Libs, Labour Lost

Britain is hungover this morning: after a late night waiting for election results, the country woke up this morning with a hung parliament. The Conservatives gained more than 90 seats on balance while falling short of a majority in Parliament, and Labour managed to lose almost as many seats. At this point, no one knows for sure who will form the new government. (Although a minority Tory government is looking increasingly likely.) But one thing is clear: Cleggmania fizzled. Despite the surge in the Liberal Democrats' popularity after the televised debates between Brown, Cameron, and Clegg, the Liberals somehow managed to lose 5 seat.

What happened is that Lib Dem supporters failed to get over that coordination problem I was talking about: a lot of people who wanted to vote for the Liberals didn't because they thought they couldn't win. A Times of London poll taken on the eve of the election found that "nearly a quarter of those not intending to vote Lib Dem say that they would have done so if they had believed that the party 'had a real chance of winning.'" But of course, the Lib Dems couldn't win, these voters thought, so better to play it safe and vote for one of the major parties.

The funny thing is though, they could have won. "If these voters had backed the Lib Dems, they would have won 39 per cent, against 31 per cent for the Tories and 22 per cent for Labour." Even with Britain's quirky electoral system, that would have given the Lib Dems a plurality of seats in Parliament. In other words, if each Lib Dem supporter had realized how many other Lib Dem supporters there were, the Conservatives and Labour would now be competing to become the junior partner in the Clegg administration.

It's easy to dismiss poll watching as a shallow distraction from the issues. But in this case, if those poll results had been publicized more widely, it would have empowered a huge swathe of the country to elect the party they felt truly represented them.