MINORITY REPRESENTATION.

Attempts which are being made to show that the Government majority at the General Election is out of all proportion to the number of votes recorded for its supporters leave uncontested seats out of account. This fact vitiates the whole of the conclusions. For example, in England alone there were 27 seats, with an electorate of 990,517 voters, returning 28 Conservative members, which are entirely ignored. In those cases the Conservative strength was regarded as so overwhelming that none of the Opposition parties ventured to put up a candidate.

Labour, of all the parties in the fight, has little ground to complain of any candidate succeeding by a minority vote. Almost exactly 38 per cent. of that party’s representation in the House of Commons was returned by minority votes. Its final gain, that of North East Derbyshire, was secured by a lead of five votes, but, in fact, the Labour candidate polled only 9,357, whereas the total of the combined opposition was 17,231 – leaving Labour in a minority of 7,874.