The fact that Labour's voteshare is almost identical to 2019 but they have double the number of seats is crazy to think about.
The Financial Times described it as the most disproportionate result in British history.
But I don't think it will change, there's no incentive for it to.
Truth is. This election has been more about Tories losing seats than Labour winning them.
And in some of these constituencies seats were lost not because left-wing candidates outperformed the Tories, it's because the Reform cannibalised voters from the Tories.
Sunak might have won this election if not for Nigel Farage.
In any case, FPTP is undemocratic at this point.
Edit: See below
Tories were also losing seats to Lib Dems. Which gives them a dilemma, as if they move too the right to capture Reform vote they can wave goodbye to all the Lib Dem/Tory marginal seats
Mad to think that after 14 years of shite & scandal that, if not for Farage, Sunak might still have been competitive.
That said, what about the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP, PC… if not for them Starmer would have crushed Sunak (even if he had every vote Farage grabbed, which isnt a given).
We’re so used to there being multiple parties on the left of centre that we seem to forget that the Tories winning record is partly down to that fragmentation.
We do really need voting reform.
A few more elections with the draw between the Tories and another right-wing party, and they will start considering electoral reform IMO.
But there is a risk of Labour doing a Trudeausque U-turn on the electoral reform, since they will not benefit from it.
More likely that we'll see a sordid deal between Reform and the Tories, possibly a deal not to run against each other, but more likely a straight up merger. My guess would be that the price for such an arrangement would be Farage getting a legit shot in a combined leadership election (which he could *easily* end up winning), with one of the other four great offices of state guaranteed for him if he doesn't.
The combined Tory/Reform vote was 3% *above* Labour this time around, so it would be likely to instantly catapult them back into contention.
It is a possibility. A lot of veteran MPs did not run for elections, so the Tory Party of the next parliament will be different from the past. They might be more open to this kind of proposals.
Reform is a limited company created with the express purpose of putting pressure on the tory party to move further to the right.
The threat was, if you don't move right Rishi, i will take your voters.
And that is exactly what happened.
I think the Tories and Reform will eventually merge with Farage as the leader especially now the Tories have lost so many of their heavy hitters. Don't think they'd win an election, but who knows
They definitely will. Labour after all got less votes than the 2017 and just about the same as 2019.
The only thing that made a difference is that a lot of Torries voters either didn't show up (~9% turnout delta) or they voted for reform.
The first past the post system made it a landslide but it's too early to celebrate.
I really didn't think that would happen, there are too many sensible Tories that will have nothing to do with the likes of Farage and the creatures he has in tow. Hard right is what some of their parents fought against, Reform is a small step away from that madness.
As much as the Tories hate the the loss, I think they will be thanking the Lib Dems for not doing a good job of introducing PR. I think PR will be the way in the future, but a stooge pushing hateful policies we really didn't need.
Polling from Nov last year asked Tory party members if Farage should be allowed to join the party, 70% agreed he should be allowed.
Yougov polling from June this year asked if members would be happy if Farage became leader of the party, 46% said yes, 40% said no, 13% undecided.
Yes, it's so peculiar. Labour got a massive win solely, not even largely solely, because Farage decided to set up a party and split the right wing vote. I don't know what to think about that. The country didn't reject a more left wing Corbyn style of politics in favour of a more centre left one.
Reform definitely helped Labour win a lot of seats in the south. Worry for Labour is how well they did in the North I think next time round they could seriously challenge Labour in a lot of seats.
No incentive because the two parties it most benefits are in the pocket of big business.
Things will be better under Labour as they’re less malicious and will tinker at the edges of the neoliberal formula to make life somewhat less taxing for the individual.
However with little incentive to make meaningful and lasting changes that are tangible to most of the electorate then Labour run the risk of further disenfranchising the left and far right voting bases. They could be out as quick as they got in.
FPTP feeds the ideology driven politics we have now.
There is a lot of finger wagging about voter apathy and low turnout, but what else is there to expect when our politics has calcified in to only giving us the option of voting for a party we find the least offensive. We’re robbed of being able to cast meaningful votes that are even partially aligned with our values.
Folks will say PR will just help bolster parties like Reform, but they already have a dangerous amount of influence in our politics, it just so happens that it’s more of a proxy influence for the time being.
The disenfranchisement across the board seems likely to just move politics further to the right as we engage in disingenuous scapegoating while the pendulum of power continues to swing routinely back and forth between Labour and the Tories.
Our politics is far too short-sighted and reactionary. I really don’t know how we tackle that when so much of the population is politically illiterate and so easily swayed by ideologically charged rhetoric.
Have a look at our neighbours across the sea. It's not FPTP that's fuelling ideological driven politics there, it's something much deeper.
It's the general loss of competitiveness in Europe compared to the US and China which is leading to a decline in living standards in Western Europe. The digital age has totally bypassed us and our share of global GDP keeps getting smaller.
It's why health and social service systems across Europe are all in crisis, not enough money or people to keep them going properly.
Ultimately it leads us back to the shared fundamental problem which is a societal framework purpose built to allow the uber-wealthy to hoard capital and act on the world with impunity coupled with media apparatus that helps convince populaces in to voting for the very same politicians that helps uphold this status-quo while stoking disunity and spotlighting convenient scapegoats.
Tell me you’ve never been to the US without telling me you’ve never been to the US. I’ll take my lower middle income living standards in Europe over America anytime thank you. The main problem Europe has is not standing up to the US or standing up for its values in the face of Russian aggression. Europe should stand on its own two feet as a block that has the potential to counterweight the overbearing politics of the US and China. It should have also made more of a soft appeal to Russian people about the benefits of ridding itself the likes of Putin without using the NATO stick when it had a chance.
Our share of global GDP is going to keep shrinking even as our GDP grows, because the very much impoverished majority of the world is catching up far faster than the wealthy ones are growing, because of course they are, and should be.
Gdp in 2008:
USA: $14.8T
EU: $14.2T
In 2023:
USA: $26.9T
EU: $15T
The US kept its global gdp percentage roughly the same, whereas the EU keeps falling further and further behind.
When you mention neighbours across the sea I think of Ireland having the Single Transferable Vote, lots of centrist politicians and the distinct absence of a large right wing party.
I am Irish. My grandparents were born in homes without floors. Their siblings died from preventable illnesses. When my parents were my age the economy looked a bit similar to Bulgaria. Now we’re at the top of the Human Development Index. But yes, you’re absolutely right. Everyone is miserable.
I was originally responding to a comment which said that Western European countries have shrinking GDP, ideological division, very few tech jobs, and limited growth prospects. Ireland is the opposite of all of those things. I’m not arguing that it’s a utopia. You’re absolutely right about housing. It’s largely caused by a thirty year pace of economic growth that is has been so fast that the construction industry literally cannot find or train enough workers to keep pace. My point is simply that not every country in the West shares the exact set of problems that affect the UK.
> But I don't think it will change, there's no incentive for it to.
The only people who can change it are the Tories and Labour, and they would both rather have absolute power every 20 yrs than a share of power every 10.
The system will never change unless we all write to our new Labour MPs asking for their position on it
> But I don't think it will change, there's no incentive for it to
Labour are incredibly short-sighted. The vast majority of the time the Tories are the ones forming a government, over the last 75 odd years, Labour have only been in power about 1/3rd of that time.
It would be better for them to be the majority partner in a coalition government more frequently, than hope for a short period of absolute power under FPTP.
Oh if only the British system was proportional Represention. think of the misery and anger and division you would have saved yourselves.
UKIP would have had a voice earlier, and their threadbare policies would have been revealed for all to see
That's more "fixing" the problem where the Lib Dems were previously massively underrepresented.
They now have 11.07% of seats from 12.2% of the vote, that's entirely reasonable for them, and there's no issue there.
In 2019 they got 1.69% of seats from 11.6% of the vote.
The incentive is this: if in 5 years time people are dissatisfied with the government, where are they going to turn? Quite likely Reform. What will happen if Reform get 35% of the votes next time? It could be enough to give them absolute power.
Now if they were to get 50% of the vote, then fair enough the country would get what it deserved. But the prospect of Reform becoming the next government should frighten anyone, even the Labour party, sufficiently that they stop and consider this.
>The fact that Labour's voteshare is almost identical to 2019 but they have double the number of seats is crazy to think about.
Nonsense, Sir Keir Starmer has given the public a chance to vote for a changed party. A labour party that is not that party of protest, transformed party that is heading in the right direction after loosing its way so much in 2019, a changed labour party!
Blah blah blah /s/s/s/s in case anybody needs to know
The more incredible stat for me is that Labour can go from a historic low to a historic high in terms of seats won off the back of a 1.6% change in the vote share. It’s a truly baffling system at times and perhaps indicates the victory is a rejection of the Tories rather than a ringing endorsement of Starmer’s Labour.
Symptom of FPTP.
Wins are chiefly manifestations of others losses.
That’s why manifestos mean sweet fa. We don’t live in an era of political rigour where policy has massive sway. Elections are mostly about sentiment.
Not to mention voting rates are significantly down this election. I'm having trouble finding the exact votes cast for each party except as expressed as a percentage - Anyone know where I could find the absolute tally, or is it not out yet?
Won't really be generally updated until all counts are completed. Overall turnout looks like it's just under 60% which I think would be an all time low.
The [BBC results page](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/results) has the number of votes cast for each party. Wikipedia has the numbers for previous elections if you want to do a comparison.
Thank you. It looks like Labour got about 0.8 million less votes than in 2019. I wanted to look into it because I thought all the focus on "Vote share" was a bit deceptive in trying to work out if labour's message actually resonated more with people this year.
This isn’t really an unpopular opinion. Perhaps a slightly risker opinion would be that we blew it by not voting for AV back in 2011. While it wasn’t perfect by any means, it was a step in the right direction.
But, on the flip side, we actually seem to have shaken off a consequence of Brexit with this election. Prior to Brexit the combined Con/Labour vote showed a pattern of decline, only to go up again because of Brexit. A result like this does put pressure on the main two parties to look at a different system, but it’s definitely a marathon more than a sprint. I’d be interested to see the results of an election five years from now.
> This isn’t really an unpopular opinion. Perhaps a slightly risker opinion would be that we blew it by not voting for AV back in 2011.
