# Tomorrows UK council/European elections. How’s it going to go? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 3, 2009, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tomorrows-uk-council-european-elections-how-s-it-going-to-go/498585 "2009-06-03T15:20:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2009, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tomorrows-uk-council-european-elections-how-s-it-going-to-go/498585/41 "2009-06-10T09:11:57Z")
> [@G. Odoreida](#): > > I wasn’t talking about a “magic” threshold, I was talking about a statutory one… As indeed was I. That would have been a threshold ‘fixed…in advance’. > [@G. Odoreida](#): > > …which the wikipedia page you linked to discusses… Which indeed it does and which are indeed a feature of some systems using the D’Hondt method. But not the UK Euro elections. > [@G. Odoreida](#): > > I thought there was one in the top up part of the Scottish election system… Which is irrelevant, as the elections for the Scottish Parliament use a completely different system (albeit another form of PR). > [@G. Odoreida](#): > > But the fact that it’s taken 6 days for someone to clear up my threshold misconception suggests that the British public aren’t as clued up as they might be on this system! But the thing is that there is no need at all for any of the voters to understand how the seats are actually distributed. All they need to grasp is that the seats are allocated roughly according to how many votes are cast for each party. (‘Roughly’ here actually meaning by a complicated mathematical formula.) Trying to vote _against_ any particular party is largely pointless; the sensible thing is to vote for the party that you think best represents your views, which is what most people do anyway. The real problem, which is one only likely to increase, is that using different PR systems for different types of elections only confuses people. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2009, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tomorrows-uk-council-european-elections-how-s-it-going-to-go/498585/42 "2009-06-10T10:11:53Z")
> [@APB](#): > > Which is irrelevant, as the elections for the Scottish Parliament use a completely different system (albeit another form of PR). I didn’t claim it was relevant, I mentioned it as being behind my erroneous assumption that there was a fixed threshold in this election (anyway I think I might also have wrong about there being a threshold in Scotland). It’s misleading to say that the Scottish Parliament uses a _completely_ different system: the UK European parliament election uses a regional D’Hondt system, and a regional D’Hondt system is used to calculate the top up to the first past the post seats in the Scottish parliament. Even if there had been a fixed threshold I’ve now found out that it could not have been more than 5%. The BNP’s level of support might well have been way above that whatever the turnout, so I would still have been wrong to keep flogging this horse. Once again I apologise for being so argumentative with Ianzin and Ximenean. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tomorrows-uk-council-european-elections-how-s-it-going-to-go/498585.md?page=2)