Government romped home with a third more seats than the Opposition last night, but only five percent more of the popular vote.

In the first-past-the-post system the UBP may have gained 47.25 percent of the electorate's support — compared to 52.35 for the PLP — but the Party only won 14 seats against the PLP's 22.

The results are virtually unchanged since the last general election in 2003, when the PLP won 22 seats and the UBP 14, with Government gaining 51.6 percent of the popular vote compared to 48 percent for the UBP.

Despite the disparity between the number of seats won and voters' political preferences however, some political experts believe the introduction of a system of proportional representation would not make much difference.

Last night Parliamentary Registrar Randy Scott said the "peculiarities" of politics in Bermuda and its pattern of constituencies meant proportional representation would not necessarily bring "drastic changes".

Mr. Scott said: "Other jurisdictions have proportional representation, and certainly, it's worthwhile looking at it. Whether or not it will change the numbers at the end of the day and bring drastic changes to the outcomes of elections, I'm not sure.

"There's a clear indication here by the numbers that the voters have spoken and want to maintain the incumbent Government." Mr. Scott admitted that race still played a part in voters' preferences, due to historical reasons, but added: "I don't think there's any increase in racial voting in this election."

Turnout last night was between 75.85 percent, with approximately 32,090 people voting. In the 2003 general election, the turnout was just slightly lower, at 74.9 percent, with 29,472 residents going to the polls.

Political pundit and blogger Christian Dunleavy said last night: "Voter turnout was probably a bit higher than a lot of people had anticipated, because there was widespread talk of disenchantment with the way things were going.

"But the PLP were very effective at getting people back out to the polls. I think they energised their core support very well and ran a campaign which stayed extremely religious to the three or four messages they wanted to deliver."

He said: "The first strategy was to ensure Dr. Brown had as low a profile as possible, together with the driving force behind the PLP for the last year. Dr. Brown, Phil Perinchief and Rolfe Commissiong disappeared for most of the campaign and only appeared in scripted scenarios.

"The second piece of strategy was to destroy Michael Dunkley. I think they threw everything at him but he handled it with class. They were trying to make him a symbol of white oligarchy.

"The third strategy was to hype their minor accomplishments — such as housing, buses and ferries — into massive achievements, things which did not take Bermuda in any new direction.

"The fourth strategy was race. I think the PLP campaign was enthused with this in every aspect. The attacks on Michael Dunkley were about his race and what he would apparently do to the other race, which I found extremely destructive to the community. The PLP advertisements had puppets invoking racial stereotypes, and the Party also talked of hanging and flogging. It was very unusual to run that material but they did it and eventually it worked.

"The tone of the campaign was extremely negative but the Government don't appear to have suffered any significant repercussions from that."

Mr. Dunleavy, who runs the blog Politics.bm, added: "The UBP seem to have far fewer safe seats than the PLP, and have a lot of voters concentrated in just a few areas, primarily Paget, Devonshire and Pembroke.

"The facts show there are some peculiarities in the way the districts are drawn, which are not particularly representative of popular vote support. After 1998 it was thought that would be rectified by the drawing of the new districts, but if we look at how small they are, seats can be decided by a small number of votes.

"It means we can end up with a scenario where the seat allocation is not representative of the popular vote. This is one of the peculiarities of the first-past-the-post system but is probably amplified by our situation here in Bermuda."

Mr. Dunleavy said: "If we look at the popular vote of this and the last election, the seats the UBP have taken are not representative of the popular vote, if you look at the percentage of voters.

"The Party took 14 seats out of 36, the equivalent of 39 percent of the seats in Parliament, but it had 47 percent of the vote. Looking at two successive elections, the seat distribution is not particularly indicative of popular vote support for the parties."

Still, there are a number of seats that remain marginals. For the UBP to have won power, it would have needed to capture five more seats that the PLP held by a total of 293 votes — just 0.9 percent of the total 32,090 votes cast.

By the Numbers: Page 4