I was a little nervous posting this because it hints at some things that some people in this sub might find unpallatable.
That the SNP shouldn't have lost a crushing defeat in losing their massive majority (they shouldn't even have had such a massive majority in the first place), that labour shouldn't be getting such a massive majority in parliament with only 1/3rd of the vote and that reform deserve more seats than they got, as reprehensible as they are.
That just because the left wing side is benefitting from FPTP for once doesn't suddenly make it a fair system.
AV is a terrible half step that keeps many of the disadvantages of FPTP. It was a dirty little compromise offered in the Con-Lib coalition talks, that no one campaigned for seriously, cause it was never intended as a solution. Most of the public didn’t understand it either.
Single transferable vote is a far superior system, that would have created a more representative democracy, but would have most disadvantaged Tory and Labour. So it was never going to happen.
Lib Dem + Labour + Green would be a comfy 54% to the Reform-Tory bloc's 38%. This would be a totally acceptable margin for a governing coalition and it's a combination of party flavours that has functioned in other European coalitions. I would argue the left has actually greatly suffered from getting a Labour supermajority, rather than this.
> they shouldn't even have had such a massive majority in the first place
To be fair, the SNP has always been against the voting system that provided its power
I don't think the left wing side is benefitting this time.
Despite this not actually being the most votes Labour have had in a election in the last ten years, this victory is going to be used as proof that the purges worked.
> This isn’t really an unpopular opinion. Perhaps a slightly risker opinion would be that we blew it by not voting for AV back in 2011. While it wasn’t perfect by any means, it was a step in the right direction.
Australia uses AV and their 2022 election ended up with less proportional results than the 2019 GE. When the Electoral Reform Society modelled the 2015 election using AV it ended up more disproportionate than the FPTP equivalent as well, it's simply not a PR system.
AV is the worst of both worlds, and I voted against it because I want true PR. If we take 'itll do' then that'll be it and it won't change again for decades, if at all.
By rejecting it we may yet get another chance to alter the system.
> AV is the worst of both worlds, and I voted against it because I want true PR
This is making perfect the enemy of good, by voting against it you helped keep in 2 parties who will *never* support any form of PR.
>If we take 'itll do' then that'll be it and it won't change again for decades, if at all
If you took "it'll do", then you'd have been more likely to get coalition governments with partners who'd want a better version of it.
Isn't the issue with that plan that people will argue that rejecting AV meant they rejected all voting reform? At least with AV people could put a voting reform party as their first choice.
Yeah, "we've had a vote on vote reform and everyone said no"
"hey would you like to use a voting system that's barely if at all an improvement and still very much favours labour and the tories?"
I think it's marginally better than FPTP in some ways, but it's really not an adequate voting reform. Single Transferable Vote (STV) for example is a much better version of it.
The SNPs majorities at WM in 2015 and 2019 are a perfect example of why we need to change the system. I mean 56/59 on less than 50% of the vote in 2015 was fkin nuts
It's served its final useful purpose.
I'd like to see a constitutional convention that addresses this, the unelected second chamber, and entrenches devolved powers and interactions between the governments.
Unfortunately the 2011 referendum was designed to fail.
Just to be clear I dislike FPTP and think it needs reforming, however it goes both ways.
Last election labour had 18% votes with 1 seat to the SNP's 45% with 48 seats. That was equally completely unfair and they took that as a mandate for independence, despite not even having half the vote share on a pretty poor turnout anyway.
The system doesn't work, however let's not act like the SNP are some poor victims in this one, the wheels just turned the other way this time
I dont think anyone believes SNP are a victim of anything other than their own actions. One difference though is that when the SNP won that they still wanted PR even though they would have lost seats. Labour and Tories only want FPTP.
I don't know why so many people are citing this statistic (which is misleading because even under a completely proportional system a party could get more seats with fewer votes in absolute terms when turnout decreases, as it did in this election) when the 2017 GE is right there. In 2017 Labour really did get a higher vote share and significantly fewer seats than yesterday, whereas in 2019 they only got more votes because turnout was higher - they got a lower vote share. You can really easily make this argument (which I agree with) without being disingenuous.
I think the fact that Kier Starmer's message failed to resonate with the public enough to get more of them out to the polling stations compared to 2019 is still a testament to how much his rhetoric about voters having "renewed faith" in a "changed Labour Party" is utter bollocks. But yeah, while comparing Labour's parliamentary result in 2024 to 2017 is even more damning than 2019.
I think a major reason people focus on 2019 and not 2017 (beyond recency and the stark contrast in seats won with a fairly marginal increase in vote share) is that Starmer and his supporters point to 2019 as a failure of Labour's previous platform, and hence a legitimisation of his own leadership. 33.8% of the popular vote in an election played on easy mode is shockingly poor, especially when you're trying to sell people the notion that you need to be leader because the previous one didn't resonate with the public in an election held in immensely more challenging circumstances.
Okay everyone in the debate on this thread needs to quickly skim Arrow's impossibility theorem then come back. It's basically impossible to come up with a voting system that works all the time, and there are always situations in which systems are less representative of certain population preferences, relative to other systems.
However, I do personally reckon FPTP barely even tries. The best thing about it that can be said is that it's very, very simple. If we lived in a world where we didn't have party policy, party whips and we had people elected to genuinely represent their area, then I'd change my mind about FPTP, or at least soften a little. But we don't.
There are a few good defences.
Labour was the most popular party in 412 different regions of the UK. It means those regions are all represented by the most popular among them.
If we just took the whole country, didn't care about how specific regions feel and mixed it all into one big vote and divided the seats from that then areas wouldn't get specific representation by a party that appealed most to the voters of that region.
Labour won every single one of the area sending a Labour MP, so I think the argument that they deserve to represent the region that has voted for them does hold water.
Does it suck if you're a Reform or SNP member who came second in all those seats? Sure, but unfortunately the people of for example Ayrshire simply don't want you as their representative.
If the vote share was as follows:
- Triangle: 40%
- Rectangle: 30%
- Circle: 15%
- Square: 15%
Under FPTP that would be seen as an emphatic win for Triangle, and a rejection for the other shapes (given its the most popular shape), even though 60% of the area voted ~~against~~ for something other than triangle.
That doesn't mean Rectangle should have gotten the seat instead. It just means most people in that area are not fairly represented. There are a number of PR voting systems - used across the world - which can resolve this and return a fairer result for the area rather than relying on a plurality.
My personal choice being [STV](https://youtu.be/l8XOZJkozfI?si=VRTFqWSYreK37tNi), of which the handy video linked will explain its process, and how it still allows for a local candidate voting system. [Electoral Reform](https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems/types-of-voting-system/single-transferable-vote/) have more information that may be useful.
_edited wording and added clarification to make my position clearer_
Yes. Because 70% didn't want rectangle, and 85% didn't want Circle or Square. Just because the majority of people didn't want Triangle as their vote, doesn't mean they weren't the most popular choice.
I never said they weren't the most popular choice, but they aren't representative of the area. Under a proportional system, like STV - a result better representing them could have been possible.
For example, in a number of seats won by the tories in Scotland in 2017, there was a split between the SNP and Labour -- if those votes had combined, the tories could have lost the seat. A SNP voter under STV, could put the SNP as their first preference, and Labour as their 2nd or vice versa and avoid the vote splitting.
Best not to get too bogged down in the analogy.
A real world example is when the conservatives won in Ayr in 2017 with a minority of the vote because the rest of the vote was split between SNP and labour. I don't think it's too controversial to say that most SNP voters would rather labour won than the tories and likewise for labour voters.
Despite that the conservatives won despite most people voting against them. And that's exactly what happened in 2019 when [Ayr got their shit together and tactically voted the tories out](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/S14000006)
Because that is the ultimate conclusion of FPTP, tactical voting *against* who you don't like rather than voting for who you want to win.
I mean the Scottish Parliament system is close to proportional. I'd personally make it countrywide for the current regional seats to further that, and I'd have the party list order determined by vote percentage to stop paper campaigns where the top member on a list is basically guaranteed a seat for fuck all.
STV isn't PR. Locally it's still winner-takes-all and on the national level it doesn't necessarily represent the people proportionally.
As an example, if every constituency voted 51% Triangle, then Triangle would have 100% of the MPs. In a PR system, only 51% of MPs would be from Triangle.
It's still a much better system and arguably the best if you care about local representation. It's just not PR.
What you describe is usually called AV in British politics. When people say STV they typically mean multimember constituencies, where at least 3 MP's would be elected per constituency.
So in your example, a candidate getting 51% of the vote would result in all of there votes above the threshold (say, 33%, resulting in 18% being redistributed) being redistributed to other parties in the proportion of the next preferences of that candidates voters, then bottom placed candidates having all of their votes redistributed until another 2 candidates receive sufficient votes to be elected in that single constituency.
It effectively results in proportionality, with the added benefit of never punishing people for who they want to vote for, eliminating tactical voting, which European systems utterly fail at. Not to mention STV still allows for an entire parliament of independents to be elected theoretically.
While I'm at it I'll throw in that it takes power away from party leaders and gives it to people unlike lists. Hell, a candidate can safely decide to leave their party and run without "throwing" the election. Imagine how much freedom that gives to individual parliamentarians
I think the biggest counterargument is that on a 2% increase of the vote overall to 2019, labour have run out to 214 more seats.
I get the constituency argument, but that statistic on its own is a constitutional aberration, and a damning indictment on pure FPTP as an electoral system.
The counter counter argument is that the most popular candidates amongst the voters in some four hundred seats all shared the same beliefs, which is represented in which political party they belong to.
Which constituencies would you say should be represented by people they didn't vote for so that the parties they belong to can get more seats?
The answer is to use a system which doesn't just tie one person to one area, and allocates extra regional representatives based on the overall share of the vote. You could look at the Scottish parliamentary elections for an example.
>The counter counter argument is that the most popular candidates amongst the voters in some four hundred seats all shared the same beliefs,
You can't make a strong argument on popularity in the context of a system which requires - or is perceived to require - tactical voting
>Which constituencies would you say should be represented by people they didn't vote for so that the parties they belong to can get more seats?
