1) It's now more obvious than ever that first-past-the-post can lead to absurd results. It's no wonder there's so much political apathy when huge swathes of people have their votes made practically meaningless, simply because of the demographics of the area they happen to live in. I despise UKIP, but they're a valid party with about 15% of the votes and just one seat out of 650 (and they probably wouldn't even have that one if the candidate hadn't been a longstanding MP recently defected from another party). The number of overall votes per party compared with the number of seats borders on the bizarre. This isn't a new thing, but it makes it clear to me how important electoral reform is, not just in the name of fairness but also to increase political engagement.
2) Being an undeniably politically-correct tree-hugging loony lefty, I would be angry that the Conservatives got in, no matter what. (And no, I don't believe this makes me a 'sore loser' or that I don't believe in democracy. People have the right to choose whatever party they want, and I have the right to believe that choice was a bad one.) But I think this result angers me because of the way the debate was laid out to people, and the misinformation surrounding it. If everyone had the facts at hand and chose the Conservatives because they believe in the conservative ideology - pro-small state, pro-business, pro-traditional family values etc. - I would disagree, but there's not an objective right or wrong there, just a different set of values. I would still debate it, but the debate would be on a more fundamentally equal level.
However, what frustrates me is that I feel a lot of voters based their decision on ideas that are being constantly fed to us, yet are simply, objectively, factually wrong. Ideas like 'the recession happened because Labour overborrowed' - go on Google for two minutes and you can get the numbers which show that Labour's borrowing was at a reasonably low level until AFTER the crash, when we bailed out the banks. Indeed, their borrowing was far lower than Osborne's has been. You don't have to like Labour or agree their government was a good one, but the idea they borrowed us into recession is an easily disprovable myth. Yet it's completely entered the public consciousness now. Everyone thinks it's a fact, and saying it isn't true usually provokes a reaction like you've just said lobsters can fly. Likewise you have ideas like 'too many people are on benefits' - on average people think 27% of benefits are fraudulently claimed. The actual figure is 0.7%. In fact, benefits are underclaimed, not overclaimed i.e. far more people are entitled to them, but don't claim them, than fraudulently claim more than they should. But again, everyone seems to agree that there's a tsunami of lazy benefit fraudsters washing over the country and draining our finances. Again, this isn't about ideology, it's just about facts - if you believe the welfare system shouldn't exist, or should exist differently, that's fine, we can argue about that. But I'm not sure most voters are hardcore ideologues. I could be wrong, but I think the majority of people are probably pragmatists who base their views on what they think are the facts. It frustrates me that the UK on the whole gets a distorted idea of what those facts are.
I'm sure this spread of misinformation is complex, but I think the reason I'm so angry about this election result is that it feels like a rigged game. Conservatives help the rich, so the rich mainly support Conservatives. The rich are also powerful and influential, and can do things like, say, buy the newspapers and tell them what line to follow. The newspapers tell everyone things that will make them want to vote Conservative, and the whole nation's frame of reference skews to the right. I'm 23 years old, practically a baby, and it astounds me to think of a time where Labour could actually discuss socialist ideas and put them into practice without being branded maniacs. There was actually a plurality of ideas, rather than "let's do loads of cuts and stop all the foreigners" vs. "let's do slightly fewer cuts and stop only some foreigners". The idea that cuts are actually BAD for the economy doesn't even get a look-in, even though that's what most economists will actually tell you. So it's not the result that upsets me so much as the whole bloody state of politics.
Just to finish: this is not me saying that everything is the right's fault and the left are blameless victims. Labour have been an incompetent opposition and incompetent in the election campaign, and they are now pretty much totally directionless. The left in general majorly needs to sort their (our) shit out.
If you read all this midnight bollocks here's a reward:
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