Brace for the most distorted election result in British history

14 comments

1. I’m sure that, once Tel Aviv Keith is installed in Number 10 with a huge majority, he’ll take steps to rectify this undemocratic imbalance, and will certainly not stuff the Lords full of cronies or seek to ride roughshod over democratic norms and stifle dissent to keep himself in power in the face of the inevitable backlash

2. FPTP really needs to die.

   Turnout is going to be terrible too.

3. I think this might be the first time I’ve seen FPTP being advocated to support more right wing parties, and claiming FPTP is unfair on them…

   …might be…

4. I donnow tho. Looking at 97 polls i see labour ahead by ~20 pts consistently until a week before election date and it ended up being 12.5 and with today’s boundaries labour is at a massive disadvantage

5. FT were suspiciously quiet on the unfairness of FPTP when it was benefitting the Conservative Party. Weird isn’t it?

   Having said that, FPTP really needs to go. It’s insane that 41% of the national vote share should equate to 70% of seats in parliament while 20% of national vote can equate to 10% of seats in parliament.

   Exactly what form PR should be is of course a whole other topic, but a system called DPR (Direct Party and Representative Voting) looks like a good (or less bad) option.

   https://www.dprvoting.org/Short_description.htm

   The website explains it better than I can, but in these examples, Labour gets 70% of seats; 455, but on national share (41%) they should only get 266. Similarly Con gets 10% of seats; 65, but on national share they should get 130.

   LAB: Divide national share by seat share to get an adjustment figure (41/70=0.586), so each Labour MPs vote is only worth 0.586 of a vote. 0.5857 x 455 (actual seats) is 266 votes – the number of votes proportional to their national share.

   CON: Divide national share by seat share to get an adjustment figure (20/10=2.0), so each Con MPs vote is now worth 2.0 votes. 2 x 65 (actual seats) is 130 votes – again, the number of votes proportional to their national share.

   As a result, everyone gets the local MP based on simple majority (as with FPTP),but the voting “power” of all MPs is adjusted to reflect national share which evens the field and (in theory) makes everyone adopt less extreme views in order to appear to the broadest audience, but any extreme right or left view is given the representation those parties achieved nationally, so *everyone’s* vote actually matters, unlike FPTP where the views of a majority of voters are simply discarded if their MP doesn’t make the simple majority, something that only makes sense if there are only 2 parties.

6. > This pattern holds overseas, with further analysis by Difford finding that parties, leaders and ministers all stay in power longer under proportional representation voting systems than FPTP, allowing governments to implement precisely the kind of long-term plans Britain needs to get out of its slump.

   This.

7. “And the right will suffer now for the first time”

   Oh, now they want something, its an urgent issue

8. Opinion polls don’t factor in the 40% of young people who have said they’re not going to vote. I don’t think it’s going to be as big of a swing as predicted. 

9. There’s a false dichotomy at play the tories are happy to push here, the idea that voting makes no difference.

   But its ridiculous. Not voting is basically saying that you don’t care how bad the current government is. Its a literal endorsement of the last 14 years.

   Now, when it comes to voting for smaller parties, it’s tough. I’ll be backing labour to try and punish the tories, but I would much prefer a high turnout and votes going elsewhere compared to people just refusing to engage.

10. Do we really want disfunctional youth to join our armed forces ?Im sure those who have to train them dont .Unleashing an army caoable of destroying our society and democracy as dont believe in it Those who are racists terrifying what they can do to the innocents fleeing terror and giving their talents and skills to our societyThe young who want a life of peace and work .Get off your arses and vote for your future

11. We need to vote in the Lib Dem’s to see if there’s a different shade of jobby that’s more palatable than these Tory and Labour fucking losers.

12. Even though it is a first past the post system, a difference can be made by voting for a fringe party. Other parties will pay attention and their policies will be framed with those voters in mind. It is always worth voting with principles. If we do then it does frame the direction of the country a little more than if people are resigned to either vote Labour/ Conservative or not at all.

13. Hoping this will finally drive some push toward proportional representation. I stand by the argument that if UKIP got the seats they deserved in 2015 (about 5-10%), we would never have had a referendum on EU membership. Having political extremists on either end of the spectrum occupying a partial seating is a far smaller price to pay than for disproportionately powerful parties appealing to the “sensibilities” of that niche voter base.

14. The worry is lots of labour voters turning up without photo id