Example: City of Chester

The City of Chester parliamentary constituancy gives us an example of how our method of controlling seats would work in a key marginal.

Chester is a beautiful city, and a major shopping centre attracting thousands of people every day of the week. Several large companies are based on the outskirts in the business parks, and the University of Chester is one of the oldest higher education establishments in the country. The seat is fairly compact and served by a daily local paper, the Chester Evening Leader, and a weekly, the Chester Chronicle. Turnout at the last election was 65%, slightly above average, and there are about 69,000 registered voters in the constituancy. About 45,000 voted at the last general election, 22,000 didn't.

Labour won it by 917 votes, so if 458 of those people had voted Conservative instead, and a straight switch between the two main parties is what usually happens, Labour would have lost the seat. If our campaign can get the support of a thousand people we will have achieved our target in that seat.

75% of people believe they have a duty to vote, 65% did and the difference between the two in Chester is about 7,000 people. We think those 7,000 people believe democracy is important but don't believe in the system we have. We can expect the support of the majority of those, but for arguments sake we'll halve that number to 3,500. There is a basic level of support for the green party throughout the country of 1%, and a larger number of people who are deeply concerned about the environmental challenges facing us. We can expect another 1% support from them, that's 700 people. The Lib Dems got almost 10,000 votes, even though they had no chance of winning the seat, and we know that 39% of Lib Dem voters vote for them as a protest vote. That's 4000 people who would probably support us. Even if we only get the support of 5% of floating voters who normally support Labour or the Conservatives that gives us the support of another 1700 people. Thats a total of 9900 people, twenty times more people in Chester than we need. We know from experience that almost everyone we speak to supports our aims, so the support for our campaign is likely to be much higher than that.

At the next general election the politicions will be knocking on those voters doors asking them for power. We'll be asking them to sit at home and put their feet up, do nothing, and if they do that, they will give themselves the power to make politicians work for the people of Britain, rather than the political parties.