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Tories - 36% of the vote - 47% of the seats
Labour - 29% of the vote - 39% of the seats
Lib Dem - 23% of the vote - 9% of the seats.

FPTP is a total fecking scam.

For non-UK, FPTP stands for First Past the Post and basically means that the party that reaches the magic number of 326 seats (half the seats in the House of Commons) has a majority and can form a government.

It can also refer to individual seats, where the candidate with the most amount of votes wins the seat and all other votes are effectively discounted for the purpose of the election. This creates the situation that LuciusAR is describing where the Lib Dems have roughly a 1/4 of the votes but only 9% of the seats. Crazy

Naturally Lib Dems are advocates of Proportional Representation where each party receives a % of seats = to their % share of the vote. The reasons for not using this system is that it will let nutters like the BNP into the House of Commons and it will also make it bloody hard for anybody to get a majority (note the three way split in this year's vote).

Current situtation in the election is that the Tories are going to try and offer the Lib Dems a deal after Clegg (LD leader) stated that as the Tories had won the most amount of seats, they should have the first chance to try and form a government (i.e.What deals are you offering Cameron?) Tory seats + Lib Dem seats would equal a majority, but the two parties share limited common ground. It would be a bit like having a load of rebel backbench MPs who always vote against your laws. Cameron will also probably not offer Clegg voting reform in the form of proportional representation either. Tories are a bit traditional like this.

So if Clegg doesn't like Cameron's talk, he can try Brown's wares. The problem here is that Labour and Lib Dem do not have enough seats to form a majority because of all the odds and sods that got voted in like Welsh and Scottish Nationalists.

There is a big rush to get something sorted, because the the proverbial is about to hit the fan in terms of the budget deficit (see Greece!). Strong leadership is needed to bring stability to economy, but the clever old British public chose this point in time to elect a hung parliament. Excellent timing

Use PR to reform the House of Lords to make it democratic.

Rewrite the constitution to ensure a fair balance of powers between the two houses.

It doesn't matter which party got elected, any of them would have been up against it economically and no-one's announced plans add up or make proper sense.

I agree with the people who said that winning this election would be a poisoned chalice. Things are going to be pretty crappy in the UK for the next five years. Whichever government is in charge is going to be sacked with extreme prejudice at the end of it.

Ross Perot is always available to run a government. Unforunately, no electorate has been insane enough to allow him within 600 miles of their capitol.

After the fiasco with brown, I KNOW its not him.

Probably cameron.

Cameron - I don't think he is an ideal Tory leader but he will get a job done.