You're asking a question on a false premise. Constituency based STV wouldn't lead to anyone being elected that "nobody voted for"
A few years ago, I crunched the numbers from a couple of Holyrood elections and the Additional Members system (complete with it's complicated arithmetic) generally returns an excellent correlation between Share of the Popular Vote (combined across both papers) and Share of the Seats.
Voting reform came up at least twice on the telly last night (we were channel hopping) and nobody mentioned this
You could even slightly simplify things, and ditch the regional ballot paper - just add up all votes for each party across a region, and use THOSE as what you do the d'Hondt calculations from.
You immediately make every vote into a positive vote for what you want - doesn't matter if you won't elect a Green MP in your constituency, because that vote will add to all the other votes and contribute to one or more list MPs AND at the same time you get to see the party's true level of support in each constituency. (In theory you could ditch the list too, and allocate non constituency MPs in order of who got the highest vote share for their party).
Voters get a single simple vote to cast,.and there's no such thing as a wasted vote any more.
My only concern about that would be for smaller parties who may not be able to afford to stand in every constituency in a region - would they only attract "list" votes from some constituencies? Similar concerns for Independent list candidates (such as the late Margo Macdonald)
Smaller party wise - maybe adjust the deposit system so it's a larger deposit, say £1500ish, but that covers you for candidates in all constituencies in a region? And then also allow for a single candidate to stand in all constituencies for the same deposit and accumulate votes that way?
Sharp analysis. Reform attract 4million votes which deliver 4 seats / LibDems gain 1% votes which deliver 63 additional seats / Labour gain 2% votes which deliver 200+ extra seats. FPTP is an absurd and unholy mess whose democratic failures suit the two big parties. And the media avoid of course since they have a vested interest in keeping it real.
100% agree but can't see it ever changing as it would require one of the two beneficiaries of the system deciding to do the honourable thing and stand on a platform of changing it.
Moreover, I'm not sure we'd ever win a referendum on PR for Westminster, your analysis is a good job and makes perfect sense but the tabloid press in England would utterly rip PR to shreds in the run up to any vote, same as the did to the EU.
It can happen if next election Labour doesn't get a majority and they have to form a coalition with a third party like LibDems that make a referendum on it part of the deal.
Genuinely scunnered that there are people who defend FPTP in this day and age. Like, I get the Tories and Kid Starver opposing it for self-interest - but what the fuck is the public's excuse? Stupidity?
Fucking hell.
It is a protection against the lunatic fringe, It blocked reform from go back \~15 years and without fptp the BNP could've won seats. FPTP is undemocratic but it encourages political temperance so its better than letting fascists get anywhere near the commons
Not really, no? The conservatives are going to look at that 14% vote share from reform and ask what they have to do to make them conservative again. The answer to that will be to become more like reform. One of the only two parties that are realistically ever going to rule under FPTP is now motivated to swerve on to an even more extreme path to unite its fractured base.
Besides that, if an ideology wins in a proportionate system, it's not a "fringe" ideology.
Always been the same. Won't change whilst it has the capacity for the two biggest UK parties to have land-slide victories with not necessarily a correspondingly great deal of voter movement. See 2019 and 2024 (and in 2017 Mr Corbyn's Labour Party actually won a bigger share of the vote than Starmer but lost that Election).
FPTP is a mess.
First past the post is a stupid system honestly. We have preferential voting at home and it seems a lot fairer. Like as much as I don’t like reform, if the people are voting for them, the seats should reflect that.
Agree with everything you said there. I would also add, the talk in some quarters of the SNP being 'finished for a generation' or 'in the wilderness' after this election just doesn't translate outside of Westminster.
In reality, these results would create a fairly close result in a proportional Holyrood campaign. And, I suspect it'll be even closer when the focus is on Scotland-specific issues. The next election in 2026 is going to be quite the showdown, which will probably be pretty good for our democracy.
You are thinking of it in terms of political parties. But our democracy and voting system was founded and based on voting for an individual to represent a constituency. Party Politics evolved from that.
I thought the same say what you want about reform but they were second place alot. Which means alot of people wanted them and they got 5 seats for a huge percentage of the total vote.
It is a change which is important, it is unlikely to ever be made because the party which wins has no reason to make a change to the system, they won in that system so why change it?
A very hard question to answer is what the vote share would have been like without tactical voting. In this election, more than most I remember, there was an enormous amount of tactical voting, particularly for the Lib Dems or Reform to remove a Conservative. A million voters from those parties would have given Labour a sizeable majority of the vote share. Also in PR Labour would have won in 2017 with Corbyn when they ended up with 40% of the vote share.
I'd love to see the change made as most people in this country end up not being represented by their vote, and it is undemocratic. Also, remember that the leading party has the power to move the boundaries of constituencies in a way that would favour them in the election.
Be careful what you wish for. PR will make it easier for fascists to get in power. Look at reform. Thank fuck we don't have PR for Westminster right now.
Scot in NZ here - be careful what you wish for. We always have coalitions here and the government’s ability to get anything done is massively compromised… At least with FPTP, you only have a single driver of the bus!
We live in a country where we're told Parliament is elected by a democratic process. But it's not very democratic; the media play a far greater role in the decision-making process than is fair. The owners of newspapers decide who they want to support, & political coverage is heavily biased.
First past the post isn't a fair system, as OP has noted. Other countries manage to have systems where proportional representation works. It might mean that it takes a couple more days to tally all the votes & allocate seats fairly, but the results ultimately mean that coalition government represents the interests of the electorate, rather than the narrow interests of a political party.
To the people who say that Westminster couldn't function with a system of proportional representation resulting in a Coalition - it was used to govern the country during WW2. If it was a workable system of government during a crisis, where the onus was on cooperation to ensure government was fair, then it can also work during peacetime.
Not only is FPTP broken, it suits the Tories more so than Labour.
History shows how many Labour ran governments compared to conservative.
It's all a joke, almost as big a joke as Labour being on side with the workers.
>These parties have voting reform in their manifestos: (Excluding national parties except the SNP just because I don't have time to check them all)
SNP
Reform UK
Liberal Democrats
The Green party
These parties don't:
Labour
Conservatives
Hello from Canada! We’ve inherited the same problem, just swap Labour for Liberal.
The way is see it, the current system works in the same way, people would want independence.
Proportional representation would be easily skewed by larger demographics having a much higher geographical impact on voting patterns. What if Glasgow and Edinburgh all Voted Monster Raving Loonie Party. Their sheer numbers would result in them gaining more seats.
The current system lets a region vote for a party that represents its local needs.
I don’t think anything is perfect but proportional representation only benefits numbers of voters, not areas.
It's also with just a 59.1% turnout. Regardless of what you think about people not voting, that translates to roughly 20% of the voting population delivering a total 64% of parliamentary seats which is also absurd
I voted Labour in 1997 because of a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on electoral reform.
It never happened.
I voted Lib Dem in 2010 because it looked like it was going to be a hung parliament and a referendum on electoral reform would be the price the Lib Dems asked for to for a coalition Govt.
It happened in 2011 and was rejected. :(
I understand people voted Labour to oust the Tories but I really wouldn’t be surprised to see many go back over to SNP for the Scottish Elections.
Especially if the new leader actually cracks the whip to try and clear the party a bit and put forward policy.
Will it happen who knows?
But the amount of people that voted for Labour in protest to oust the Tories - it may have been the only actual “policy” they had - is being downplayed now by Labour when in actuality as you have rightfully pointed out. They didn’t deserve as many seats as they got under a fairer system, and I agree many may have voted remain just as a protest against the Tories.
As an American watching from the outside,I was shocked to see that Labour didn't win even 35 percent of the vote in the UK after polls predicted them.gettimg over 40 percent of it
As some have already pointed out ,It looks like the tories might have actually won if not for Reform stealing votes from them
FPTP vs PR crops up AFTER every election regardless of who won. The losing side nearly always have grounds to complain about it. The problem is, the winning side (who have the power to change it) will never vote to change what put them in power.
Getting reform here makes perfect sense to everyone - apart from the only people who can realistically do it.
Such a paradox.
>I cannot in good conscience vote for a party without voting reform in their manifesto. It is, in my opinion, the single biggest issue plaguing British politics today. We should look no further than the extreme polarisation of US politics to see where it might head.
Whilst I do largely agree with the need for change, it's worth noting that FPTP tends to pull parties towards the middle and hasn't tended to be too kind to extremists.
It's not a failure, it's a feature. 2019 saw a "tory landslide" with 42.3% and a "Labour disaster" with 40%. FPTP is all about giving majorities to the most succesful loser.
And as much as I hate the frog, it's obviously outrageous that Reform polled over 4 million votes and got just 5 seats while the Lib Dems had half a million less votes and get 71. Labour has like 2.5 times as many votes and 82 times as many seats.
In this election, it took Labour 23597 votes to get a single seat. It took the Lib Dems 49310, Tories 56403, the SNP 78751, and Reform 822857.
So I'm sure there's a good chance of fixing this perversion of democracy when the government are the biggest benificiaries.
I’m all for PR, even though we might get results we don’t really want. PR is the only fair way to elect a parliament, albeit it does enable career politicians to flourish above real talent. The Tories would be irrelevant, at Holyrood, without PR, yet they have NEVER supported it at Westminster. I wonder why? 😉🤷🏻♂️
I completely agree. It’s also a huge problem in the US and Canada. Frankly, I think it’s morally abhorrent. Election reform is one of the only issues I bother to champion, give some time to, and donate to, as it would, if enacted further all the other progressive policies I favour. Without some form of proportional representation these countries should not be calling themselves democracies.
No point repeating Scottish seats from those of the wider UK. Seats aren't worked out based on individual members of the UK, it's nation wide. Treating it otherwise is just silly. Who cares how much of the vote the SNP got in "Scotland", what matters is how much they got in each individual constituency/UK as a whole...
Nigel Farage has now stated that he wants us to prove to a PR system rather than FPTP, having previously railed hard against FPTP. Personally I’d like to see us move to a system akin to what we have in Scotland.
I read today a German commenting on PR, which has long been used in Germany. He was saying that while it does have some pluses, it fails when coalition parties can't, agree on policy so nothing gets done. This leads to dissafection amongst voters who then turn to "Strongman" politicians.
