UK General Election 2015 | Conservatives win with an overall majority

[rcoobc]

The Liberal Democrats are contemplating a name change i hear, ironic seeing as Gordon Brown often used to abbreviate the party's name as a means of insult. The Orange Bookers will be taking a back seat for a little while you'd suspect.

Weird, I was wondering if they would do this. But the only names I could think of that they should change to would be either; "The Liberal Party" or "The Democratic Liberals" or possible "Lib Dems FC".

But a change back to the Liberal Party would be a return to their roots.

 

[Cheesy]

Weird, I was wondering if they would do this. But the only names I could think of they should change to would be either "The Liberal Party" or "The Democratic Liberals" or possible "Lib Dems FC".

But a change back to the Liberal Party would be a return to their roots.

They could call themselves, "The Lemoncrats", and make their party logo a lemon.

 

[rcoobc]

Nope that's why the whole system is mental.

SNP 1,454,436 votes got 56 seats
UKIP 3,881,099 votes and only got 1 seat



I know that is a bit simplistic because of how spread the UKIP votes were across the country but being able to get 56 seats with so few votes is ridiculous.

I tried to work out what what have happened if the three closest constituencies to me (Ashford, Maidstone and Faversham) had been done under the STV System.

This is what I estimated after round 1:

Note I forgot Labour's Allen Simpson who would have had around 3.5% of the vote.

I worked this out very basically, so the reality would likely have been wildly different. There are about 100 different things here that I havent taken into account, and probably a few that I did take into account that I shouldn't have. I also assumed that the Green party and UKIP put forward only 1 candidate to try to increase their chances of having any MPs.

The threshold here would be 33% of the vote (3 MPs to elect). After the first few rounds where low ranking Liberal, Labour and the Green candidate were eliminated, you'd be left with the 3 Conservatives Candidates, a UKIP candidate, a Lib Dem Candidate and a Labour Candidate.

My summary:

On a good day, when running a strong Conservative 1-2-3 campaign the Tories could take all three seats.
Or if UKIP had a strong candidate and a strong campaign, they could have won a seat.
Or if Labour had a strong candidate and a strong campaign, the could have won a seat (taking votes from the Lib Dems and the Greens)
Or if the Lib Dems had a strong candidate and a strong campaign they could have won a seat (taking votes from Labour and the Greens)

But anyway, UKIP would definitely have won a lot more seats if we had the Single Transferable Vote system even when "only" combining groups of around 3 constituencies.

 

[Cheesy]

How is it exactly that STV works again? I know roughly...but I'm not 100% sure of the mechanics of it.

 

[sun_tzu]

How is it exactly that STV works again? I know roughly...but I'm not 100% sure of the mechanics of it.

You rank candidates in order of preference
At the end of the counting the candidate with the fewest votes are eliminated and their votes transfered to the next selection still in the race
The process is repeated till one candidate has 50%+ of the votes and they are the winner

 

[Kag]

Strangely I'd assume the exact opposite - almost all of the people I've spoken to who've recently joined want to see a move away from the centre, not towards it. Ed Miliband's Labour were by no means a centre-left option, despite what Murdoch's papers and the Daily Mail would have people believe. Leaving aside their 'LOOK, WE'RE NOT THE TORIES' policies (mansion tax, income tax etc.) their overall plan was basically 'We'll do what they're doing, except we'll do it a little slower' - hardly a hard-hitting leftist alternative. If Labour wants Scotland back, and to win back some of the disillusioned working class vote that went to UKIP, it has to address the reason those voters don't vote Labour anymore, which is that they've shifted to the right and embraced policies that no longer benefit their traditional support.

It's conceivable that they might move to the centre/centre-right under someone like Umunna and get in from snatching from Tory votes but frankly, what's the point of the Labour Party being in office if they're just going to be Tories in red ties? (That may sound dramatic, but it's the reason Scotland turned against them, and the reason there are a lot of working class folks voting UKIP or not voting at all)

I envisage Scotland will push for another referendum in the near-to-mid future, which I suspect will lead to independence this time round. Campaigning for votes in seats that may no longer exist would be a problem. Plus, Labour didn't lose the election because of Scotland; they more or less ostracised the majority of the English electorate. Middle class families with moderately good jobs and income didn't want what they were offering. Small business owners were scared off. A further lurch to the left would only serve to maintain the votes that already exist, in my opinion.

