{"id":649,"date":"2012-11-17T09:16:30","date_gmt":"2012-11-17T09:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=649"},"modified":"2012-11-17T09:17:42","modified_gmt":"2012-11-17T09:17:42","slug":"a-failure-of-representative-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=649","title":{"rendered":"Election special: 80% of voters don’t bother"},"content":{"rendered":"

It cannot have escaped anyone’s notice that there was an election for an elected Mayor in Bristol<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The fact that George Ferguson<\/a> – affectionately known as Red Trousers after his preferred choice of leg coverings – received a total 37,353 votes and was declared the winner.<\/p>\n

George’s win is being described by all the political pundits as a consequence of the people of Bristol being fed up with party politics.<\/p>\n

However, there’s another analysis. Turnout in the mayoral election was under 28%. That means George was elected by a tiny minority of electors who could be bothered to turn out and vote for him. Indeed, George’s winning total means just 11.7% of Bristol’s 320,000 voters put a cross next to his name.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the vast majority of voters – 78% of the on Bristol’s electoral roll – stayed away from the polls.<\/p>\n

The figures for the Police and Crime Commissioners suffered from even lower turnouts right across the country, with a national average of 15%<\/a> in the 41 English and Welsh police areas. In the Avon and Somerset area, turnout was 19.59%, meaning 80% of the electorate didn’t bother and winning candidate Sue Mountstevens, who received a total of 125,700 votes, was likewise given a mandate by about 10% of voters.<\/p>\n

Representative democracy doesn’t seem to be faring very well at present and one must question the legitimacy of the mandates received.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It cannot have escaped anyone’s notice that there was an election for an elected Mayor in Bristol on Thursday. The fact that George Ferguson – affectionately known as Red Trousers after his preferred choice of leg coverings – received a total 37,353 votes and was declared the winner. George’s win is being described by all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15],"tags":[40,20],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bristol","category-politics","tag-bristol","tag-politics-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}