Totals 643,920 70 70

Every Scottish Unionist member of Parliament represented on an average
28,400 voters, whilst a Liberal member represented less than 6000
voters. The figures repay still further examination. One of the Unionist
seats--the Camlachie division of Glasgow--was only captured as the result
of a split in the Ministerialist ranks. The other eight seats were won
by majorities ranging from 41 to 874, amounting in the aggregate to
3156. If therefore in these constituencies some 1600 Unionist voters had
changed sides, the Unionist party, though numbering more than a quarter
of a million, or 40 per cent. of the electorate, might have failed to
secure any representation at all. With the single-member system more
than a quarter of a million of Scottish Unionists only obtained
representation as it were by accident. In the same election the Liberals
in the counties of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, numbering 134,677, found
themselves without a representative.[5]

_The underrepresentation of majorities._

The failure of existing electoral methods to provide representation for
minorities not only unduly emphasizes racial and other differences
between different parts of the same country, as in Ireland, but often
leads to a complete falsification of public opinion. The results in
Birmingham and Manchester in the election of 1906 may serve as a text.
As a result of that election these two towns were represented in
Parliament as being absolutely opposed to one another--a heightened
contrast which was a pure caricature of the difference disclosed by the
polls. Manchester (including Salford) returned nine Ministerialists;
they were elected by the votes of 51,721 citizens, whilst the votes of