This is how many votes it took, on average, to elect an MP:
SNP 25,972
CON 34,244
LAB 40,290
LD 301,986
GRN 1,157,613
UKIP 3,881,129
— amol rajan (@amolrajan) May 8, 2015
You see in this country we don't vote for parties, we vote for people, who may or may not belong to a party, and they, in turn, sort out the government and prime minister amongst themselvesA quick look at the appropriate results page clearly shows that on average approximately* how many votes each winning candidate received:
CON: 24,500
SNP: 23,500
GRN: 22,900
UKIP: 19,600
LAB: 17,700
LD: 17,000
PC: 12,900
Of course, this is just semantics, but its easy enough to faff about with numbers.
For example, the various candidates didn't actually need that many votes to win their constituency, all they needed were more votes than the next best candidate, which gives the following approximate numbers:
UKIP: 16,200
GRN: 14,900
SNP: 13,900
LD: 13,800
CON: 10,600
LAB: 9,600
PC: 8,000
* I didn't mong all the numbers for all the seats, so this is just a representative sample for CONS, LAB and SNP
