By William Mills
The country goes to the polls this Thursday for the European Parliamentary elections.
The Euro elections use a different vote counting system. At General Elections for our national government Members of Parliament, and local elections for Town Hall councillors the” first past the post” system is used. Whoever gets the most votes wins.
However Euro elections, once every five years, use proportional representation. The country is divided up into huge super constituencies which elect more than one winner.
South East Region
In the South East region there are ten seats available to be filled. Each political party submits a list of candidates and depending how many votes it receives is given an allocation of seats.
In 2009 Euro elections of the 6.2 million eligible voters in the South East 2.3 million actually voted.
The results were;
| Party | No of votes | % | No of seats |
| Conservative | 812,000 | 35 | 4 |
| UKIP | 440,000 | 19 | 2 |
| Liberal Democrats | 330,000 | 14 | 2 |
| Green Party | 270,000 | 11 | 1 |
| Labour | 192,000 | 8 | 1 |
This time however the result might be very different.
There is suggestion that Lib Dems Sharon Bowles and Catherine Bearder might lose their seats and that Greens might pick up another seat with 25 year old Brighton councillor Alex Phillips joining Keith Taylor in Brussels.
Labour’s first three on their list are Annelise Dodds, John Howarth and Emily Westley.
The four Tories hopefuls are Daniel Hannan, Niri Deva, Richard Ashworth, and Marta Andreasen.
But all eyes will of course be on UKIP!
Leading their team is Nigel Farage, supported by Janice Atkinson, Diane James and Ray Finch.
