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British General Election 2001

This is because the results of the election are not proportional to the number of votes received but to the number of constituencies won. It does not take into account the number of votes by which the constituencies are won by. For example, in the 2001 General Election, whilst Labour won a 42% share of the popular vote, they won 64% of the seats, thus the results were biased in their favour. This system, with it's bias in favour of the leading candidate, would have contributed towards Labour's victory in 2001. TABLE.
             Seats won Change since 1997 Total votes cast % share of popular vote % share of seats.
             Labour 413 -6 10,740,168 42 64.
             Conservative 166 +1 8,352,845 33 26.
             Lib-Democrat 56 +6 4,815,249 19 8.
             Others 10 0 688,693 6 2.
             Another factor, which would have contributed towards Labour's successful election, was the low turnout of voters on June 7th In fact; the election of 2001 produced the lowest turnout figure since 1918, with only 59% of the electorate turning up to vote. This meant that, whilst 42% of those who actually did vote, voted for Labour, 41% of the entire electorate did not vote at all. This meant that there were more people who did not vote than those who voted for Labour. The turnout was lowest among young people, with 79% of over 64-year-olds voting and only 38% of 18-24-year-olds voting. Although this statistic indicates that we are becoming more apathetic towards voting as to who runs our country, a study by the Hansard Society argued differently. They found that particularly young non-voters felt alienated from the political system because they were so ill informed. .
             In considering reasons why there was such a low turnout in 2001, we must also consider the fact that people see voting for MPs as increasingly pointless since the House of Commons is gradually losing more and more of it's power to EU and devolved legislatures anyway. .
             Another reason that has been suggested for the low turnout is that society in general is becoming more and more orientated towards the individual and so people are more likely to play passive roles in society and withdraw from social activities such as voting.


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