Our democratically elected representatives

In the last UK general election (2005):

16% of the population of the UK voted for Labour, whereas 15% voted Conservative^[1], meaning that, even combined, they don't have the support of the majority of the population (only 31%).

What's going on here then? Surely a democratically elected government requires the support (i.e., the vote) of the majority of the population?

Well, lets not forget that not everyone is allowed to vote.

And lets ignore that allowing prisoners to vote would put a natural cap on how many people could be jailed (i.e., a natural cap on the extremes of authoritarianism); that it's inconsistent that several 16- and 17-year-olds pay taxes and can be tried as an adult should they commit a crime, but aren't allowed to vote ; and the unfairness of forcing younger teenagers, by law, to attend school (elsewize their parents are punished) without a say in the matter.

Lets assume, instead, that everyone who is disenfranchised is done so for a just reason, so it's fair to ignore them.

Labour got the support of 22% of those who are allowed to vote^[2]; Conservative got 20%^[3].

Umm... that's still only 42% of the vote: still not a majority.

The final piece of the puzzle — which gives our rulers the support of 'the majority' that they need in order to claim that they're a democracy — is the fact that not everyone who can vote does vote.

So: lets ignore those who don't vote because they feel that the system is corrupt, and who's 'no vote' is intended as a 'vote of no confidence', and assume that everyone who chooses not to vote either doesn't care, or is just too lazy to take part — either way, lets assume that it's perfectly OK and fair to ignore them.

Well, Labour and Conservative combined have the support of 67% of those who are allowed, and who choose, to vote^[4].

Horay! A majority! Proving that, with some assumptions, our country is, in fact, democratic!

But wait: the Labour and the Conservative parties may have a majority between them, but they don't run the country between them: see, the Conservative's 32% of the votes^[4] was enough to get them 31% of the power^[5], whereas Labour's 35% of the votes^[4] was enough to get them 55% of the power^[5] — which is a majority, and thus enough for the Labour party to rule the country on their own.

And, because a majority (even only a slight one) is enough to essentially do whatever they want, the Labour party are in charge of the country with a minority of the vote, no matter how you look at it.

There's a lot more to this subject than the above — how these results come about (gerrymandering, peculiar counting methods, etc), the effect that things like 'wasted votes' have on constituencies, the exclusion of third parties by The System, and the fact that 'the Labour party' is held pretty effectively under the control of the Prime Minister (so, actually, it's one non-democratically-elected person who's effectively in charge of the country) and so on and so forth; but that's enough typing for one day.


Our 'democratic system' is not democratic. I wonder why they go to these lengths to create the impression that it is, rather than just outright admit that it isn't?

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[1] 60.2 million in 2005 (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/populationestimates/flash_pyramid/UK-pyramid/pyramid6_30.html)

9,566,618 voted Labour[4]

that's 9.6/60.2*100 = 16.0%

8,785,941 voted Conservative[4]

8.8/60.2*100 = 14.6%

[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/constituencies/default.stm

[3] Labour votes = 9.6 million; conservative 8.8 million[4]; 8.8/9.6*100 = Conservatives got 91.6% of the vote that Labour did.

Labour won with 22% of the people who are allowed to vote[2], meaning that Conservative got 91.6% of this = 20.2%

[4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/html/scoreboard.stm

[5] 198 seats for Conservative out of 646 total seats[4] = 198/646*100 = 30.7%
356 seats for Labour[4] = 356/646*100 = 55.1%