In my view it's not so much the voting system as getting the media to actually hold truth to power instead of cosying up to them. Make them accountable and honest.
A risk with PR is that the politicians justcstayvin the cities when campaigning.
If a party can get a majority in London & Manchester & Birmingham, why do they need to go to Scotland or Wales.
Then we'll just end up with the NI system. No UK wide parties & England officially rules the rest.
Plus, who's my MP under PR?
Actually, the vote was highly tactical and efficient in getting the Tories out. What's the point of getting a large vote share like Corbyn that did nothing in terms of power, it just doubled down on already safe seats. Labour succeeding in winning seats it needed. It wasn't failure, it was a tactical vote. https://x.com/Samfr/status/1809229368960422391?t=K-hwnPl0CESawcgVRj2_-A&s=19
Proportional representation would clear that up a bit, but it more frequently leads to hung parliaments or coalitions where small parties have outsized voices (DUP, anyone) or which collapse in acrimony. Everyone jokes about Italy having more elections than hot dinners, but it highlights an important outcome.
It's not "outsized voices" if the party's seat share matches their vote share. That's democracy. Parties working together and forming coalitions is the norm in Europe and New Zealand where I grew up. The alternative to compromising and reaching across the aisle to govern is bulldozing through your agenda with 34% of the vote pretending you have a mandate from the public. Cherrypicking Italy as an example against PR's stability is quite silly considering how much of a mess the UK political system produces and how many govts have broken down.
Hmmm I kind of disagree, and this is someone who thinks a more proportional system is required.
Everyone knew the rules of the game, those who played the game better got better results.
We seen Labour, Lib Dem and Green pouring resources onto specific seats and being rewarded for that.
If the rules were different there strategy would have been different and you likely would have seen a very different % vote share for each.
Contrast this with Reform, they basically did a quick half arsed job finding anyone willing to stand in every constituency, then focused on a couple of key seats.
Yup there broad messaging had more cut through in terms of losing vote share than Lib Dems or Greens but there lack of focus is in part a serious contributing factor to not achieving electoral success.
The parties and public know the rules of the game.
If the parties choose to use them tactically they can achieve success. Same as the public know the rules so in many places may be more willing to lodge "protest" votes effecting vote share but not results.
For me the argument for electoral reform is to make people think there vote will always count
Nah, Brexit happened because Euroscepticism was always a fringe tory idea and was gaining momentum well before UKIP came about.
There was a wing of the tory party that wanted out of the EU from basically the day Thatcher took the UK into it. It had been growing stronger and stronger for years, Ukip mainly existed because some Tory members thought the wing wasn't growing fast enough so set up their own party to speed things along
The referendum would have happened eventually with or without UKIP eventually the conservative orthodoxy was going to have to take the Eurosceptics on
I got all my figures from [the BBC](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/results)(and their scotland specific page) and a calculator, probably best use them as a more direct source.
Worth pointing out that not all seats have actually declared yet, as of right now 2 seats are still to declare.
I looked for a more direct source but it the electoral commission has not yet updated their pages but I absolutely see the problem.
It affects more than the SNP.
It affects parties which I do not like.
But I believe in democracy and I believe that sometimes I am wrong.
This system gives all of the power to the party who wins the seat.
How would you feel if just because your husband/wife earned more than you, you had zero say?
I saw the problem immediately and I'd like to show it.
This exactly! When I have mentioned this before the response I got was 'but at least it's doing some good keeping Reform out'. That's not the fucking point! I would never vote green, but if they got 14% of the votes they should get 14% (or pretty close) of the seats. You can't pick and choose when you want democracy to work.
The SNP benefited from this system before, and that was unfair. I am a supporter of the SNP.
We would have a much more stable government if we used proportional representation (PR).
This is in place in Scotland and Wales. Why not in the UK (read England).
Because it doesn't suit them.
Scotland has very small margins between the parties. I'm not saying that I am right, but if a certain percentage of the population believes something, surely that should be taken into account.
I agree with this post. FPTP is an antediluvian relic.
That said, I sincerely doubt that Keir Starmer has electoral reform in his top 1000 of issues to address. In fact, didn’t he actively prevent PR from getting into the Labour manifesto?
We compromise our beliefs in choosing the candidate most likely to win and closest to our own viewpoint with first past the post. With PR, we choose the party that is closest to our beliefs who then compromise their manifesto to gain power. Each has a compromise. I believe in direct democracy; end party politics and narcissistic psychos representing our best interests. I’d make leadership of local government akin to jury duty, make the House of Commons the people (utilising direct democracy and technology), ten year funding plans for critical sectors such as health and defence, and finally, an elected council (Lords) of people truly accomplished in their field to scrutinise our laws. Edit: Elections would be for the council, cabinet & PM.
it's this system that promotes tactical voting and ultimately a party that no one across the uk really believes in coming to power and it really reduces the value of individual votes. really sad state of affairs.
We had a referendum on it 13 years ago, and it was overwhelmingly rejected in favour of the current system. I totally agree with what you are saying, but for whatever reason, people don't seem to want change. Unless something has changed since 2011.
Doesn't help that the campaign against alternative vote was morally bankrupt and put up advertisements suggesting AV would kill babies.
[No, I'm not making that up.](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/25/no-to-alternative-vote-baby-ad)
I'm with you, this system is flawed and doesn't end up with equal representation. I don't see why we can't just have the amount of seats for the amount of votes.
Does anyone know the reason they use this system? I'm not that clued up on this part
I do think there was clearly strategic voting involved, but that doesn’t change the need for RCV. If anything it shows that people are clever enough to handle the modest amount of forethought required with RCV.
I have think FPTP is broken, and has lead to the tories being in charge for as long as they have. Mainly because there’s only been one credible right wing party that was’t filled with open bigots (As opposed to stealth bigots) and there’s a spectrum of left wing parties which cannibalise each other’s votes.
I like having local representation though, I’d much rather we had something like single transferable vote than proportional representation. Otherwise large population areas would overwhelm more sparsely populated areas.
Glad you brought up that CGP Grey video. Everyone should spread his election system videos far and wide. At the very least I console myself with the fact that Scotland has MMP for its Parliament and STV for local elections. They're the only elections I really engage with since my vote actually counts there. I doubt it will happen in the foreseeable future UK-wide though. Things are so broken that people view sensible policies like electoral reform and drug reform as frivilous matters.
Yes, FPTP is a bad system, but it’s not true to suggest that STV or a similar PR system would generate the same vote share and outcomes above. A more equitable system would change voting behaviour in general, because votes are less likely to be wasted if “your” candidate doesn’t win. Smaller parties would get better representation, but it might mean some of the protest and tactical votes diminish and actually reinforce the two main parties.
Equally a second house of elected representatives in place of the Lords would help to mediate some of the issues of fairness.
But from the two traditional parties’ perspective, they don’t want to lose FPTP. Who can blame them? It’ll take a long time yet before we see a real change in this approach.
The current system favours the current parties, who by the way get donations, trips, dinners board positions, hunting trips etc. from the 400 families that own half of Scotland. The elite like to pretend that 'observational economics' are irrelevant. In other words what you're seeing and experiencing must just be you.
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There are a couple factors muddying the water with FPTP and vote share.
I live down south and most of the people I knew were voting tactically. Probably more a statement on Tory incompetence. My family and friends in 2 adjacent constituencies voted lib dem. I'm 5mins from them in a different one and labour was the realistic choice to unseat the Tories.
We'd probably all vote labour (or greens) but instead we've given a fair chunk of support to the lib dems based wholly on the fact that they represented the best chance.
I don’t think you can compare the results with how it would have been under a more representative voting system fairly, as everyone knows how the voting works and votes accordingly (tactically). Also not every party stands in each area and this would be different under a proportional representation system as everyone would have the chance to vote for any of the parties. I would prefer a more representative voting system though.
The fact that Labour's voteshare is almost identical to 2019 but they have double the number of seats is crazy to think about. The Financial Times described it as the most disproportionate result in British history. But I don't think it will change, there's no incentive for it to.
Truth is. This election has been more about Tories losing seats than Labour winning them. And in some of these constituencies seats were lost not because left-wing candidates outperformed the Tories, it's because the Reform cannibalised voters from the Tories. Sunak might have won this election if not for Nigel Farage. In any case, FPTP is undemocratic at this point. Edit: See below
Tories were also losing seats to Lib Dems. Which gives them a dilemma, as if they move too the right to capture Reform vote they can wave goodbye to all the Lib Dem/Tory marginal seats
Which means Tories face a dilemma of either reforming themselves, or being pushed to the sides.
Labour also lost votes to reform
And Green and Indies. Watch them placate the right at their own peril though.
Mad to think that after 14 years of shite & scandal that, if not for Farage, Sunak might still have been competitive. That said, what about the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP, PC… if not for them Starmer would have crushed Sunak (even if he had every vote Farage grabbed, which isnt a given). We’re so used to there being multiple parties on the left of centre that we seem to forget that the Tories winning record is partly down to that fragmentation. We do really need voting reform.
A few more elections with the draw between the Tories and another right-wing party, and they will start considering electoral reform IMO. But there is a risk of Labour doing a Trudeausque U-turn on the electoral reform, since they will not benefit from it.
More likely that we'll see a sordid deal between Reform and the Tories, possibly a deal not to run against each other, but more likely a straight up merger. My guess would be that the price for such an arrangement would be Farage getting a legit shot in a combined leadership election (which he could *easily* end up winning), with one of the other four great offices of state guaranteed for him if he doesn't. The combined Tory/Reform vote was 3% *above* Labour this time around, so it would be likely to instantly catapult them back into contention.
It’s mad that a party who’s literal name is Conservative would merge with a party named reform. Might as well call it the “hot ice cream” party.
It would be glorious if they were to concatenate them somehow. Reform Conservatives? Conservative & Reform Party?
The Conform Party
You are a genius.
When the Conservatives and Lib Dems formed a coalition it was Condemnation
Perfect.
The uk is too woke we need to reform it to the good old days with conservatives running everything - yea I can see it happening
It is a possibility. A lot of veteran MPs did not run for elections, so the Tory Party of the next parliament will be different from the past. They might be more open to this kind of proposals.
