to the circumstances in Staffordshire South, the media have agreed to count it as the result of the 2005 General Election. Harry Hayfield 10:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Updated election results

I have updated the election results on this page with the results from the Electoral Commission website, adding all parties which received more than 1,000 votes at the election. Talrias (t | e | c) 20:37, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Can we lose the 'As of (date)' from the top? That's not really appropriate for a UK election once it's over because once a constituency has been declared, no more votes are added. David | Talk 20:57, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
No disagreement here. Talrias (t | e | c) 21:06, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Can someone figure out a way of re-adding the party colours to the election results chart? --Fangz 00:13, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Poor map of results

I've only looked at the map of results very quickly, but it isn't very accurate.

One quick example is that Thanet North is listed as Labour, whereas the Tory Roger Gale is the MP - it is Thanet South that is Labour. I'm sure others are wrong, too, but I haven't had chance to check. Gretnagod 14:44, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, a map that outlined the boundaries of the districts would be much more informative. Joncnunn 20:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wales

Plaid Cymru did not gain a seat from Labour they failed to win Ynys Mon and Lost Ceredigion

  • Plaid Cymru held Caernarfon, Meirionydd and Carmarthen East. They lost Ceredigion to the Liberal Democrats and failed to win Ynys Môn from Labour. Harry Hayfield 10:00, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Boundary Commission for Scotland

The paragraph about the Boundary Commission for Scotland which asserted that it did not achieve its objective is seriously misleading. What happened was that the Boundary Commission was given a target electorate to hit, called the 'quota' which was made the same as the quota in England. However, the Boundary Commission is allowed to depart from strict application of the quota if there are 'special geographical considerations'. The low population of the Scottish highlands and islands makes it practically impossible to increase the electorate of the Western Isles (na h-Eileanan an Iar) constituency or Orkney and Shetland, so they were recommended for no change.

The reason the paragraph is misleading is that that did not happen because those constituencies were in Scotland. It would have happened just the same if they were in England. David | Talk 08:06, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Extra interpreation of Election 2005 result

When I was transferring my copy of the BBC's election coverage to DVD yesterday, something that Professor Anthony King said about the result got me thinking the following and I would like to know if it could be included anywhere:

"Labour's share of the vote was 36%, this means that 64% of voters did not vote Labour. If the Liberal Democrat share of 23% is deemed as correct, this means that the Conservatives should have polled 38% but instead they polled 33%. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the missing Conservatives voted for the UK Independence Party and British National Party and thus deprived the Conservatives of a chance of forcing a hung parliament" Harry Hayfield 10:01, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Wrong, 64.8% of voters turning out to vote did not vote Labour (including Northern Ireland), in fact overall about 78% of those eligible to vote did not vote Labour[3]. As for the Conservative Party, I have no idea where you get this idea that the Conservative Party should have polled 38%, they polled 32.3% including Northern Ireland. Mostly the BNP have done best in safe Labour seats, in fact even supposing everyone who had voted UKIP, Veritas, English Democrat and BNP had all voted Conservative then even supposing everything else had remained the same Labour would still have had a comfortable overall majority.--Lord of the Isles 18:44, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
If Anthony King said that I'm afraid he is simply wrong as if you add the BNP and UKIP vote to the Conservative vote it doesn't even add up to 36%, it's simple arithmetic, analysis of the UKIP vote have shown that they cost the Conservative Party about 20 seats if it is assumed that all those who voted for UKIP would otherwise have voted for the Conservative Party - but of course no one really knows and it is improbable that they would have all done otherwise - some would not have voted, some might even have otherwise voted Labour. The effect of the BNP was mainly in places such as Keighley and it's main effect seemed to have been to reduce Labour's majority in that area, but there is no sign that in any General Election seat that the BNP have actually taken enough votes to swing a parliamentary seat one way or another--Lord of the Isles 19:09, 30 October 2006 (UTC).
Even UKIP only claimed to have affected 27 seats [4]--Lord of the Isles 19:38, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
One would assume that Mr King said that while the results were still coming in, so I think your completely correct criticism is slightly uncalled for.Jammydodger 10:46, 01 June 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is about reliable sources, not assumptions - he might have intended to say something an forgotten, or he might have mis-said something. For all anyone knows who didn't hear or watch him on the media at the time, or read about it in a reliable source, he might have refused to say anything and spent the whole interview standing on his head attempting to eat buttered crumpets upside down and if he had a tendency to do such a thing, if it was not reported that he did, it would be unreasonable to assume that he had. But whatever he said, and I only said if he said that, he cannot alter the fact that it does not add up to 38% using simple arithmetic. The Conservatives got 32.3% of the vote, UKIP got 2.2% and the BNP 0.7%; the figures are slightly higher if you leave out Northern Ireland, but still short of 38% and I rather suspect if it is an accurate quote that it is possibly out of context in terms of what preceded and followed it, whether said by him or others.Lord of the Isles 20:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Northern Ireland

