On 7/14/06, James Gilmour <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Juho Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 10:22 PM > > The Scottish situation sounds to me like a multi-party system > > (that has emerged under different rules) has gotten trapped > > in a two-party EM, and this kind of mixture is not a pretty > > match (looks actually quite terrible). > > No, not at all. For UK (Westminster) parliament elections the whole of the > UK has used only FPTP (simple plurality) in single-member districts for many > decades, in most case for more than 100 years. We all also used the same > voting system for local government elections (the only other public elections > we had until comparatively recently). In the elections after the 1939-45 war, > the two main parties (Conservative and Labour) got around 90% of the total > vote (96.8% in 1951). The third party was the Liberals (now Liberal Democrats) > who, in elections after 1945, got around 9% of the vote, but only 1% of the > seats. Despite Duverger's "law", support for the Liberal Democrats has grown > and in 2005 they had 25% of the vote and 9.6% of the seats. Eight smaller > parties also have seats in the UK Parliament. So there has been a three-party > system across the whole of the UK for some time. > > In Scotland the SNP (Scottish National Party - campaigning for independence) > became a significant force in 1970, gaining 11% of the vote, again despite > Duverger's "law". In the October 1974 election the SNP peaked at 30.5% of > the vote, and they now get around 20% of the vote (but far fewer seats). So > In > Scotland we have had a four-party system for the past 30 years, all based on > single-member districts and the simple plurality (FPTP) voting system.
This is quite surprising to me. American third parties would kill to get a few percent of the votes and a couple seats in Congress. Why have third parties been so much more successful in the UK? Cheers, - Jan ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info