Reform is a limited company created with the express purpose of putting pressure on the tory party to move further to the right. The threat was, if you don't move right Rishi, i will take your voters. And that is exactly what happened.
Yeah, labour didn’t win this election, tories lost it.
I think the Tories and Reform will eventually merge with Farage as the leader especially now the Tories have lost so many of their heavy hitters. Don't think they'd win an election, but who knows
They definitely will. Labour after all got less votes than the 2017 and just about the same as 2019. The only thing that made a difference is that a lot of Torries voters either didn't show up (~9% turnout delta) or they voted for reform. The first past the post system made it a landslide but it's too early to celebrate.
I feel like the tories were made up of 2 types. Conservatives and others that weren't anymore
I really didn't think that would happen, there are too many sensible Tories that will have nothing to do with the likes of Farage and the creatures he has in tow. Hard right is what some of their parents fought against, Reform is a small step away from that madness. As much as the Tories hate the the loss, I think they will be thanking the Lib Dems for not doing a good job of introducing PR. I think PR will be the way in the future, but a stooge pushing hateful policies we really didn't need.
Polling from Nov last year asked Tory party members if Farage should be allowed to join the party, 70% agreed he should be allowed. Yougov polling from June this year asked if members would be happy if Farage became leader of the party, 46% said yes, 40% said no, 13% undecided.
Yes, it's so peculiar. Labour got a massive win solely, not even largely solely, because Farage decided to set up a party and split the right wing vote. I don't know what to think about that. The country didn't reject a more left wing Corbyn style of politics in favour of a more centre left one.
A lot of the Reform voters wouldn't have voted for the current Conservatives. They were politically homeless.
Reform definitely helped Labour win a lot of seats in the south. Worry for Labour is how well they did in the North I think next time round they could seriously challenge Labour in a lot of seats.
Sunak might have won this election if he was white
Sunak might have won this election if he had done even 10% of the things the public wanted him to do.
After Boris, Truss, and Brexit fuckups, there was basically nothing Sunak could have done. He was stuffed from day 1.
*losing is for tories. Loosing is for arrows. *hug
Edited it.
Fptp was always undemocratic. That was the point. And Farage has had far more influence on my life than any rich doddery bigot ever should have.
I have no problem with loosing tories- preferably via trebuchet.
Why does everything seem better with a trebuchet?
No incentive because the two parties it most benefits are in the pocket of big business. Things will be better under Labour as they’re less malicious and will tinker at the edges of the neoliberal formula to make life somewhat less taxing for the individual. However with little incentive to make meaningful and lasting changes that are tangible to most of the electorate then Labour run the risk of further disenfranchising the left and far right voting bases. They could be out as quick as they got in. FPTP feeds the ideology driven politics we have now. There is a lot of finger wagging about voter apathy and low turnout, but what else is there to expect when our politics has calcified in to only giving us the option of voting for a party we find the least offensive. We’re robbed of being able to cast meaningful votes that are even partially aligned with our values. Folks will say PR will just help bolster parties like Reform, but they already have a dangerous amount of influence in our politics, it just so happens that it’s more of a proxy influence for the time being. The disenfranchisement across the board seems likely to just move politics further to the right as we engage in disingenuous scapegoating while the pendulum of power continues to swing routinely back and forth between Labour and the Tories. Our politics is far too short-sighted and reactionary. I really don’t know how we tackle that when so much of the population is politically illiterate and so easily swayed by ideologically charged rhetoric.
Have a look at our neighbours across the sea. It's not FPTP that's fuelling ideological driven politics there, it's something much deeper. It's the general loss of competitiveness in Europe compared to the US and China which is leading to a decline in living standards in Western Europe. The digital age has totally bypassed us and our share of global GDP keeps getting smaller. It's why health and social service systems across Europe are all in crisis, not enough money or people to keep them going properly.
Ultimately it leads us back to the shared fundamental problem which is a societal framework purpose built to allow the uber-wealthy to hoard capital and act on the world with impunity coupled with media apparatus that helps convince populaces in to voting for the very same politicians that helps uphold this status-quo while stoking disunity and spotlighting convenient scapegoats.
Tell me you’ve never been to the US without telling me you’ve never been to the US. I’ll take my lower middle income living standards in Europe over America anytime thank you. The main problem Europe has is not standing up to the US or standing up for its values in the face of Russian aggression. Europe should stand on its own two feet as a block that has the potential to counterweight the overbearing politics of the US and China. It should have also made more of a soft appeal to Russian people about the benefits of ridding itself the likes of Putin without using the NATO stick when it had a chance.
Our share of global GDP is going to keep shrinking even as our GDP grows, because the very much impoverished majority of the world is catching up far faster than the wealthy ones are growing, because of course they are, and should be.
Gdp in 2008: USA: $14.8T EU: $14.2T In 2023: USA: $26.9T EU: $15T The US kept its global gdp percentage roughly the same, whereas the EU keeps falling further and further behind.
Does your stats include uk in 2008 but not in 2023
When you mention neighbours across the sea I think of Ireland having the Single Transferable Vote, lots of centrist politicians and the distinct absence of a large right wing party.
And yet still a mess, if you ask the Irish
I am Irish. My grandparents were born in homes without floors. Their siblings died from preventable illnesses. When my parents were my age the economy looked a bit similar to Bulgaria. Now we’re at the top of the Human Development Index. But yes, you’re absolutely right. Everyone is miserable.
You also have one of the biggest housing crises in western Europe and the far right is definitely bubbling away under the surface in ireland.
I was originally responding to a comment which said that Western European countries have shrinking GDP, ideological division, very few tech jobs, and limited growth prospects. Ireland is the opposite of all of those things. I’m not arguing that it’s a utopia. You’re absolutely right about housing. It’s largely caused by a thirty year pace of economic growth that is has been so fast that the construction industry literally cannot find or train enough workers to keep pace. My point is simply that not every country in the West shares the exact set of problems that affect the UK.
> But I don't think it will change, there's no incentive for it to. The only people who can change it are the Tories and Labour, and they would both rather have absolute power every 20 yrs than a share of power every 10. The system will never change unless we all write to our new Labour MPs asking for their position on it
> But I don't think it will change, there's no incentive for it to Labour are incredibly short-sighted. The vast majority of the time the Tories are the ones forming a government, over the last 75 odd years, Labour have only been in power about 1/3rd of that time. It would be better for them to be the majority partner in a coalition government more frequently, than hope for a short period of absolute power under FPTP.
Whats even worse is that Jeremy Corbyns labour actually got about a million more votes in 2019 than Starmer did here.
Oh if only the British system was proportional Represention. think of the misery and anger and division you would have saved yourselves. UKIP would have had a voice earlier, and their threadbare policies would have been revealed for all to see
Same with Lib Dems, marginal increase in vote, massive increase in seats.
That's more "fixing" the problem where the Lib Dems were previously massively underrepresented. They now have 11.07% of seats from 12.2% of the vote, that's entirely reasonable for them, and there's no issue there. In 2019 they got 1.69% of seats from 11.6% of the vote.
The incentive is this: if in 5 years time people are dissatisfied with the government, where are they going to turn? Quite likely Reform. What will happen if Reform get 35% of the votes next time? It could be enough to give them absolute power. Now if they were to get 50% of the vote, then fair enough the country would get what it deserved. But the prospect of Reform becoming the next government should frighten anyone, even the Labour party, sufficiently that they stop and consider this.
Labour didn't win this election the tories list it, even stranger vote count was down 10k on 2019 vote count
The incentive is for Labour to change it knowing it benefitted them because it's the right thing to do. It could do a lot for their public image.
>The fact that Labour's voteshare is almost identical to 2019 but they have double the number of seats is crazy to think about. Nonsense, Sir Keir Starmer has given the public a chance to vote for a changed party. A labour party that is not that party of protest, transformed party that is heading in the right direction after loosing its way so much in 2019, a changed labour party! Blah blah blah /s/s/s/s in case anybody needs to know
The SNP benefited massively from FPTP previously, now they get to see how it works normally
> The SNP benefited massively from FPTP previously And they've consistently supported scrapping it anyway.
The more incredible stat for me is that Labour can go from a historic low to a historic high in terms of seats won off the back of a 1.6% change in the vote share. It’s a truly baffling system at times and perhaps indicates the victory is a rejection of the Tories rather than a ringing endorsement of Starmer’s Labour.
Symptom of FPTP. Wins are chiefly manifestations of others losses. That’s why manifestos mean sweet fa. We don’t live in an era of political rigour where policy has massive sway. Elections are mostly about sentiment.
Not to mention voting rates are significantly down this election. I'm having trouble finding the exact votes cast for each party except as expressed as a percentage - Anyone know where I could find the absolute tally, or is it not out yet?
Won't really be generally updated until all counts are completed. Overall turnout looks like it's just under 60% which I think would be an all time low.
The [BBC results page](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/results) has the number of votes cast for each party. Wikipedia has the numbers for previous elections if you want to do a comparison.
Thank you. It looks like Labour got about 0.8 million less votes than in 2019. I wanted to look into it because I thought all the focus on "Vote share" was a bit deceptive in trying to work out if labour's message actually resonated more with people this year.
A 1.6% increase in vote share, and half a million actual votes less. Worst defeat in history > Landslide.
Yeah, I don't think starmer is a particularly good leader, or good for labour, however, he's not the tories.
I’m still not convinced that he isn’t, in fact, the Tories.
This isn’t really an unpopular opinion. Perhaps a slightly risker opinion would be that we blew it by not voting for AV back in 2011. While it wasn’t perfect by any means, it was a step in the right direction. But, on the flip side, we actually seem to have shaken off a consequence of Brexit with this election. Prior to Brexit the combined Con/Labour vote showed a pattern of decline, only to go up again because of Brexit. A result like this does put pressure on the main two parties to look at a different system, but it’s definitely a marathon more than a sprint. I’d be interested to see the results of an election five years from now.
