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> The UK is plowing ahead with a hard brexit with a 52% majority on a 72% turnout (38% of the electorate explicitly said they wanted to leave), with a minority

> The UK is plowing ahead with a hard brexit with a 52% majority on a 72% turnout (38% of the electorate explicitly said they wanted to leave), with a minority government propped up by a bribe with a minor political party from Northern Ireland. Well, that's how referendums work, there is never 100% turnout. So the amount of people who votes constitute the "100%" and you only need 51% of that to win a referendum. Your argument is also not good because by following your logic we could say that almost no US president has ever gotten elected by majority, at least from top of my head I am not aware of anybody actually being elected by getting votes of 51% or more of all eligible voters.

maccard 9y ago
The US presidential elections, referendums and UK parliament elections can't be compared equally, so extending the logic like that doesn't make sense. For the POTUS elections, trump lost on a count of just shy of 2.9million votes, but won by the electoral college. By applying that logic to the brexit referendum, breaking up over the 5 countries that voted (england, scotland, NI, wales, gibralter) remain would have won. By dividing up the 382 counting areas [0] I'm sure you get a different result too. For a UK parliament vote, I'm not sure on what the result would be if you took a voter turnout by percentage across the countries, and then evenly distributed the MPs based on those number of votes, but I'm sure someone has done the analysis somewhere. To go back on topic, my point was (supposed to be) more about how a tyranny of the majority can happen, and does happen, in western countries (with some slightly alternative points such as the fact that majorities aren't always majorities) [0] https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-subject/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/eu-referendum-result-visualisations https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-s...

maccard 9y ago

The US presidential elections, referendums and UK parliament elections can't be compared equally, so extending the logic like that doesn't make sense. For the POTUS elections, trump lost on a count of just shy of 2.9million votes, but won by the electoral college. By applying that logic to the brexit referendum, breaking up over the 5 countries that voted (england, scotland, NI, wales, gibralter) remain would have won. By dividing up the 382 counting areas [0] I'm sure you get a different result too. For a UK parliament vote, I'm not sure on what the result would be if you took a voter turnout by percentage across the countries, and then evenly distributed the MPs based on those number of votes, but I'm sure someone has done the analysis somewhere. To go back on topic, my point was (supposed to be) more about how a tyranny of the majority can happen, and does happen, in western countries (with some slightly alternative points such as the fact that majorities aren't always majorities) [0] https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-subject/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/eu-referendum-result-visualisations https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-s...