I don't think Labour need to pose as Conservatives, albeit I agree that this Labour government will only have served to commit to very similar spending plans, but slower, like you say. The problem for the socialist element of the party is that the wider electorate no longer cares for that brand of politics, and hasn't voted for it in decades. If you know people that think differently then fair enough, albeit I think living in Durham may have something to do with that.

 

[rcoobc]

How is it exactly that STV works again? I know roughly...but I'm not 100% sure of the mechanics of it.

The best two videos I have found are these:



...



(Don't watch CGPGrey's main video on it as I don't think it is that good).

Explaining how it works can be confusing, but what you get from it:

1) A fairly proportional system ...(not a fair proportional system, a fairly proportional system. The greens may still struggle to get MPs unless they improve)
2) MPs that are directly elected in each constituency... (like we have now)
3) No "Party Lists"... (like we have now. I think Party Lists enable corruption, see Arruda's thread on the Portuguese Politics System)
4) Multiple MPs per constituency... (I think this is better than we have now. At the moment if your MP sucks (or you dont like them), you have no alternative if you have a problem).

But this is my explanation on how it works.

Explanation

Spoiler

Instead of there being 650 constituencies electing 1 MP, you combine neighbouring constituencies creating 200 odd super-constituencies electing 3, 4 or 5 MPs. (some islands would still elect 1 MP).

In each super-constituency, the main parties would probably put forward as many candidates as there are seats (3, 4 or 5) to try and win them all. The smaller parties could also put forward 3, 4 or 5 candidates, but may only put forward 1.

To be elected in any super-constituency the candidate must get past a "threshold;" each candidate needs a number of votes to be elected (either 33%, 25% or 20% depending on whether there are 3, 4 or 5 seats to be won).

Voters receive their ballot paper, but instead of writing an X next to their preferred candidate, they rank their favourite candidates in order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on. They can, if they wish, only rank their top candidate (1) or they can rank only their top three (1, 2, 3) etc. This part is the same as the Alternative Vote that the UK rejected a few years back. It's important to note here that each voter only gets a single vote (it wont ever count for multiple people in the end) and that vote will never be used to elect a lesser preference (rank 2) unless their greater preference (rank 1) can no longer be elected. However, that single vote is transferable between candidates if the better choice has been "knocked out" or already elected.

This is where it gets complicated.

After the votes have been cast, any candidate that has got more than the threshold (33, 35 or 20%) is straight away declared a winner. If they had more votes than they needed to pass the threshold (say, they won 50% of the vote and only needed 33%), their surplus votes (17% in our case) would be selected randomly and distributed to those voters second choices.

Next the remaining candidates are checked to see if anyone else has now won, and if not, the candidate with the fewest votes is knocked out and those voters next choice (second/third/forth choice etc) are looked at.

This is repeated until all the 3/4/5 MPs are elected.



It's confusing in theory, but it works well in practice. You can be all done by normal counting methods in the same way the votes are counted now.

It's most useful I think to look at what would have happened in the real world:

In the South where the Conservatives basically painted the map Blue, instead of a Tory whitewash there would have been Labour, UKIP and Lib Dem wins.

In Scotland where the SNP won 95% of the seats, there would have been Tory, Labour and Lib Dem wins.

 

[Cheesy]

Interesting. Seems to be one of the best systems available, certainly.

 

[rcoobc]

I think it's also important to note two things about the STV system; every single vote matters (far, far more than it does now anyway), and there would be no safe seats anywhere.

Well, kinda. The conservatives would certainly be guaranteed at least 1 MP in the combined Ashford-Maidstone-Faversham superconstituency. There, they could hide their David Camerons or Boris Johnsons or George Osbournes and be fairly confident that they wouldn't have a shock defeat. But to win a majority, they would need to be taking 2 or 3 seats in the Ashford-Maidstone-Faversham superconstituency, and they would have to campaign very very hard to get the votes.