If it's a UNITED KINGDOM election, I'd say NI needs a fair bit of inclusion as well

[edit] Marginals

I would agree that MARGINAL CONSTITUENCIES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM should be merged with the article THE UK GENERAL ELECTION 2005.I started the former article because I felt it wholly relevant to any political article about Britain. JFBridge 06:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] New/ex-electors

Is there any source for the number of new people to the electoral roll, and the number of people who fall off it? Preferably for the individual constituencies?

I don't mean simply the net change of people on the roll, but the raw numbers of how many new electors? Or how many left the electoral roll? It would also be useful to find the number of people voting who didn't last time.

I think this would be very useful in analysing changing vote patterns: for example it would shed light on whether Labour voters are switching to Liberal or whether the Liberal voters are primarily new voters and the Labour voters are staying at home. BillMasen 18:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] UKIP/SNP

Why exactly are the SNP above UKIP on the resuts table? Even if it's based on the amount of seats, surely the DUP must then rank above both? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.29.217.4 (talk) 23:04, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

Somebody inexplicably swapped their positions. I've changed it back. Warofdreams talk 04:18, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox

Why was the Infobox removed? --Philip Stevens 05:29, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Fwiw, I reckon it should be removed. Makes the page look a bit...crap. Alexp73 20:10, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


[edit] The minefield of votes received

What should we report when writing up the election? That Labour won. Certainly. Should we also report that Labour won but gained X% of the vote less than the Conservatives? Maybe we should. It is a 'fact' after all. But, like many statistical facts, laid bare by itself, that 'fact' is only half the story. Why is it only half the story? Because in safe Labour seats, the turnout is substantially lower than in safe Conservative seats. Were it the same, %wise, then Labour would have achieved Y% of the vote MORE than the Conservatives. Unless we report that 'fact' too, then we are making the article imbalanced. POV. So some 'facts' are better left unstated. It seems obvious to me that we must tell all of the story or none of it. Marcus22 19:43, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

It is impossible though to use what is not results, certain numbers of people vote in each constituency. People make assumptions about how those who wouldn't have vote might have voted if they had turned out, but they didn't turn out and vote so statistically in terms of results they are irrelevant. The only way to know what would happen in a lot of safe seats if everyone turned out and voted would be if everyone turned out and voted. The fact that turnout drops further in safe Labour seats could be as much hopelessness on the part of supporters of other parties who see no point in bothering to vote because they are sure Labour will win there, or indeed sheer apathy by people who can't be bothered thinking about it or don't see a candidate they feel they can support. Votes are part of the results, non-votes are not although votes as a percentage of those eligible to vote is of course recorded as turnout. Therefore the numbers voting for a particular party are part of results, and of course without votes there would be no elected members, large numbers of marginal seats can mean that large majorities in terms of seats can be overturned quite quickly and equally many safe seats in which turnout has fallen for a party who held them safely have gone on to be taken by other parties indeed Blaneau Gwent was one seat where it used to be said that the Labour vote could be weighed, now of course held by an Independent. The Liberal Democrats indeed hold many formerly safe Labour and Conservative seats, according to your arguments you would expect that as soon as Labour came under threat in such areas that the Labour vote would start recovering in safe Labour seats but notably in 2005 there was no sign of this. Indeed following the logic of your argument there would be no mention of national shares of the vote at all or total numbers of votes for parties because only seats mattered.Lord of the Isles 20:31, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
  • 'By my argument' - I make no argument. My point is simple; I am just explaining why I removed certain facts. On the one hand I see that someone may need or want to include such facts, but on the other I see that bare (unqualified) statistics can, in such a case, distort the story. For clarity and brevity I think, therefore, that it is better if these facts are left out. If included, they must be explained more fully. Marcus22 08:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My recent caption change.

Sorry about the description on my last edit. I was trying to type in the dark and hit the wrong key by mistake. Given that the SDLP's number of seats has nto reduced, I think the gains of both Sinn Fein and the DUP can be considered to be largely at the expense of the UUP. If we were considering votes, this would be a different matter.--Peter cohen (talk) 16:58, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Swing

Should it really say 'swing' in the summary box at the top of the page? Perhaps, 'change' would be better. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.209.140 (talk) 17:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth (not much) I have never heard swing called 'change'. You probably want to discuss this at Template talk:Infobox Election. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 21:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)