British Election

As I'm sure that everyone knows, Tony Blair and the Labour Party won their third straight election last week in Great Britain. I was looking at this map shortly after the election, and I was struck by the similarities and differences between Britain and the U.S. Though the colors are reversed, the map looks strikingly like that of the U.S. - a sea of one color (in this case, blue for the Conservatives), with little bits of the other (red for Labour). Like the U.S., the countryside is heavily conservative, and the cities are mostly liberal. Also similar to the U.S., the percentages don't necessarily translate neatly into the share of power. In the U.S., a slight Republican majority nationwide has translated into a solid Republican majority in all branches of government, meaning that the government as a whole is far less equivocal than the electorate. In Britain, this is even more pronounced, as Labour's 35.2% victory translates into an electoral landslide of 356 seats (55% of the total).

But the differences are striking as well. First of all, despite a winner-take-all system like our House of Representatives (as opposed to a proportional system, like in other parliamentary systems), there are more than two parties. The Liberal Democrats, notably, captured 22% of the vote, with smaller parties getting another 10.5% - accounting for 92 seats. This is partly explained, looking again at the map, by regional differences. Note that the Conservatives won only a single seat in Scotland, for instance, while the local Scottish National Party won 6 seats. Second, whereas in the U.S, the equality of representation of states in the Senate and gerrymandering in the House favor rural (and therefore conservative) areas, in Britain this is reversed. London alone, for instance, accounts for 74 seats, and other urban areas are similarly overrepresented, which helps to explain the dominance of Labour.

Anyway, if you're inclined to look at Britain as a sort of Bizarro version of the U.S., except with a different language, then these election results would tend to confirm that belief.