Secondly every single vote counts. There are no wasted votes in that you can let your liberal side run free and vote green (1st), or if you are feeling wacky you can even vote for the monster raving loony party and even if your first candidate loses, your vote can still help elect someone. Indeed, the idea of STV is that 66% or 70% or 75% of people's votes can help elect one of their candidates. But its more than that. Even with 30,000 votes cast it can be just a few hundred votes difference to decide whether Labours top candidate or the UKIP candidate or the Conservatives bottom candidate is evicted in the South East. Or in Scotland there maybe a three-way tussle between the Conservatives top candidate and Labours second-best candidate and the SNPs third-best candidate for the final spot. Just a few hundred votes would be there difference between the SNP "winning" or the Conservatives or Labour winning in the final seats.

Ever single (super) consistency would need to be heavily fought by every party. The Labour bandwagon would come to Kent. The Tory bandwagon would head up to Scotland and Sunderland. The Lib Dems would spout up like weeds all over the place. More people would have an MP they can possibly relate to (be it Labour, Tory, UKIP, Green, Lib Dem or SNP).

And no one would really know who would win anywhere

 

[Eboue]

What are the arguments against FPTP @rcoobc?

 

[jeff_goldblum]

I envisage Scotland will push for another referendum in the near-to-mid future, which I suspect will lead to independence this time round. Campaigning for votes in seats that may no longer exist would be a problem. Plus, Labour didn't lose the election because of Scotland; they more or less ostracised the majority of the English electorate. Middle class families with moderately good jobs and income didn't want what they were offering. Small business owners were scared off. A further lurch to the left would only serve to maintain the votes that already exist, in my opinion.

I don't think Labour need to pose as Conservatives, albeit I agree that this Labour government will only have served to commit to very similar spending plans, but slower, like you say. The problem for the socialist element of the party is that the wider electorate no longer cares for that brand of politics, and hasn't voted for it in decades. If you know people that think differently then fair enough, albeit I think living in Durham may have something to do with that.

I don't think Scotland will get another referendum in the next 5 years, Cameron's line after the last one was that 'the question had been answered for a generation'. I think in the eventuality that it did happen Labour be the favourites for the next election by a mile - the backlash against the Tories would be enormous and basically every senior Tory politician (certainly those in the cabinet) would have a black mark against their name.

Secondly, in terms of the economy Labour didn't really offer anything different to the Tories so it's strange to say that they 'ostracised' middle class families. I think the Labour loss in that demographic, and in the Tory-Labour marginals, was more due to the media crucifying them throughout the campaign - notably with their attacks on Miliband's image, constantly bringing up the 'Labour caused the recession' myth and fear-mongering about the SNP running the show (Alex Salmond takes a lot of the blame for that by blustering about how he'd write Labour's budget if they went into a coalition, which was like a red rag to a bull). In the end there were two parties with very similar plans and the Tories simply won the propaganda war.

On your final paragraph, to be fair it's been ~25 years since the wider electorate has been offered that brand of politics. The votes for the left are still there, just Labour aren't getting all of them, either because the Greens/SNP have picked them up or because a lot of traditionally Labour voters have been taken in by UKIP as Labour has left them behind. On the face of it mentioning UKIP might seem strange, but you have to remember that for the bulk of their voters they're effectively a single issue party on immigration. As the economy's been bad and no party has really been courting the working class/lower-middle class vote for a couple of decades now, Farage's scapegoating and 'quick fix' attitude to unemployment/the economy has become quite attractive to a lot of people, especially amongst poorer communities for whom the economy has been bad for a lot longer than there's been a recession going on.

 

[Cheesy]

What are the arguments against FPTP @rcoobc?

Basically, whoever wins a particularly constituency wins that particular seat. But the problem with this is that you end up with parties who have an even vote distribution across the country (say 10-15%), and don't get incredibly high votes in certain areas not getting a lot of seats, because they struggle to win that particular constituency vote. For example, UKIP were the second most voted party in more than 100 constituencies, but only managed to actually win one seat.

It also encourages tactical voting. If you support the Greens, there's an almost impossible chance of them getting elected in most seats, because again they don't get enough of the vote to win that seat, and will be nowhere near in a lot of places. So instead, people will vote Labour to keep out the Tories, since Labour are generally the less terrible option from the perspective of a Green.

The vote of anyone for a party that isn't likely to win a seat is essentially wasted. In my seat, it was obviously going to be a two-horse race between the SNP and Labour. As a result, if you were voting Tory/Lib Dem/UKIP, there wasn't any point in showing up: your vote would have no overall effect. Of course, some will still vote anyway, but it's all a bit in vain, and in these safe seats, parties without a chance won't put too much effort into winning them when they know that they have no chance.

