It's my party and I'll cry if I want to...

Better we fund our political parties than let lobbyists rule the roost | David Mitchell http://gu.com/p/33jxq

Mr Gray's Y13 Politics Class: Atilla the Hen

Mr Gray's Y13 Politics Class: Atilla the Hen: The impending release of The Iron Lady has thrown up a few 'legacy of Thatcher' type articles including THIS ONE from the Telegraph whic...

What makes candidates nervous? - Marginal seats

Marginal seat - A constituency where the MP has a very small majority. These tend to change hands quite often but not always. e.g. In the 2010 election Ashfield in Nottinghamshire once again returned a Labour MP (they have done in almost every single election since WWII). However, you'd hardly call it a safe seat given that in 2010 the Labour candidate won by a majority of 0.4%. That DOESN'T mean she got 50.4% of the vote in Ashfield. It means she got 0.4% more than the NEXT HIGHEST polling candidate. Labour won 16,239 votes while the LD candidate won 16,047 votes.

As per usual in FPTP the winning candidate in Ashfield didn't get anywhere an overall majority (over 50% of the vote). The Labour candidate won what is call a PLURALITY of the vote - she won the largest SINGLE amount, and that is all you need to win in FPTP. In actual fact while 16,239 votes were cast for the Labour candidate, 31,957 votes were cast for every other party put together (LDs, Cons, UKIP, BNP etc). So Ashfield ended up with a representative that roughly two thirds of voters did not vote for. This is not unusual in FPTP systems, though the tiny gap between the top two parties is among the top 10 closest in the 2010 election.  The closest was in Hampsted & Kilburn constituency, where Glenda Jackson MP (Lab) won by just 42 votes more than the next highest polling candidate.

What have the effects of AMS been on Scottish politics?

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STV - summary video

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