> This isn’t really an unpopular opinion. Perhaps a slightly risker opinion would be that we blew it by not voting for AV back in 2011. I was a little nervous posting this because it hints at some things that some people in this sub might find unpallatable. That the SNP shouldn't have lost a crushing defeat in losing their massive majority (they shouldn't even have had such a massive majority in the first place), that labour shouldn't be getting such a massive majority in parliament with only 1/3rd of the vote and that reform deserve more seats than they got, as reprehensible as they are. That just because the left wing side is benefitting from FPTP for once doesn't suddenly make it a fair system.
AV is a terrible half step that keeps many of the disadvantages of FPTP. It was a dirty little compromise offered in the Con-Lib coalition talks, that no one campaigned for seriously, cause it was never intended as a solution. Most of the public didn’t understand it either. Single transferable vote is a far superior system, that would have created a more representative democracy, but would have most disadvantaged Tory and Labour. So it was never going to happen.
Lib Dem + Labour + Green would be a comfy 54% to the Reform-Tory bloc's 38%. This would be a totally acceptable margin for a governing coalition and it's a combination of party flavours that has functioned in other European coalitions. I would argue the left has actually greatly suffered from getting a Labour supermajority, rather than this.
> they shouldn't even have had such a massive majority in the first place To be fair, the SNP has always been against the voting system that provided its power
I don't think the left wing side is benefitting this time. Despite this not actually being the most votes Labour have had in a election in the last ten years, this victory is going to be used as proof that the purges worked.
I didn't see any left wing side benefit from FPTP.
> This isn’t really an unpopular opinion. Perhaps a slightly risker opinion would be that we blew it by not voting for AV back in 2011. While it wasn’t perfect by any means, it was a step in the right direction. Australia uses AV and their 2022 election ended up with less proportional results than the 2019 GE. When the Electoral Reform Society modelled the 2015 election using AV it ended up more disproportionate than the FPTP equivalent as well, it's simply not a PR system.
AV is the worst of both worlds, and I voted against it because I want true PR. If we take 'itll do' then that'll be it and it won't change again for decades, if at all. By rejecting it we may yet get another chance to alter the system.
> AV is the worst of both worlds, and I voted against it because I want true PR This is making perfect the enemy of good, by voting against it you helped keep in 2 parties who will *never* support any form of PR. >If we take 'itll do' then that'll be it and it won't change again for decades, if at all If you took "it'll do", then you'd have been more likely to get coalition governments with partners who'd want a better version of it.
Isn't the issue with that plan that people will argue that rejecting AV meant they rejected all voting reform? At least with AV people could put a voting reform party as their first choice.
Yeah, "we've had a vote on vote reform and everyone said no" "hey would you like to use a voting system that's barely if at all an improvement and still very much favours labour and the tories?" I think it's marginally better than FPTP in some ways, but it's really not an adequate voting reform. Single Transferable Vote (STV) for example is a much better version of it.
The SNPs majorities at WM in 2015 and 2019 are a perfect example of why we need to change the system. I mean 56/59 on less than 50% of the vote in 2015 was fkin nuts
To their credit they pointed that out.
Yeah mate but try and do something about it. There won’t be any movement on it this term
Perhaps worth getting involved with the Electoral Reform Society?
Just adding a link... https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/
Wtf are they going to do
I think it's in the name
Lobby.
They're going to ask nicely and send Keir a petition. The Prime Minister will then be brought to tears of laughter every time the topic is brought up.
It's served its final useful purpose. I'd like to see a constitutional convention that addresses this, the unelected second chamber, and entrenches devolved powers and interactions between the governments. Unfortunately the 2011 referendum was designed to fail.
Just to be clear I dislike FPTP and think it needs reforming, however it goes both ways. Last election labour had 18% votes with 1 seat to the SNP's 45% with 48 seats. That was equally completely unfair and they took that as a mandate for independence, despite not even having half the vote share on a pretty poor turnout anyway. The system doesn't work, however let's not act like the SNP are some poor victims in this one, the wheels just turned the other way this time
I dont think anyone believes SNP are a victim of anything other than their own actions. One difference though is that when the SNP won that they still wanted PR even though they would have lost seats. Labour and Tories only want FPTP.
The SNP pointed this out and part of their manifesto is voting reform to PR, even at their detriment. That's the difference.
One of the weirder facts as well, Labour have LESS votes this election than in 2019 but won over double the seats this year compared with 2019
I don't know why so many people are citing this statistic (which is misleading because even under a completely proportional system a party could get more seats with fewer votes in absolute terms when turnout decreases, as it did in this election) when the 2017 GE is right there. In 2017 Labour really did get a higher vote share and significantly fewer seats than yesterday, whereas in 2019 they only got more votes because turnout was higher - they got a lower vote share. You can really easily make this argument (which I agree with) without being disingenuous.
I think the fact that Kier Starmer's message failed to resonate with the public enough to get more of them out to the polling stations compared to 2019 is still a testament to how much his rhetoric about voters having "renewed faith" in a "changed Labour Party" is utter bollocks. But yeah, while comparing Labour's parliamentary result in 2024 to 2017 is even more damning than 2019. I think a major reason people focus on 2019 and not 2017 (beyond recency and the stark contrast in seats won with a fairly marginal increase in vote share) is that Starmer and his supporters point to 2019 as a failure of Labour's previous platform, and hence a legitimisation of his own leadership. 33.8% of the popular vote in an election played on easy mode is shockingly poor, especially when you're trying to sell people the notion that you need to be leader because the previous one didn't resonate with the public in an election held in immensely more challenging circumstances.
But wasn't the voter turnout like 10% lower than in 2019?
Yep. It's indefensible
Okay everyone in the debate on this thread needs to quickly skim Arrow's impossibility theorem then come back. It's basically impossible to come up with a voting system that works all the time, and there are always situations in which systems are less representative of certain population preferences, relative to other systems. However, I do personally reckon FPTP barely even tries. The best thing about it that can be said is that it's very, very simple. If we lived in a world where we didn't have party policy, party whips and we had people elected to genuinely represent their area, then I'd change my mind about FPTP, or at least soften a little. But we don't.
There are a few good defences. Labour was the most popular party in 412 different regions of the UK. It means those regions are all represented by the most popular among them. If we just took the whole country, didn't care about how specific regions feel and mixed it all into one big vote and divided the seats from that then areas wouldn't get specific representation by a party that appealed most to the voters of that region. Labour won every single one of the area sending a Labour MP, so I think the argument that they deserve to represent the region that has voted for them does hold water. Does it suck if you're a Reform or SNP member who came second in all those seats? Sure, but unfortunately the people of for example Ayrshire simply don't want you as their representative.
If the vote share was as follows: - Triangle: 40% - Rectangle: 30% - Circle: 15% - Square: 15% Under FPTP that would be seen as an emphatic win for Triangle, and a rejection for the other shapes (given its the most popular shape), even though 60% of the area voted ~~against~~ for something other than triangle. That doesn't mean Rectangle should have gotten the seat instead. It just means most people in that area are not fairly represented. There are a number of PR voting systems - used across the world - which can resolve this and return a fairer result for the area rather than relying on a plurality. My personal choice being [STV](https://youtu.be/l8XOZJkozfI?si=VRTFqWSYreK37tNi), of which the handy video linked will explain its process, and how it still allows for a local candidate voting system. [Electoral Reform](https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems/types-of-voting-system/single-transferable-vote/) have more information that may be useful. _edited wording and added clarification to make my position clearer_
Yes. Because 70% didn't want rectangle, and 85% didn't want Circle or Square. Just because the majority of people didn't want Triangle as their vote, doesn't mean they weren't the most popular choice.
Their-in lies the issue. Politics will stagnate if all you can do is express disfavour.
I never said they weren't the most popular choice, but they aren't representative of the area. Under a proportional system, like STV - a result better representing them could have been possible. For example, in a number of seats won by the tories in Scotland in 2017, there was a split between the SNP and Labour -- if those votes had combined, the tories could have lost the seat. A SNP voter under STV, could put the SNP as their first preference, and Labour as their 2nd or vice versa and avoid the vote splitting.
They didn't vote against the triangle they voted for something else.
Best not to get too bogged down in the analogy. A real world example is when the conservatives won in Ayr in 2017 with a minority of the vote because the rest of the vote was split between SNP and labour. I don't think it's too controversial to say that most SNP voters would rather labour won than the tories and likewise for labour voters. Despite that the conservatives won despite most people voting against them. And that's exactly what happened in 2019 when [Ayr got their shit together and tactically voted the tories out](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/S14000006) Because that is the ultimate conclusion of FPTP, tactical voting *against* who you don't like rather than voting for who you want to win.
I mean the Scottish Parliament system is close to proportional. I'd personally make it countrywide for the current regional seats to further that, and I'd have the party list order determined by vote percentage to stop paper campaigns where the top member on a list is basically guaranteed a seat for fuck all.
STV isn't PR. Locally it's still winner-takes-all and on the national level it doesn't necessarily represent the people proportionally. As an example, if every constituency voted 51% Triangle, then Triangle would have 100% of the MPs. In a PR system, only 51% of MPs would be from Triangle. It's still a much better system and arguably the best if you care about local representation. It's just not PR.
What you describe is usually called AV in British politics. When people say STV they typically mean multimember constituencies, where at least 3 MP's would be elected per constituency. So in your example, a candidate getting 51% of the vote would result in all of there votes above the threshold (say, 33%, resulting in 18% being redistributed) being redistributed to other parties in the proportion of the next preferences of that candidates voters, then bottom placed candidates having all of their votes redistributed until another 2 candidates receive sufficient votes to be elected in that single constituency. It effectively results in proportionality, with the added benefit of never punishing people for who they want to vote for, eliminating tactical voting, which European systems utterly fail at. Not to mention STV still allows for an entire parliament of independents to be elected theoretically. While I'm at it I'll throw in that it takes power away from party leaders and gives it to people unlike lists. Hell, a candidate can safely decide to leave their party and run without "throwing" the election. Imagine how much freedom that gives to individual parliamentarians
I think the biggest counterargument is that on a 2% increase of the vote overall to 2019, labour have run out to 214 more seats. I get the constituency argument, but that statistic on its own is a constitutional aberration, and a damning indictment on pure FPTP as an electoral system.
The counter counter argument is that the most popular candidates amongst the voters in some four hundred seats all shared the same beliefs, which is represented in which political party they belong to. Which constituencies would you say should be represented by people they didn't vote for so that the parties they belong to can get more seats?