Overall, it's a system which benefits big parties who can win constituencies with 30-40% of the vote, leaving them sometimes with 50%+ of the seats if they get a majority. Parties with 20% or lower will struggle to win seats because they don't win constituencies, unless their vote is a lot more regional like the SNP, who didn't even have 5% of the national vote, but swept up in Scotland because they had 50% of the vote here.

 

[Cheesy]

I think it's also important to note two things about the STV system; every single vote matters (far, far more than it does now anyway), and there would be no safe seats anywhere.

Well, kinda. The conservatives would certainly be guaranteed at least 1 MP in the combined Ashford-Maidstone-Faversham superconstituency. There, they could hide their David Camerons or Boris Johnsons or George Osbournes and be fairly confident that they wouldn't have a shock defeat. But to win a majority, they would need to be taking 2 or 3 seats in the Ashford-Maidstone-Faversham superconstituency, and they would have to campaign very very hard to get the votes.

Secondly every single vote counts. There are no wasted votes in that you can let your liberal side run free and vote green (1st), or if you are feeling wacky you can even vote for the monster raving loony party and even if your first candidate loses, your vote can still help elect someone. Indeed, the idea of STV is that 66% or 70% or 75% of people's votes can help elect one of their candidates. But its more than that. Even with 30,000 votes cast it can be just a few hundred votes difference to decide whether Labours top candidate or the UKIP candidate or the Conservatives bottom candidate is evicted in the South East. Or in Scotland there maybe a three-way tussle between the Conservatives top candidate and Labours second-best candidate and the SNPs third-best candidate for the final spot. Just a few hundred votes would be there difference between the SNP "winning" or the Conservatives or Labour winning in the final seats.

Ever single (super) consistency would need to be heavily fought by every party. The Labour bandwagon would come to Kent. The Tory bandwagon would head up to Scotland and Sunderland. The Lib Dems would spout up like weeds all over the place. More people would have an MP they can possibly relate to (be it Labour, Tory, UKIP, Green, Lib Dem or SNP).

And no one would really know who would win anywhere

Yeah, that explanation definitely makes me think it's the best system to use. AMS is quite good in Scotland because it's fairly proportional and you do have an MP solely from your constituency, but as you've said, party lists can be a bad thing, and you still have wasted votes in constituencies, even if the regional lists are better.

STV is used for local council elections in Scotland, and is probably something that England should experiment with locally first, then hopefully apply it at national level in the UK.

 

[Eboue]

Basically, whoever wins a particularly constituency wins that particular seat. But the problem with this is that you end up with parties who have an even vote distribution across the country (say 10-15%), and don't get incredibly high votes in certain areas not getting a lot of seats, because they struggle to win that particular constituency vote. For example, UKIP were the second most voted party in more than 100 constituencies, but only managed to actually win one seat.

It also encourages tactical voting. If you support the Greens, there's an almost impossible chance of them getting elected in most seats, because again they don't get enough of the vote to win that seat, and will be nowhere near in a lot of places. So instead, people will vote Labour to keep out the Tories, since Labour are generally the less terrible option from the perspective of a Green.

The vote of anyone for a party that isn't likely to win a seat is essentially wasted. In my seat, it was obviously going to be a two-horse race between the SNP and Labour. As a result, if you were voting Tory/Lib Dem/UKIP, there wasn't any point in showing up: your vote would have no overall effect. Of course, some will still vote anyway, but it's all a bit in vain, and in these safe seats, parties without a chance won't put too much effort into winning them when they know that they have no chance.

Overall, it's a system which benefits big parties who can win constituencies with 30-40% of the vote, leaving them sometimes with 50%+ of the seats if they get a majority. Parties with 20% or lower will struggle to win seats because they don't win constituencies, unless their vote is a lot more regional like the SNP, who didn't even have 5% of the national vote, but swept up in Scotland because they had 50% of the vote here.

I understand the system, I just don't quite understand the arguments against it. I mean, why should getting 20% of the vote across the country entitle a party to seats? Shouldn't the people in a constituency get represented by the people they voted for?

 

[rcoobc]

What are the arguments against FPTP @rcoobc?

Ignoring that it doesn't give a "proportional" outcome (4 million votes earned UKIP 1 MP and 1.5 million votes earned the SNP 56 seats) there are a few other disadvantages.

