What will a vote in national election (uk) mean?
There aren’t 3 main parties in the UK – if you live in Scotland, then the parties winning seats are Lab, Con, Lib Dem, and SNP. If you live in Wales, the parties winning seats are Lab, Con, Lib Dem and Plaid Cymru. Not everyone (in the whole of the UK) has the chance to vote for the minor parties like UKIP, Greens, or the others. Most of these small parties will not contest every single seat. They can’t afford it because polling less than 5% of the constituency vote means a lost deposit – an expensive exercise. Voting for any losing candidate is a wasted exercise in our first past the post system. No matter who wins your constituency, any votes for all the ones who don’t win, don’t affect the local result or the national result. Any votes for the winner in excess of his required majority are also pointless, and thus some 70% of votes cast nationally did not affect the constituency result or the national result, and may as well be thrown in to the bin. Let’s face it, when all the votes
