Muir starts his quest for a quota of 483,076 with his primary vote of 17,083 (0.51% of votes cast).
Then the allocation of preferences begins with the candidates with the fewest votes getting eliminated and those achieving a quota being elected.
By the third round four of the six spots have been determined.
By the 36th round Muir has gained a further 6 votes.
In the 37th round he gets 31 from the #2 in the Motor Enthusiasts Party ticket.
By the 160th round Muir has picked up 104 votes.
By the 220th round his total vote has reached 18,994 and Ricky’s run looks done but he squeaks ahead of the Fishing & Lifestyle Party, gets most of their votes in a preference swap and nearly doubles his holding.
By the 240th round all below the line preferences have long since been exhausted and he has 54,040, still barely 1/10th of the quota he needs. There are still 10 candidates in the ballot seeking one of the last two spots.
But his luck holds and other minor parties fall by the wayside in rapid succession and so by the 284th round he has 185,282, 1/3rd of a quota.
In the 284th round he’s almost gone again but beats the Palmer United Party and through a preference deal picks up 161,252
Then in the 291st and last round he gets 143,118 votes from the Sex Party and takes the last spot ahead of the 3rd LIB candidate. 62% of his quota have come from Palmer United and Sex Party
The number of votes that were cast to Muir directly as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th … 100th, …131st preferences? 18,049 (0.53%)
Adding to the likelihood of a further hung parliament, the latest ICM poll gives Labour a considerable gain in seats from LibDems and Conservatives in London.
This balances somewhat the expected Labour losses in Scotland.
FPTP is potentially “unfair” from the perspective of a political party. It is true that it is disadvantageous for a party that has broad support but not large enough to win a plurality in any one seat, and advantageous for regional parties.
But it’s perfectly fair to the VOTERS. If each seat is contested amongst an essentially equal number of voters (which is not always true but that’s another issue) then every voter has just as much of a say as every other voter, and that, one can argue, is the mot important type of “fairness” there is.
Elections aren’t for the benefit of parties, they’re for the benefit of voters.
That applies to any voting system applied consistently, surely?
Or, to put it another way, FPTP is unfair to voters who feel themselves compelled to vote 100% for the lesser of two evils, when they really want someone else who they don’t consider an evil at all; and to those who want their representative to stand for X, Y and Z in this or that party’s manifesto, but feel the local candidate for that party is lazy or crooked or otherwise personally unacceptable.
Latest YouGov poll has LAB on 36, CON 32, UKIP 13 and LDEM 8. That’s ordinarily a 40+ seat Labour majority. With Labour majorities slimmed by losses in Scotland, they can form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats and easily pass the threshold for a stable government. It is looking more likely that the SNP have, as predicted, completely overplayed their hand and the party that promised Scottish business a “day of reckoning” if Scotland voted “yes” will be kept safely away from power.
So you base your reasoning on one rogue poll that contradicts others taken in the same week, that has a validity of plus or minus 3% and follows several months of gradual conservative advance on all poll of polls.
It also does not adjust for constituency irregularities. Labour need to gain 70 seats over its 2010 performance if all else remains equal. Against this must be set an almost certain loss of 25 seats to the SNP (I am going for the lowest reasonable advance here, much less than Scottish polls currently suggest.
So Labour need to win ninety five seats in England, some taken from Conservatives and some from LibDems. This is barely credible on even the above rogue poll. The Libdems are unlikely to have as many as twenty five seats and probably fewer with predicted losses in Scotland to the SNP.
Even to manage to form a LibLab government, they would still need to win seventy seats to get a majority of one.
Note that you are using one rogue poll to bolster Labour chances and I am considerably underestimating the result in Scotland indicated by a poll of polls up here.
The ComRes poll on Sky today has the Tories ahead by four percent an Lord Ashcroft in the Telegraph today has them with a two percent lead. Best to rely on the running poll of polls rather than cherry picking only those polls that support ones own point of view.
It is referring to the above post quoting one rogue poll to suggest that Labour will win outright and hence the SNP will not mattwr and FPTP will then not be under threat. I maintain that if 4% of the population return 30-50 SNP MPs but fifteen per cent of the population return only half a dozen, that people will turn against FPTP.
I am suggesting that anyone can cherry pick an occasional poll to support their view, but I prefer to trust the running poll of polls run by various organisations. These have persistently suggested a massive swing from Labour to SNP in Scotland suggesting that the majority of Scottish seats will go to the SNP and the poll of polls run by various organisations suggest close to equal outcomes of votes for Tory and Labour, well below a majority, and only a handful for Green and UKIP.
This result is very likely to bring the system into disrepute by magnifying the effect of the SNP vote and minimising the Green and UKIP votes. This is the very intent of the FPTP system- advantaging the party able to get a plurality and punishing parties getting less than a third of the vote.