First off, I should say it is actually a fairly decent system that has worked for hundreds of years. By and large it keeps the wackos out of office (AV would have been better for that, but we turned it down), and every MP is accountable to his or her constituency and faces losing their seat if they do a crap job.

However, the problems:

1) Your votes are pointless. No matter what way I voted in Ashford it wouldnt have made a difference. Even if I convinced all my friends, and my families friends, and my friends families, and my friends families friends to all vote Labour, it wouldnt have made a difference. The Conservative MP won by a margin of 20,000 votes out of 60,000 votes cast.

2) Each consistency has only one elected representative. If your MP is a bit crap, then you are out of luck when you've got a problem and need some help. If your MP is Tim Fallon, then maybe he will fight tooth and nail to help you out. If you happen to live somewhere that sadly elected a BNP however...

3) It creates safe seats where everyone knows what the result is going to be, so nobody really bothers to try there. The South East, by and large, always elect Conservatives, so Labour arent going to bother putting a strong candidate forward just to see them defeated. As such, a hugely disproportionate amount of money is spent to try and win the 50-100 or so seats that may change hands. In this way, the majority of the public is denied exposure to other ideas and everything stays the same.

4) It also may be very difficult to find an elected official that shares your view point.. If you want to legalise weed, then you are going to have to go a long way from the South East to find an MP that likely shares that view. If you support the union in Scotland (as over 50% of the Scots appear to), then you almost have to leave Scotland now to find an MP that shares your opinion.

5) It's a bad way to choose anything. In X Factor, do they choose the winner on peoples first preferences on the first day? No, they do round by round voting until there are only a few candidates left. (Okay they also have judges that do stuff). In Business, you also almost always use round-by-round voting to narrow the options down until a clear choice emerges.

6) You can have a split vote. If there is a very liberal constituency, but the Lib Dems, Labour and the Green party are all competing, then there is a chance they will all cancel each other out and the Tories will get in. Same with UKIP and the Torys. 60% of a consistency may not mind between the Tories and UKIP, but as the vote is split, a Lib Dem gets in.

7) Nothing is proportional.

There are probably more.

Edit : oh yeah tactical voting. You want a green but vote Labour as you know your vote for the Greens is pointless. You want labour but known you'd be better of voting Lib Dem to stop the Tories in your area

 

[Cheesy]

I understand the system, I just don't quite understand the arguments against it. I mean, why should getting 20% of the vote across the country entitle a party to seats? Shouldn't the people in a constituency get represented by the people they voted for?

There should definitely be some level of representation at local level, but a system like STV still allows that while allowing proportionality.

In a national election, it's arguably a bit unfair that a bunch of mini-local elections are essentially deciding the makeup of a national UK parliament.

If you have 3 constituencies, for example, where 40% vote Labour, 30% vote Tory and 20% vote Lib Dem in each of them, you get 3 Labour MP's. Considering those 3 constituencies could all be relatively close to each other, it's arguably a bit unfair that these people will get 3 Labour MP's, but no representation from the Tories or Lib Dems when there are other systems which allow you to keep local representation, while still producing a fairer result across the nation.

It's especially important because like Robo said, in STV, parties actually have to fight for seats. There are certain parts where your result is basically guaranteed. MP's can basically just exist, and if they stand for a certain party then they're bound to get elected. Parties will put more work into winning certain constituencies than others, which means that people aren't actually getting represented fairly at a local level.

It's a system which can work well in 2-party systems, but the UK has sort of moved beyond that now, and should be trying to adapt in the process.

 

[Ubik]

I understand the system, I just don't quite understand the arguments against it. I mean, why should getting 20% of the vote across the country entitle a party to seats? Shouldn't the people in a constituency get represented by the people they voted for?

There are plenty of constituencies where most people in that constituency didn't vote for their candidate. In many more, they were unable to vote for their preferred party/candidate because they knew it would be a wasted vote, and preferred to support a likelier challenger against a party they disliked. Or, if you're like myself and live in a constituency where you can predict the result decades into the future, you know you have a very low influence on the outcome and in many cases don't bother turning out to vote (yes, I know that your single vote is very unlikely to be the deciding factor in any election, but at least in close races there's a feeling of uncertainty that means campaigning can alter outcomes).

