Swing Seats and Safe Seats
- Main articles: Marginal seat and Safe seat
Sometimes, particularly under non-proportional winner-take-all voting systems, electoral districts can be prone to landslide victories. A safe seat is one that is very unlikely to be won by a rival politician due to the makeup of its constituency. Conversely, a swing seat is one that could easily swing either way. In United Kingdom general elections, the voting in a relatively small number of swing seats usually determines the outcome of the entire election. Many politicians aspire to have safe seats.
Read more about this topic: Electoral District
Famous quotes containing the words swing, seats and/or safe:
“And then came the most devastating thought of all: I was one of them. I who used to swing upside down on a living horse, who always danced when mere walking would have done, so glad was I of life, so full of health. It was the most gruesome thought I had ever had in my life.”
—Josephine Demott Robinson (1865–1948)
“To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.”
—John Emerich Edward Dalberg, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902)