Mediaboss Marketing

Comments(0)

ON THURSDAY voters in Staffordshire will join thousands of others across the West Midlands region in electing seven Members of the European Parliament.

At the same time, people in South Cheshire will be voting for MEPs to represent the North West region.

In total, 751 MEPs will be elected across the 28 member states of the European Union in the largest trans-national poll in history.

But most residents in the Potteries would probably struggle to name any of their MEPs, or explain what they actually get up to in Brussels and Strasbourg.

The confusion can start in the voting booth, where voters are asked to choose between parties, rather than individual candidates as is usually the case in local and national elections.

Technically speaking, the election employs the d'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation, which in laymen's terms means MEPs from different parties are elected in order to reflect the popular vote.

Robert Ladrech, professor of European Politics at Keele University, said: "The elections to the European Parliament operate on a different basis than elections to the House of Commons.

"Stoke-on-Trent is in the West Midlands region, which has seven seats to fill. Each political party has already selected their seven candidates, and has also ranked them from first to seventh.

"This matters because on polling day a voter simply votes for a party, and depending on the percentage of the vote the party receives, it takes one or more of the seven seats.

Excerpt from:
European elections 2014: How do they work and will Ukip make gains in the West Midlands?