There is no real defence of FPTP in this day and age, even the "strong government" argument is basically championing majority rule on a minority's mandate, and the constituency link is available in many different proportional systems.

 

[rcoobc]

I understand the system, I just don't quite understand the arguments against it. I mean, why should getting 20% of the vote across the country entitle a party to seats? Shouldn't the people in a constituency get represented by the people they voted for?

There is definitely an element of that. FPTP is a decent system.

But if you look, say, Ashford-Maidstone-Faversham as a group rather than individual constituencies, 50% of the voters there got all three candidates they wanted and no one else got anything.

Let's say for a moment that Ashford-Maidstone-Faversham isn't a Tory area, but a BNP area. You'd begin to feel trapped when all the MPs from your area are BNP. You know there are normal people around you who dont vote BNP, but you begin to feel like they dont exist. The whole world treats you like you must support the BNP as you come from this area, and the other parties dont even bother trying because they know they will lose.

You cant go to your MP for help because they are BNP. Your region isnt represented in parliament because your MPs are BNP and just dont try to make a difference.

The only reason the system has survived is because of 2 party politics.

 

[Eboue]

There are plenty of constituencies where most people in that constituency didn't vote for their candidate. In many more, they were unable to vote for their preferred party/candidate because they knew it would be a wasted vote, and preferred to support a likelier challenger against a party they disliked. Or, if you're like myself and live in a constituency where you can predict the result decades into the future, you know you have a very low influence on the outcome and in many cases don't bother turning out to vote (yes, I know that your single vote is very unlikely to be the deciding factor in any election, but at least in close races there's a feeling of uncertainty that means campaigning can alter outcomes).

There is no real defence of FPTP in this day and age, even the "strong government" argument is basically championing majority rule on a minority's mandate, and the constituency link is available in many different proportional systems.

The likelihood of your vote affecting anything, even in battleground districts, is so remote that anyone who seriously considers that as a reason for voting isn't considering the math. You should vote for who you want since all individual voting is symbolic. I think we are just approaching it from different perspectives. I don't see why it should necessarily be "a national election". I would think of it more as a lot of local elections.

 

[Eboue]

Ignoring that it doesn't give a "proportional" outcome (4 million votes earned UKIP 1 MP and 1.5 million votes earned the SNP 56 seats) there are a few other disadvantages.

First off, I should say it is actually a fairly decent system that has worked for hundreds of years. By and large it keeps the wackos out of office (AV would have been better for that, but we turned it down), and every MP is accountable to his or her constituency and faces losing their seat if they do a crap job.

However, the problems:

1) Your votes are pointless. No matter what way I voted in Ashford it wouldnt have made a difference. Even if I convinced all my friends, and my families friends, and my friends families, and my friends families friends to all vote Labour, it wouldnt have made a difference. The Conservative MP won by a margin of 20,000 votes out of 60,000 votes cast.

2) Each consistency has only one elected representative. If your MP is a bit crap, then you are out of luck when you've got a problem and need some help. If your MP is Tim Fallon, then maybe he will fight tooth and nail to help you out. If you happen to live somewhere that sadly elected a BNP

3) It creates safe seats where everyone knows what the result is going to be, so nobody really bothers to try there. The South East by and large always elect Conservatives, so Labour arent going to bother putting a strong candidate forward just to see them defeated. As such, a hugely disproportionate amount of money is spent to try and win the 50-100 or so seats that may change hands. In this way, the majority of the public is denied exposure to other ideas and everything stays the same.

4) It also may be very difficult to find an elected official that shares your view point.. If you want to legalise weed, then you are going to have to go a long way from the South East to find an MP that likely shares that view. If you support the union in Scotland (as over 50% of the Scots appear to), then you may almost have to leave Scotland now to find an MP that shares your opinion.

5) It's a bad way to choose anything. In X Factor, do they choose the winner on peoples first preferences on the first day? No, they do round by round voting until there are only a few candidates left. (Okay they also have judges that do stuff). In Business, you also almost always use round-by-round voting to narrow the options down until a clear choice emerges.

6) You can have a split vote. If there is a very liberal constituency, but the Lib Dems, Labour and the Green party are all competing, then there is a chance they will all cancel each other out and the Tories will get in. Same with UKIP and the Torys. 60% of a consistency may not mind between the Tories and UKIP, but as the vote is split, a Lib Dem gets in.

