The EU elections have a lot riding on them, and because of the way we elect MEPs, it’s critical for Remainers to know who has a real chance of getting in. In several areas of the UK, Remainers won’t get an MEP unless we’re really careful about who we vote for.
As my last post explained, the d’Hondt voting system is not proportionally representative. Small parties are penalised and large parties get an advantage, but with current polling data, who’s going to pull the short straw?
This YouGov/Hope Not Hate poll does split its results out into the EU voting regions, of which there are 12, although it does not poll in Northern Ireland, so only 11 regions are represented, accounting for 70 of the total 73 MEP seats.
I sat down with this data the other day and worked out roughly how the seats would be distributed under d’Hondt. It’s a bit tricky, because the data has been rounded to the nearest whole figure, meaning that sometimes you end up with a draw that would be extremely unlikely with real voting data. In these cases, I’ve tried to apportion the seats realistically, but that’s obviously a judgement call.
The table below shows how the national averages results I calculated earlier in the week (including Northern Ireland, so 73 seats) compare to the regionalised results (without NI, 70 seats)
| Party | Regional | National |
| Conservative | 9 | 10 |
| Labour | 19 | 22 |
| Liberal Democrats | 3 | 1 |
| SNP/PCY | 4 | 0 |
| Green | 5 | 8 |
| UKIP | 0 | 0 |
| Brexit | 27 | 27 |
| Change-TIG | 3 | 5 |
| Other | 0 | 0 |
The regional results really do make quite a difference to the overall outcome, which emphasises how important it is to understand which Remain party is doing well in your region and to vote for them.
But because of the way that d’Hondt works, parties below a certain vote percentage threshold won’t get any representation at all. The fewer the number of seats available in that region, the higher the threshold to win a seat. If you vote for a minority party, your vote won’t count because your party won’t be allocated an MEP seat.
In the final column of this table, the top value is the percentage of all the votes that were cast for parties that did not win a seat. I’ve then split that out in to the percentage of all votes cast for Leave, Remain and other parties that did not win a seat.
| Region | No of seats available | Who wins | How many votes don’t count? |
| North East | 3 | Labour Brexit | 32% in total 12% Leave 19% Remain 1% other |
| North West | 9 | Labour Greens Brexit | 27% in total 15% Leave 22% Remain |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | 6 | Tories Labour Brexit | 32% in total 5% Leave 26% Remain 1% other |
| East Midlands | 5 | Tories Labour Green Brexit | 21% in total 6% Leave 15% Remain |
| West Midlands | 7 | Tories Labour Brexit | 27% in total 5% Leave 21% Remain 1% other |
| East of England | 7 | Tories Labour Brexit Change-TIG | 22% in total 5% Leave 17% Remain |
| London | 8 | Tories Labour LibDems Greens Brexit Change-TIG | 5% in total 3% Leave 1% Remain 1% other |
| South East | 10 | Tories Labour LibDems Greens Brexit Change-TIG | 5% in total 4% Leave no Remain 1% other |
| South West | 6 | Tories Labour LibDems Greens Brexit | 18% in total 8% Leave 9% Remain 1% other |
| Wales | 4 | Labour Brexit | 46% in total 16% Leave 30% Remain |
| Scotland | 6 | Labour SNP Brexit | 32% in total 14% Leave 17% Remain 1% other |
Basically, if you vote for UKIP, Plaid Cymru or Other, you’re shit out of luck, because they don’t get a single seat in any constituency. Wales is the worst, with a full 46% of voters being essentially disenfranchised. London and the South East both do much more reasonably, with only 5% of all votes not counting.
It’s also clear that because of the Remain vote is split between a number of smaller parties, more Remain voters will find their chosen parties not gaining a seat, and their votes essentially wasted.
The only way for Remainers to make sure that their votes to really count is to keep an eye on the polls and then go for the party in your region that is polling the best. I just hope that someone with better data and better maths than me will start making recommendations soon.