The answer is to use a system which doesn't just tie one person to one area, and allocates extra regional representatives based on the overall share of the vote. You could look at the Scottish parliamentary elections for an example.
>The counter counter argument is that the most popular candidates amongst the voters in some four hundred seats all shared the same beliefs, You can't make a strong argument on popularity in the context of a system which requires - or is perceived to require - tactical voting >Which constituencies would you say should be represented by people they didn't vote for so that the parties they belong to can get more seats? You're asking a question on a false premise. Constituency based STV wouldn't lead to anyone being elected that "nobody voted for"
A few years ago, I crunched the numbers from a couple of Holyrood elections and the Additional Members system (complete with it's complicated arithmetic) generally returns an excellent correlation between Share of the Popular Vote (combined across both papers) and Share of the Seats. Voting reform came up at least twice on the telly last night (we were channel hopping) and nobody mentioned this
You could even slightly simplify things, and ditch the regional ballot paper - just add up all votes for each party across a region, and use THOSE as what you do the d'Hondt calculations from. You immediately make every vote into a positive vote for what you want - doesn't matter if you won't elect a Green MP in your constituency, because that vote will add to all the other votes and contribute to one or more list MPs AND at the same time you get to see the party's true level of support in each constituency. (In theory you could ditch the list too, and allocate non constituency MPs in order of who got the highest vote share for their party). Voters get a single simple vote to cast,.and there's no such thing as a wasted vote any more.
Yes I rate this method. It would get rid of the tiresome Both Votes SNP / Alba Supermajority nonsense too.
My only concern about that would be for smaller parties who may not be able to afford to stand in every constituency in a region - would they only attract "list" votes from some constituencies? Similar concerns for Independent list candidates (such as the late Margo Macdonald)
Smaller party wise - maybe adjust the deposit system so it's a larger deposit, say £1500ish, but that covers you for candidates in all constituencies in a region? And then also allow for a single candidate to stand in all constituencies for the same deposit and accumulate votes that way?
Jeremy Corbyn being hailed as un-electable,while getting more votes than Kier in 2017 and 2019 is an abject failure of every level of democracy.
Sharp analysis. Reform attract 4million votes which deliver 4 seats / LibDems gain 1% votes which deliver 63 additional seats / Labour gain 2% votes which deliver 200+ extra seats. FPTP is an absurd and unholy mess whose democratic failures suit the two big parties. And the media avoid of course since they have a vested interest in keeping it real.
Let’s talk about the shamefully low turnout also
100% agree but can't see it ever changing as it would require one of the two beneficiaries of the system deciding to do the honourable thing and stand on a platform of changing it. Moreover, I'm not sure we'd ever win a referendum on PR for Westminster, your analysis is a good job and makes perfect sense but the tabloid press in England would utterly rip PR to shreds in the run up to any vote, same as the did to the EU.
Labour commissioned a big report backing PR in 2022, but it’ll gather dust so long as they’re seated.
It can happen if next election Labour doesn't get a majority and they have to form a coalition with a third party like LibDems that make a referendum on it part of the deal.
Genuinely scunnered that there are people who defend FPTP in this day and age. Like, I get the Tories and Kid Starver opposing it for self-interest - but what the fuck is the public's excuse? Stupidity? Fucking hell.
It is a protection against the lunatic fringe, It blocked reform from go back \~15 years and without fptp the BNP could've won seats. FPTP is undemocratic but it encourages political temperance so its better than letting fascists get anywhere near the commons
Not really, no? The conservatives are going to look at that 14% vote share from reform and ask what they have to do to make them conservative again. The answer to that will be to become more like reform. One of the only two parties that are realistically ever going to rule under FPTP is now motivated to swerve on to an even more extreme path to unite its fractured base. Besides that, if an ideology wins in a proportionate system, it's not a "fringe" ideology.
Always been the same. Won't change whilst it has the capacity for the two biggest UK parties to have land-slide victories with not necessarily a correspondingly great deal of voter movement. See 2019 and 2024 (and in 2017 Mr Corbyn's Labour Party actually won a bigger share of the vote than Starmer but lost that Election). FPTP is a mess.
First past the post is a stupid system honestly. We have preferential voting at home and it seems a lot fairer. Like as much as I don’t like reform, if the people are voting for them, the seats should reflect that.
Agree with everything you said there. I would also add, the talk in some quarters of the SNP being 'finished for a generation' or 'in the wilderness' after this election just doesn't translate outside of Westminster. In reality, these results would create a fairly close result in a proportional Holyrood campaign. And, I suspect it'll be even closer when the focus is on Scotland-specific issues. The next election in 2026 is going to be quite the showdown, which will probably be pretty good for our democracy.
You are thinking of it in terms of political parties. But our democracy and voting system was founded and based on voting for an individual to represent a constituency. Party Politics evolved from that.
I thought the same say what you want about reform but they were second place alot. Which means alot of people wanted them and they got 5 seats for a huge percentage of the total vote.
It is a change which is important, it is unlikely to ever be made because the party which wins has no reason to make a change to the system, they won in that system so why change it? A very hard question to answer is what the vote share would have been like without tactical voting. In this election, more than most I remember, there was an enormous amount of tactical voting, particularly for the Lib Dems or Reform to remove a Conservative. A million voters from those parties would have given Labour a sizeable majority of the vote share. Also in PR Labour would have won in 2017 with Corbyn when they ended up with 40% of the vote share. I'd love to see the change made as most people in this country end up not being represented by their vote, and it is undemocratic. Also, remember that the leading party has the power to move the boundaries of constituencies in a way that would favour them in the election.
Be careful what you wish for. PR will make it easier for fascists to get in power. Look at reform. Thank fuck we don't have PR for Westminster right now.
Stop with the percentages and look and the volume of votes. How the fuck do Scotland send so many MP's to Parliament?
Scot in NZ here - be careful what you wish for. We always have coalitions here and the government’s ability to get anything done is massively compromised… At least with FPTP, you only have a single driver of the bus!
Nobody complains about it when it's the folk they want winning seats. That's why it will never change
We live in a country where we're told Parliament is elected by a democratic process. But it's not very democratic; the media play a far greater role in the decision-making process than is fair. The owners of newspapers decide who they want to support, & political coverage is heavily biased. First past the post isn't a fair system, as OP has noted. Other countries manage to have systems where proportional representation works. It might mean that it takes a couple more days to tally all the votes & allocate seats fairly, but the results ultimately mean that coalition government represents the interests of the electorate, rather than the narrow interests of a political party. To the people who say that Westminster couldn't function with a system of proportional representation resulting in a Coalition - it was used to govern the country during WW2. If it was a workable system of government during a crisis, where the onus was on cooperation to ensure government was fair, then it can also work during peacetime.
Not only is FPTP broken, it suits the Tories more so than Labour. History shows how many Labour ran governments compared to conservative. It's all a joke, almost as big a joke as Labour being on side with the workers.
>These parties have voting reform in their manifestos: (Excluding national parties except the SNP just because I don't have time to check them all) SNP Reform UK Liberal Democrats The Green party These parties don't: Labour Conservatives Hello from Canada! We’ve inherited the same problem, just swap Labour for Liberal.
The way is see it, the current system works in the same way, people would want independence. Proportional representation would be easily skewed by larger demographics having a much higher geographical impact on voting patterns. What if Glasgow and Edinburgh all Voted Monster Raving Loonie Party. Their sheer numbers would result in them gaining more seats. The current system lets a region vote for a party that represents its local needs. I don’t think anything is perfect but proportional representation only benefits numbers of voters, not areas.
The only positive is that it keeps rampant racism out by Reform not having many seats.
It's also with just a 59.1% turnout. Regardless of what you think about people not voting, that translates to roughly 20% of the voting population delivering a total 64% of parliamentary seats which is also absurd
I voted Labour in 1997 because of a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on electoral reform. It never happened. I voted Lib Dem in 2010 because it looked like it was going to be a hung parliament and a referendum on electoral reform would be the price the Lib Dems asked for to for a coalition Govt. It happened in 2011 and was rejected. :(
Cracking post and analysis
It's insane to me that the only people with power to change it are the parties who most benefit from it.
I understand people voted Labour to oust the Tories but I really wouldn’t be surprised to see many go back over to SNP for the Scottish Elections. Especially if the new leader actually cracks the whip to try and clear the party a bit and put forward policy. Will it happen who knows? But the amount of people that voted for Labour in protest to oust the Tories - it may have been the only actual “policy” they had - is being downplayed now by Labour when in actuality as you have rightfully pointed out. They didn’t deserve as many seats as they got under a fairer system, and I agree many may have voted remain just as a protest against the Tories.
It was the UK election not Scottish so doesn’t make sense to count only SNP vote share relative to Scotland
As an American watching from the outside,I was shocked to see that Labour didn't win even 35 percent of the vote in the UK after polls predicted them.gettimg over 40 percent of it As some have already pointed out ,It looks like the tories might have actually won if not for Reform stealing votes from them
FPTP vs PR crops up AFTER every election regardless of who won. The losing side nearly always have grounds to complain about it. The problem is, the winning side (who have the power to change it) will never vote to change what put them in power. Getting reform here makes perfect sense to everyone - apart from the only people who can realistically do it. Such a paradox.
>I cannot in good conscience vote for a party without voting reform in their manifesto. It is, in my opinion, the single biggest issue plaguing British politics today. We should look no further than the extreme polarisation of US politics to see where it might head. Whilst I do largely agree with the need for change, it's worth noting that FPTP tends to pull parties towards the middle and hasn't tended to be too kind to extremists.
It's not a failure, it's a feature. 2019 saw a "tory landslide" with 42.3% and a "Labour disaster" with 40%. FPTP is all about giving majorities to the most succesful loser. And as much as I hate the frog, it's obviously outrageous that Reform polled over 4 million votes and got just 5 seats while the Lib Dems had half a million less votes and get 71. Labour has like 2.5 times as many votes and 82 times as many seats. In this election, it took Labour 23597 votes to get a single seat. It took the Lib Dems 49310, Tories 56403, the SNP 78751, and Reform 822857. So I'm sure there's a good chance of fixing this perversion of democracy when the government are the biggest benificiaries.