7) Nothing is proportional.

There are probably more.

1) Your vote is pointless anyway. Your vote is only symbolic.
2) I don't see this as a good argument.
3) This is a fair point.
4) Same as #2.
5) Don't watch X Factor.
6) Fair point.
7) N/A

 

[rcoobc]

The likelihood of your vote affecting anything, even in battleground districts, is so remote that anyone who seriously considers that as a reason for voting isn't considering the math. You should vote for who you want since all individual voting is symbolic. I think we are just approaching it from different perspectives. I don't see why it should necessarily be "a national election". I would think of it more as a lot of local elections.

Your own vote may not affect anything, but if you got all your family and all your friends to vote the same way as you, that could affect the result in tight conditions under STV. Okay that would be unlikely, but I think it would be far more likely than under FPTP.

 

[Ubik]

The likelihood of your vote affecting anything, even in battleground districts, is so remote that anyone who seriously considers that as a reason for voting isn't considering the math. You should vote for who you want since all individual voting is symbolic. I think we are just approaching it from different perspectives. I don't see why it should necessarily be "a national election". I would think of it more as a lot of local elections.

This doesn't work in multi-party politics. Maybe the first time, but the next time you'll be saying "I can't believe the Tories got in last time because the Greens took so many votes away from Labour. I won't be doing that again." Or something similar. Yeah, your individual vote still won't make the difference, but the collective mindset does. Everyone considers the result when they vote, even if they eventually decide not to care because "the others are all the same anyway" and look to boost the no hopers. It's undoubtedly a national election, we're selecting the members of parliament which decide who sets the legislative agenda and holds the executive branch in government. It holds back minor parties, represses choice and promotes highly combative politics.

 

[rcoobc]

I'm surprised you say it isn't important to get an MP that fights for you, its a pillar of British society that you can turn to your MP in times of trouble.

There was this emotive peice on Tim Farron

Tim Farron is getting emotional. Tears well in the eyes of the Liberal Democrat MP and his voice cracks as he recounts the words of a constituent to his daughter. “The lady said to Gracie: “You should be really proud of your dad. We were stuck in a bedsit and he rehoused us, so you should be really proud of your daddy.”

He continues: “I’ll tell you what, if she had told me that, I’d have said: ‘That’s very kind of you to say that, but I tell you what, you got rehoused because hundreds of volunteers delivered shedloads of leaflets and the Liberal Democrats won elections and we built council houses and that’s how we rehoused you. So you should be dead proud of yourself and I’m dead proud of you. Because we won elections we rehoused that family, and a thousand more besides, and that is what winning means, winning is not about holding office, winning is about making a difference - and I need you to win again.”

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/03/tim-farron-profile-lib-dems-leader-waiting

Now no offence to Helen Grant, but I've not heard of her doing anything except to turn up to a few schools and say "go sports!"

 

[rcoobc]

FPTP was used to elect the Pirate King in Pirates of the Caribbean 3... And guess what. The vote was split and they ended up with a king that 80% of them weren't happy with.

Then that king Elizabeth Swan led most of them to their deaths I think.

 

[Dion]

I just find it depressing that in the 2010 election in 440~ seats the biggest section of the electorate was those who didn't bother to cast their votes. If they'd gotten organised they could have elected a party whose sole policy was to write "feck off" in felt tip onto Cameron and Browns foreheads then pass off power to the party with the second most seats. They could have done that with a majority bigger than Blair in 97.

Hopefully the Scottish result at the very least put to bed the whole "my vote doesn't matter" mindset.

 

[Eboue]

FPTP was used to elect the Pirate King in Pirates of the Caribbean 3... And guess what. The vote was split and they ended up with a king that 80% of them weren't happy with.

Then that king Elizabeth Swan led most of them to their deaths I think.

that's me convinced

 

[rcoobc]

Its a shame the British public voted against AV. In some ways it really is the best voting system in the world. No one can get into office without 50% of their constituencies concent. So no BNP wackjobs. And no wasted or split votes.

Sadly I've not met a single person who voted NO who knew what they were voting for, except for maybe 1 or 2 that wanted PR

 

[Grinner]

What are some of the worst examples of gerrymandered seats?

