Conservative majority??

No. No. No.

Congratulations to two Australians for having safely delivered a Tory government: Rupert Murdoch and Lynton Crosby - and to two British politicians for having provided the circumstances and climate for the destruction of the UK: NIcola Sturgeon and David Cameron.

Goddamit, UKIP came second in my seat; not good news as we have a large immigrant population (which I like, even though I'm a WASP); my little street is a good example: of 26 households, 2 pakistani, 1 burmese, 1.5 afro-carribean, 1 sikh, 1 SE Asian, and we all seem to get along OK. So the racist reactionary UKIP vote dismays me.

I don't agree with UKIP but I don't think it's fair to necessarily dismiss the party as "the racist reactionary UKIP". They're not PEGIDA or Golden Dawn. We don't need to add to the froth around UKIP, that just makes people get on less.

Diplomacy Game ID 155253 Pest Buda, Monday Morning:
"The Real Slim Shady Takes Over England"
Reality, Friday Morning:
"The Real Slim Shady Takes Over England"

Norman Baker's down. I now officially live in a Conservative seat.

Sorry, Tom, I have to disagree. The roots of Labour's destruction is a result of Ed Milliband's middle class appearance, their anti-SNP, -tory rhetoric which drowned out any other message and most importantly the confirmation in the failure of the Brown/Darling administration, of labour to handle the economy; no-one who lived through the seventies and the effects of the Callaghan/Wilson admin (25+% inflation) will ever forget it.

Some of my friends are UKIP supporters and they aren't racist, but even they admit that at least locally (and I suspect in all built up areas), a sizeable proportion of their vote is derived from racist reactionary people. I like Farage, for what it's worth. (Oy vay, I just heard a Scots person saying the 'Scotch vote': d'you na' ken lassie? Scots for the folk, Scotch for the water of life!)

There goes Ed Balls...

Wow

And Reckless. Ha! Serves the bugger right

After 627 seats:

Party -------------Seats---Seat%---Vote%

Conservative----313----49.9%----36.6%
Labour------------227----36.2%----30.7%
SNP-----------------56-----8.9%------4.9%
Lib Dem--------------8-----1.3%------7.8%
UKIP------------------1-----0.2%-----12.6%
Greens---------------1-----0.2%-------3.8%

So for every percentage of the vote the SNP gets, they get 11.43 seats. While for every percentage of the vote UKIP gets, they get 0.08 seats. The Tories are at 8.55, Labour at 7.39, LibDems at 1.03, and Greens at 0.26.

I've heard all the reasons why FPTP is superior, but it's embarrassingly ineffective at truly representing the views of the people.

I predict rioting in the next 5 years.

Depends how you look at it. The people of Glasgow really wanted an SNP candidate to represent them, and they got one. The people of Bridgwater thought the Tory was great and the UKIPER was ok, so they got the Tory. The constituents are well represented by their chosen candidate. You could say the nation is poorly represented on a party level, but I am adamant that I'd rather be represented by a person than a party.

PR could probably do something useful in the Lords, but in terms of the Commons give me first past the post any day.

@ mendax

We have a far clearer result than most people dared hope for and you predict rioting now? There may well be but the chances have dropped significantly from what they were.

Rioting doesn't happen because of lack of clarity. That's just a ridiculous position to take.

LeinadT, your analysis of FPTP is invalid for people who advocate FPTP. It is not meant to show the proportional preferences, but rather give every district his very own member. Of course SNP get's the best seats/votes ratio, because in Scotland they are the biggest party, hence the are first to past all the posts and don't "lose" the votes on being second or third. UKIP however is usually second or third so they just lose all those votes. Now, usually, I consider FPTP a terrible, terrible voting system. But today, I'm thinking - hey, it gives UKIP 1-2 votes. It cannot be THAT bad.

Oh, the Greens got a vote! That's so sweet

Farage has lost. Could be the end of UKIP?

The Al-Zebabist Nation of Ooog put in a better than expected showing though

UKIP: Not racist, but #1 with racists!

@Jeff, I know I posted Cassetteboy already, but as for UKIP, Farange's part here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbLGG5UGEKw
is pretty accurate

Congratulations to the UK.

What's the turnout? And is it considered good? Bad?

In percentage terms it's mid to high 60s, which is pretty good by UK standards

Sounds pretty good indeed, compared to almost every other nation..

I second the prediction of rioting

Not really, sounds fairly reasonable compared to the 63-70% (depending on how you count turnout) in the last Irish election ( see: politicalreform.ie/2014/09/19/voter-turnout-data-make-many-of-our-comparisons-invalid )

Actually it looks like voter turnout in the US for presidential elections is at a similar to what other countries get in local elections... (See: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout )

That is the 'big' elections in the US seem to turn people out aswell as the small ones in Europe. I would suggest this is mainly due to the distance between the voter and elected in terms of power - but that's not a strong enough trend - still smaller countries seem to have better turnout.

Nothing surprising about the Conservative victory. People everywhere are rejecting liberalism/socialism. Brits for it right.

I find it odd that a party that gets 12.6% of the national vote gets 1 seat, but the party with 7.8% has 8 seats. If the Libertarians over here in the USA got 12.6% it would be earth-shattering. Scottish vote I find very interesting as well. I have my St. Andrew cross flag and Rampant Lion on the wall...and at least the UK managed to not elect the commies to lead them.