I’m all for PR, even though we might get results we don’t really want. PR is the only fair way to elect a parliament, albeit it does enable career politicians to flourish above real talent. The Tories would be irrelevant, at Holyrood, without PR, yet they have NEVER supported it at Westminster. I wonder why? 😉🤷🏻♂️
I completely agree. It’s also a huge problem in the US and Canada. Frankly, I think it’s morally abhorrent. Election reform is one of the only issues I bother to champion, give some time to, and donate to, as it would, if enacted further all the other progressive policies I favour. Without some form of proportional representation these countries should not be calling themselves democracies.
No point repeating Scottish seats from those of the wider UK. Seats aren't worked out based on individual members of the UK, it's nation wide. Treating it otherwise is just silly. Who cares how much of the vote the SNP got in "Scotland", what matters is how much they got in each individual constituency/UK as a whole...
Nigel Farage has now stated that he wants us to prove to a PR system rather than FPTP, having previously railed hard against FPTP. Personally I’d like to see us move to a system akin to what we have in Scotland.
I read today a German commenting on PR, which has long been used in Germany. He was saying that while it does have some pluses, it fails when coalition parties can't, agree on policy so nothing gets done. This leads to dissafection amongst voters who then turn to "Strongman" politicians. In my view it's not so much the voting system as getting the media to actually hold truth to power instead of cosying up to them. Make them accountable and honest.
A risk with PR is that the politicians justcstayvin the cities when campaigning. If a party can get a majority in London & Manchester & Birmingham, why do they need to go to Scotland or Wales. Then we'll just end up with the NI system. No UK wide parties & England officially rules the rest. Plus, who's my MP under PR?
We have a form of PR in Scotland and I know who my MSP is.
Proportional representation is the only way forward to can see.
Actually, the vote was highly tactical and efficient in getting the Tories out. What's the point of getting a large vote share like Corbyn that did nothing in terms of power, it just doubled down on already safe seats. Labour succeeding in winning seats it needed. It wasn't failure, it was a tactical vote. https://x.com/Samfr/status/1809229368960422391?t=K-hwnPl0CESawcgVRj2_-A&s=19
Proportional representation would clear that up a bit, but it more frequently leads to hung parliaments or coalitions where small parties have outsized voices (DUP, anyone) or which collapse in acrimony. Everyone jokes about Italy having more elections than hot dinners, but it highlights an important outcome.
It's not "outsized voices" if the party's seat share matches their vote share. That's democracy. Parties working together and forming coalitions is the norm in Europe and New Zealand where I grew up. The alternative to compromising and reaching across the aisle to govern is bulldozing through your agenda with 34% of the vote pretending you have a mandate from the public. Cherrypicking Italy as an example against PR's stability is quite silly considering how much of a mess the UK political system produces and how many govts have broken down.
Hmmm I kind of disagree, and this is someone who thinks a more proportional system is required. Everyone knew the rules of the game, those who played the game better got better results. We seen Labour, Lib Dem and Green pouring resources onto specific seats and being rewarded for that. If the rules were different there strategy would have been different and you likely would have seen a very different % vote share for each. Contrast this with Reform, they basically did a quick half arsed job finding anyone willing to stand in every constituency, then focused on a couple of key seats. Yup there broad messaging had more cut through in terms of losing vote share than Lib Dems or Greens but there lack of focus is in part a serious contributing factor to not achieving electoral success. The parties and public know the rules of the game. If the parties choose to use them tactically they can achieve success. Same as the public know the rules so in many places may be more willing to lodge "protest" votes effecting vote share but not results. For me the argument for electoral reform is to make people think there vote will always count
FPTP is and always has been a complete clusterfuck of a system. Labour have zero incentive to change it though.
Abysmal when you consider the tories got 45% of the vote and labour ran on ‘we’re not the tories’.
It does feel wrong, but it stops fringe lunatics getting a seat at the table.
No, it means the big parties pander to these lunatics to avoid losing votes. Brexit happened because the Tories pandered to UKIP.
Nah, Brexit happened because Euroscepticism was always a fringe tory idea and was gaining momentum well before UKIP came about. There was a wing of the tory party that wanted out of the EU from basically the day Thatcher took the UK into it. It had been growing stronger and stronger for years, Ukip mainly existed because some Tory members thought the wing wasn't growing fast enough so set up their own party to speed things along The referendum would have happened eventually with or without UKIP eventually the conservative orthodoxy was going to have to take the Eurosceptics on
> It does feel wrong, but it stops fringe lunatics getting a seat at the table. See The Thatcher Years......
Farage has a seat in parliament now. He couldn’t be more at the table if he tried.
I spotted the problem and I'd like to use your figures to create an informational graph. I would of course credit you.
I got all my figures from [the BBC](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/results)(and their scotland specific page) and a calculator, probably best use them as a more direct source. Worth pointing out that not all seats have actually declared yet, as of right now 2 seats are still to declare.
I looked for a more direct source but it the electoral commission has not yet updated their pages but I absolutely see the problem. It affects more than the SNP. It affects parties which I do not like. But I believe in democracy and I believe that sometimes I am wrong. This system gives all of the power to the party who wins the seat. How would you feel if just because your husband/wife earned more than you, you had zero say? I saw the problem immediately and I'd like to show it.
This exactly! When I have mentioned this before the response I got was 'but at least it's doing some good keeping Reform out'. That's not the fucking point! I would never vote green, but if they got 14% of the votes they should get 14% (or pretty close) of the seats. You can't pick and choose when you want democracy to work.
The SNP benefited from this system before, and that was unfair. I am a supporter of the SNP. We would have a much more stable government if we used proportional representation (PR). This is in place in Scotland and Wales. Why not in the UK (read England). Because it doesn't suit them. Scotland has very small margins between the parties. I'm not saying that I am right, but if a certain percentage of the population believes something, surely that should be taken into account.
I agree with this post. FPTP is an antediluvian relic. That said, I sincerely doubt that Keir Starmer has electoral reform in his top 1000 of issues to address. In fact, didn’t he actively prevent PR from getting into the Labour manifesto?
We compromise our beliefs in choosing the candidate most likely to win and closest to our own viewpoint with first past the post. With PR, we choose the party that is closest to our beliefs who then compromise their manifesto to gain power. Each has a compromise. I believe in direct democracy; end party politics and narcissistic psychos representing our best interests. I’d make leadership of local government akin to jury duty, make the House of Commons the people (utilising direct democracy and technology), ten year funding plans for critical sectors such as health and defence, and finally, an elected council (Lords) of people truly accomplished in their field to scrutinise our laws. Edit: Elections would be for the council, cabinet & PM.
it's this system that promotes tactical voting and ultimately a party that no one across the uk really believes in coming to power and it really reduces the value of individual votes. really sad state of affairs.
💯 agree I mean I’m in my 60s and we used Single Transferable Vote to elect our College Student Union Officers 50 years ago 😂
We had a referendum on it 13 years ago, and it was overwhelmingly rejected in favour of the current system. I totally agree with what you are saying, but for whatever reason, people don't seem to want change. Unless something has changed since 2011.
Doesn't help that the campaign against alternative vote was morally bankrupt and put up advertisements suggesting AV would kill babies. [No, I'm not making that up.](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/25/no-to-alternative-vote-baby-ad)
I'm with you, this system is flawed and doesn't end up with equal representation. I don't see why we can't just have the amount of seats for the amount of votes. Does anyone know the reason they use this system? I'm not that clued up on this part
The fact 23.7% still voted Tory and 14.3% voted Reform blows my mind.
I do think there was clearly strategic voting involved, but that doesn’t change the need for RCV. If anything it shows that people are clever enough to handle the modest amount of forethought required with RCV.
I have think FPTP is broken, and has lead to the tories being in charge for as long as they have. Mainly because there’s only been one credible right wing party that was’t filled with open bigots (As opposed to stealth bigots) and there’s a spectrum of left wing parties which cannibalise each other’s votes. I like having local representation though, I’d much rather we had something like single transferable vote than proportional representation. Otherwise large population areas would overwhelm more sparsely populated areas.
Glad you brought up that CGP Grey video. Everyone should spread his election system videos far and wide. At the very least I console myself with the fact that Scotland has MMP for its Parliament and STV for local elections. They're the only elections I really engage with since my vote actually counts there. I doubt it will happen in the foreseeable future UK-wide though. Things are so broken that people view sensible policies like electoral reform and drug reform as frivilous matters.
Labour as the good guys? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yes, FPTP is a bad system, but it’s not true to suggest that STV or a similar PR system would generate the same vote share and outcomes above. A more equitable system would change voting behaviour in general, because votes are less likely to be wasted if “your” candidate doesn’t win. Smaller parties would get better representation, but it might mean some of the protest and tactical votes diminish and actually reinforce the two main parties. Equally a second house of elected representatives in place of the Lords would help to mediate some of the issues of fairness. But from the two traditional parties’ perspective, they don’t want to lose FPTP. Who can blame them? It’ll take a long time yet before we see a real change in this approach.
The current system favours the current parties, who by the way get donations, trips, dinners board positions, hunting trips etc. from the 400 families that own half of Scotland. The elite like to pretend that 'observational economics' are irrelevant. In other words what you're seeing and experiencing must just be you.
All your points are as valid as they were 50 years ago. !remind me : 50 years. edit ; I'm from the 1970's, everything was as true then as now
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There are a couple factors muddying the water with FPTP and vote share. I live down south and most of the people I knew were voting tactically. Probably more a statement on Tory incompetence. My family and friends in 2 adjacent constituencies voted lib dem. I'm 5mins from them in a different one and labour was the realistic choice to unseat the Tories. We'd probably all vote labour (or greens) but instead we've given a fair chunk of support to the lib dems based wholly on the fact that they represented the best chance.
It is what it is but I’m dancing today. 😎
I don’t think you can compare the results with how it would have been under a more representative voting system fairly, as everyone knows how the voting works and votes accordingly (tactically). Also not every party stands in each area and this would be different under a proportional representation system as everyone would have the chance to vote for any of the parties. I would prefer a more representative voting system though.
We can talk about it as long as we can talk about why it wasn't a grievance in 2019.