Let me give you this nice analysis of the BNPs vote share

Comment on Reasons to Vote British National Party by Voter2010.

Let me give you this nice analysis of the BNPs vote share I found on a rather nice website

The BNP are going to get millions of votes at the 2010 General Election? Not likely!

We keep hearing how the BNP got a “million votes”: they haven’t and the result was actually poor by their previous improvements. Okay, I’m going to do some basic maths here to show what I mean.

For example, the increase in the BNP’s share of the vote in the last two General Elections has been slightly higher (0.5% versus 0.4%) than that of the increase in the Greens’ share.

BNP 0.2% in 2001 General Election. 47,129 votes.
BNP 0.7% in 2005 General Election. 192,850 votes.

Green Party 0.6% in 2001 General Election. 166,477 votes.
Green Party 1% in 2005 General Election. 281,780 votes.

In the 2004 Euro Elections the BNP got 78% of what the Greens did.
4.9% versus 6.1% of the total or 808,200 votes versus 1,033,093.

In the 2009 Euro Elections the BNP got 77% of what the Greens did.
6.26% versus 8.7% of the total or 943,598 votes versus 1,223,303.

Therefore BNP has got roughly the same proportion of votes in relation to those of the Greens in both European Elections it has contested.

So all things being equal we can make a rough guess as to what the BNP will get in the 2010 General Election.

If the same increases in the share of the vote that happened between 2001 and 2005 (0.5% and 0.4%) were repeated for the 2010 General Election, the BNP would get 1.2% of the vote and the Greens would get 1.4%.

However, using the increase between the 2004 and 2009 Euro Elections as a guide, 4.9% to 6.26%, would mean the BNP would only go from 0.7% to 0.89% (0.7/4.9 x 6.26).

The increase between the 2004 and 2009 Euro Elections for the Greens was 6.1% to 8.7%. Using the same formula (1/6.1 x 8.7) would give them 1.43% of the national vote if the same increase was repeated in the 2010 General Election. Exactly the same increase, 0.4%, as that between their 2001 and 2005 General Election results.

In other words the increase in the BNP’s share of the vote between the 2001 and 2005 General Elections was proportionally far greater than that between the 2004 and 2009 European Elections. An improvement of 1.36% in a European Election with a much lower voter turnout, proportional representation and more protest votes, is nothing like as good as a 0.5% increase in a General Election with first-past-the post. To repeat that result in the 2009 European Election the BNP would’ve had to have gone from 4.9% to 17.15% or from 808,200 to 2,585,096 votes.

To put it another way, they went from 47,129 votes in the 2001 General Election to 192,746 in the 2005 General Election. An increase of 145,617 votes. They only increased their votes by 135,398 between the 2004 and 2009 Euro Elections, which shows their popularity is slowing down rather than growing at the same rate as before.

If 27 million vote at the next General Election (which is around the same as the previous two) and the BNP get 0.89% of the vote, they’ll be on 240,300 votes – a gain of 47,554. If the Greens get 1.43% they’ll get 386,100 votes – a gain of 104,320.

Despite the BNP’s hyperbole it is more likely that we’ll have a Green government after the 2010 General Election than a BNP one. Or a Liberal Democrat or UKIP one for that matter.

A 6.26% share of the popular vote or 943,598 votes in a European Election with Proportional Representation coupled with a low turn out by voters from the main parties, will not translate into about 5,000,000 votes, 22% or whatever figures being bandied about. That would give them the same share of the vote as the Liberal Democrats did in 2005 and see the BNP fighting them for third place! Most predictions say 2-3%, which would still mean they’d have to increase their share of the vote substantially even to get that.

The other obvious point is that the BNP got 134,959 votes in North West England in the 2004 European Election or 6.4%. They got 126,538 votes in Yorkshire and the Humber or 8.0%. As everyone knows they didn’t get a seat in either region.
In the 2009 European Election the BNP only got 132,094 votes in the North West, but that came out as 8.0% due to the lower turnout, so they got that seat. In Yorkshire and the Humber they again got fewer votes at 120,139, but that translated into 9.8% as a result of the lower voter turnout and they got a seat there too. So the BNP only won those two seats that they make all the fuss about, because fewer people bothered to vote against them.

Their overall increase in popularity nationally made absolutely no difference to the result, as they only got seats in those two regions and on fewer votes. They could’ve got no votes at all outside of Yorkshire and the Humber and North West England, and they’d have still got those two seats. The extra 135,398 votes nationally didn’t translate into any seats and might as well have been chucked in the bin.

It’ll almost be sad to see the BNP’s silly illusions smashed next May.