If all votes cast for the various parties in the constituency section were totalled up and seats allocated according to party strengths
instead of by the first-past-the-post method, Labour would still only manage to capture 16 out of the 40 seats, instead of the 30 they netted under the notoriously unfair system we now use.
The following are the updated party strengths
in both houses of the Diet following the entry Tuesday of Kenji Kosaka, an independent lawmaker in the House of Representatives, into the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
s unparalleled success; b) by revealing that party strengths
across Germany were massively reapportioned after 1918; c) by showing that most parties (other than the Catholic Centre) failed to achieve a strong and permanent bond ("coalition") with their voters, thus undermining the notion of firm socio-cultural milieux; and d) by demonstrating that knowledge about the regions of particular liberal strength in the 1870s helps not one whit in predicting where liberals would be strong at the beginning of the Weimar period (let alone at the end).