Disproportionality and Bias in the Results of the 2005 General Election in Great Britain: Evaluating the Electoral System's Impact

The 2005 UK general election resulted for the third successive time in the Labour party winning a much larger share of seats in the House of Commons than of the votes cast. Furthermore, with an equal share of the votes the Conservative party would have won 111 seats fewer than Labour. Commentators h...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of elections, public opinion and parties public opinion and parties, 2006-02, Vol.16 (1), p.37-54
Main Authors:	Johnston, Ron, Rossiter, David, Pattie, Charles
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Bias Conservative parties Elections Electoral results Electoral Systems Labour parties New Labour Parliamentary elections Political Parties Political Representation United Kingdom Voting Behavior Voting behaviour
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	The 2005 UK general election resulted for the third successive time in the Labour party winning a much larger share of seats in the House of Commons than of the votes cast. Furthermore, with an equal share of the votes the Conservative party would have won 111 seats fewer than Labour. Commentators have used this outcome to criticise aspects of the country's electoral system. This paper reports a decomposition of the pro-Labour bias in the 2005 result (in the context of the outcome of previous contests), which allows an evaluation of the validity of such criticisms. It shows that most of the bias can be attributed not to the operation of the first-past-the-post electoral system per se but rather to party and voter behaviour within the template provided by that system.
ISSN:	1745-7289 1745-7297