So is the polling system unfair?
13 April 2012
Studies claim the Tories need a lead of up to 10 per cent to stand any chance of forming a government - an electoral mountain. By contrast, say academics, Labour could be behind in the polls and still come out on top by having a Commons majority.
At the last election, it took an average of 51,000 votes to return a Tory MP, compared with just 26,000 on average for each Labour victor. The Conservatives got an extra two per cent share of the vote but only one extra MP. A Nuffield College analysis in 2001 suggested the party would have had to be 11 per cent ahead of Labour to win.
The main reasons for the phenomenon are thought to be:
- More tactical voting by Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters, designed to thwart Tory candidates in marginal seats. The two Left-of-centre parties make their votes work harder by forming an informal coalition against the Right.
- Smaller seats in Scotland and the North where Labour are traditionally strongest means they get more MPs for their total vote. A dozen Scottish seats are due to be scrapped to help redress the imbalance.
- Boundary changes in the early Nineties were favourable to Labour, which argued for crucial alterations that helped turn marginals into safe seats. The Tories under John Major did nothing.
- Lower turnouts in solid Labour seats like Newcastle make no difference to the result in the constituency but hugely exaggerate the impression of bias. Such bias has worked for the Tories in the past. They won the 1951 election despite getting fewer votes than Labour. The population drift from cities to the countryside could also work in their favour in future.
