Just how powerful is your vote where you live? Here's how to find out...

While the biggest problem at the moment may be just getting people to the polling stations, there is another problem and this comes courtesy of the wonderful way our political system is structured, how the constituencies are defined and how big the majority of the incumbent’s vote was in the last election, and means that the votes are far from equal across the country.

It is clear that all of the political parties are tackling the seats which are considered “marginal” because the voting in the last election was close and they sense a greater chance of winning the seat so focus their attention on that. Did you know that more than 50% of the electorate voted against Labour in the last election yet we had another Labour government…

It is for that reason that the more “marginal” a seat is, the more powerful the vote of each member of the electorate in that constituency.

So how powerful is your vote?

Well, the New Economics Foundation (NEF) have put together a site to tell you exactly how much your vote is "worth" under the current “first past the post” system. Simply enter postcode into the box, click ‘Search’ and then it gives you the answer.

My constituency of Devon East, as I expected, does not score particularly well. I do not have one vote, but instead the equivalent of 0.122 votes, see left.

It is regarded as a very safe Conservative seat thus requiring a relatively large swing in the voting to unseat the current MP Hugo Swire (this is case despite 53% of the voters in my area did not vote Conservative).

The same website informs me that the average UK voter has 2.08 times more voting power than voters in Devon East.

But compared to other constituencies, that vote is quite ‘powerful’. Take the Merseyside seat of Knowsley. This is the ‘safest’ seat in the land and so the vote is the least powerful: one vote there is the equivalent of 0.002 votes.

On the other hand, the powerful vote can be found in Wales, in the newly-enlarged constituency of Arfon – the name is derived from the north Wales towns of Bangor and Caernarfon and "Arfon" is a historical name for the area and means "facing Anglesey".

In this most ‘marginal’ of all ‘marginal constituencies’ one person there does not really have one vote, they have the equivalent of 1.308 votes - 5.17x greater than the UK average.

So how does your constituency score? Visit www.voterpower.org.uk to find out.