GE2010: Those Scotland votes in full...

Voting is about populating an institution. It is about many other things too, of course. Human intentionality and understanding turns the simple act of scratching an X on a simple piece of paper into governments, parliaments. It can be a ballot cast against some pernicious local numpty; an expression of rage against a party which you feel has injured you individually; a distillation and expression of your political ideas and loyalties; an earnest duty of a good citizen; a casual, half-or-quarter-informed choice, based on hunching judgements about where your interests lie - or merely which party leader seemed like a git or which seemed to have been blessed with a smaller gittish quotient than his opponents. As we saw in Scotland, voting can also be a vindication of your identity, following the electoral path cleared out by your mothers, fathers and fathers' fathers. It may be the sign of personal loyalty to a candidate who is a friend or a relation. Or a secret betrayal in the holy space of the polling station, where with no sentinel observing your pencil's motion, you can finally unleash your shameful  political secrets - your inner Tory, your guilty Greenery.  Still others will besmirch their paper with an extra X or some unsanctioned symbol - spoiling this object of secular holiness, a sign of transgression. The voter's informal contempt for their choices furnishes the basis for an official rejection of their preferences. A good voter observes the forms. All of these orientations and many more populate the full reality of voting. However, the final expression of this dense, rich field of human understanding is quantitatively expressed. How many MPs from each group are in Parliament? Who has the larger crew of allied mates and satellite supporters?

Much to the frustration of those of us who believe, for our different reasons, that electoral reform of Westminster elections is urgent and needful - institutional legitimacy is all too readily decoupled from the votes which give Parliament its life. Once the benches are peopled with our deputies, politics takes on a parliamentary cast. The complex warring forces in the manifold minds of the electorate, finally given expression in votes cast, are reduced to an intense jus of parliamentary counting - its dominant notes the seasoning of institutional majorities and their triumphs or defeats. In first past the post, this reduction clearly begins on the night of the count itself, the returning officer's announcement clearing away all other competitors, skimming off and discarding their support - the whole sediment of a constituency's votes are stripped away - leaving the victor, by whatever slim margin, claiming to be the essence of the sauce.  Interestingly, an inversion usually follows, which takes us back towards claims about who the electorate actually supported. It will always be tempting for first-past-the-post winners to forget the artificial victories which the electoral system hands them. Commentators, overexcited by their triumphs, quite understandably but quite disingenuously begin to use justifying formulations about their clutch of seats which suggest that their successes unproblematically represent popular opinion. In brief, first-past-the-post victors begin to talk about themselves as if their massive victory had been delivered proportionally, as a literally overwhelming expression of the whole electorate's views. Looking at how the public actually voted, however, demonstrates how misleading this argument can be. 

When I was blogging yesterday morning, my childhood constituency of Argyll had not yet declared its final results. Without the 59th piece in Scotland's electoral jigsaw, the final picture across the country lacked a crucial, defining piece. In particular, given the foregoing, it is worth paying attention to the popular vote across the realm. As I conceded yesterday, undeniably, Labour did crackling well on Thursday. Attracting 42% of the popular vote, the new parliament will boast 41 Labour MPs from Scottish constituencies. Or to put it another way, Labour tribunes make up 69.5% of Scotland's representation in Westminster. Proportionately - even conceding Labour did much better than the rest of us - it is worth keeping in mind that 58% of ballots cast in Scotland were for parties other than Labour. If Scotland's MPs were elected this week using a (very crude) but directly proportional national calculus - Labour would have around 24 MPs, Liberal Democrats 11, SNP also on 11, with the Tories on 9 or so. Interestingly enough, on this brutally simple analysis, it is the Scots Tories who have most to complain about, the number of Liberal MPs accidentally reflect their national vote, the SNP are under-represented while Labour are clearly overrepresented. 

Nevertheless, without further ado, here are Scotland's votes in full. See what catches your eye.

GE2010 Full Scotland Results

Party	Seats	Gain	Loss	Net	Votes	%	+/-%
Labour	41	0	0	0	1,035,528	42.0	+2.5
Liberal	11	0	0	0	465,471	18.9	-3.7
SNP	6	0	0	0	491,386	19.9	+2.3
Conservative	1	0	0	0	412,855	16.7	+0.9
UKIP	0	0	0	0	17,223	0.7	+0.3
Green	0	0	0	0	16,827	0.7	-0.3
BNP	0	0	0	0	8,910	0.4	+0.3
TUSC	0	0	0	0	3,530	0.1
SSP	0	0	0	0	3,157	0.1	-1.7
Christian	0	0	0	0	835	0.0
Others	0	0	0	0	10,000	0.4	-0.6
Turnout					2,465,722	63.8	+3.0