15 November 2006

The Others

An interesting discussion developed at Iain Dale's place the other day following this post. In a nutshell, there was widespread condemnation of the lack of differentiation between the three mainstream parties and many predictions of further rises in the number of people voting for "other parties". So, here's the figures for other parties excluding NI in recent elections.

1992 - 436,207 VOTES 1.3% of the overall vote
1997 - 1,361,701 VOTES 4.3% (mainly the REFERENDUM PARTY)
2001 - 1,000,223 VOTES 3.9%
2005 - 1,519,372 VOTES 5.6%
2009 - ???

Source - British Political Facts Since 1979 Butler & Butler
NB - the number of typos in Butlers' election tables was beyond embarassing - e.g UKIP had 491 MPs elected in 2005 according to them.

Predictions for 2009? and is this trend a result of the increasing focus of the mainstream parties on the marginals/floating voters or are there other factors at play?
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I can see the BNP having one or two London assembly members and one or two MEPs if the mainstream parties aren't careful. And every extra vote they get gives them more legitimacy.

12:28 PM

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