Would it really be so bad if the BNP gained seats?
Legolas Send a noteboard - 26/04/2010 05:03:06 PM
Now, as a classroom exercise, design an electoral system where seats are allocated fairly according to how many votes each party gets, but where extremist parties like the BNP find it very hard to get seats, and where it's actually possible for someone to form a government without ending up with a coalition that nobody voted for. Answers on a postcard to Nick Clegg, who'll give a knighthood to whoever can find a solution.
Obviously what you describe here is an impossibility, with some of your requirements contradicting others. But is it really a necessary requirement that BNP-like parties get no or very few seats? History in continental Europe shows that such parties get less extreme as they get represented in parliament and accountable to their voters, even when they never make it into a government (I oppose the Belgian cordon sanitaire in principle, but wouldn't want to form a coalition with the Vlaams Belang, either). And I can see why you'd have issues with coalition governments, but in most cases, having a government platform that makes compromises between the stances of several of the most popular parties who together have a majority of the popular vote is likely to represent the stances of more voters than having a single party government that represents less than 40% of the popular vote.
British politics is ... like a basket of crazy muffins. But they taste nice.
- 26/04/2010 09:34:57 AM
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British politics or muffins taste nice? Or both?
- 26/04/2010 10:52:35 AM
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- 26/04/2010 10:52:35 AM
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Both
- 26/04/2010 05:11:54 PM
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- 26/04/2010 05:11:54 PM
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Indeed
- 26/04/2010 11:01:30 AM
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Re: Indeed
- 26/04/2010 11:06:10 AM
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Didn't mean to put the effectively in there
- 26/04/2010 11:17:20 AM
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That makes more sense
- 26/04/2010 11:24:33 AM
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- 26/04/2010 11:24:33 AM
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Yeah, I follow elections in lots of countries.
- 26/04/2010 11:11:28 AM
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Re: Yeah, I follow elections in lots of countries.
- 26/04/2010 05:17:55 PM
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It's all very entertaining.
- 26/04/2010 01:46:25 PM
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It works alright when you have a two- or 2½-party system with support divided geographically.
- 26/04/2010 04:40:31 PM
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Would it really be so bad if the BNP gained seats?
- 26/04/2010 05:03:06 PM
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I don't have a problem with it as such (I dow ith the fact that people want to vote for them)
- 26/04/2010 05:15:02 PM
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Re: It works alright when you have a two- or 2½-party system with support divided geographically.
- 26/04/2010 06:14:44 PM
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Big fucking deal. Coalitions of less than 5 parties = LAME *NM*
- 28/04/2010 12:03:36 AM
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Rather a bigger deal when it happens in a first past the post system. *NM*
- 28/04/2010 08:20:42 AM
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