 

[finneh]

Just as an aside, if 50% of seats were elected via FPTP and 50% were elected via proportional representation (working off "fair" boundary mergers where each party would get 50% of seats via FPTP) we'd be looking at:

Conservatives: 295 seats
Labour: 215 seats
SNP: 43 seats
UKIP: 42 seats
Lib Dems: 30 seats
Greens: 13 seats

I think that's far more representative of the electorate, with the added bonus of keeping the local accountability of your local MP.

 

[Untied]

Its a shame the British public voted against AV. In some ways it really is the best voting system in the world. No one can get into office without 50% of their constituencies concent. So no BNP wackjobs. And no wasted or split votes.

Sadly I've not met a single person who voted NO who knew what they were voting for, except for maybe 1 or 2 that wanted PR

I don't agree. It reinforces two party politics more than FPTP and isn't a proportional system. Its only advantage over FPTP is that it avoids split votes.

 

[Don't Kill Bill]

Its a shame the British public voted against AV. In some ways it really is the best voting system in the world. No one can get into office without 50% of their constituencies concent. So no BNP wackjobs. And no wasted or split votes.

Sadly I've not met a single person who voted NO who knew what they were voting for, except for maybe 1 or 2 that wanted PR

I disagree and voted against it because what you say about this system isn't true and you can play with terms all you want but in my opinion you have the whole thing backwards.

Forcing me to vote for a second choice in order to stop a candidate I really don't want isn't giving consent to anything. All you are doing there is forcing people to vote tactically with their next choice. So which is it, tactical voting is either a good or a poor way to elect people. With FPTP you have the option to vote tactically or not, it is your decision it isn't forced onto you.

Each system has merit and problems there is no correct system and no agreement by those who want change as to which system they want to change to.

The basic question is wrong we don't elect a government to be the least offensive to everyone which is the X factor way and how many great acts, that have gone on to great music careers, has that actually produced compared to generic non entities? (I'm guessing more misses than hits because I don't know the answer as I have never watched the show).

If we look at the last election and as a Labour voter I am gutted with the result but I'm not going to cry about the system because under any other system it would have been as bad one way or the another.

 

[bishblaize]

No voting system is without downsides. I'm not convinced any system has appreciably more pros or less cons than any other. The various hybrid systems that people propose just end up having all the pros and cons of both systems, so dont work out any better on balance.

I think the other issue is to note that politics is moving away from centralised Westminster power. Obviously in Scotland that's already true, but here in Manc we're getting more power too. That means that systems that favour local candidates working on local issues will be increasingly desirable over time as new purely regionaly political issues arise. So any system that is designed with the national vote in mind may find itself less relevent in the future than it may have been in the past.

 

[sincher]

I'd go for Yvette Cooper, Chuka too smarmy Blairite for me, Burnham is a No.2 not a leader. I think Ed should have stayed on.

No way Ed should have stayed on. Capable as he is, he is not electable.

I think you're right about Cooper though, probably the right kind of refresh.

 

[Cheesy]

I disagree and voted against it because what you say about this system isn't true and you can play with terms all you want but in my opinion you have the whole thing backwards.

Forcing me to vote for a second choice in order to stop a candidate I really don't want isn't giving consent to anything. All you are doing there is forcing people to vote tactically with their next choice. So which is it, tactical voting is either a good or a poor way to elect people. With FPTP you have the option to vote tactically or not, it is your decision it isn't forced onto you.

Each system has merit and problems there is no correct system and no agreement by those who want change as to which system they want to change to.

The basic question is wrong we don't elect a government to be the least offensive to everyone which is the X factor way and how many great acts, that have gone on to great music careers, has that actually produced compared to generic non entities? (I'm guessing more misses than hits because I don't know the answer as I have never watched the show).

If we look at the last election and as a Labour voter I am gutted with the result but I'm not going to cry about the system because under any other system it would have been as bad one way or the another.

Not necessarily. Pretty much no systems other than FPTP would've given the Tories a majority. Certainly, no PR system would have.

 

[Don't Kill Bill]

Not necessarily. Pretty much no systems other than FPTP would've given the Tories a majority. Certainly, no PR system would have.

So a Tory UKIP Unionist govt would have been better then just a Tory one or

given the vote we just had, on what basis could Labour have governed by the will of the people?

 

[simon_xazza]

Don forget a change in the system would likely have changed peoples votes. Less tactical voting, perhaps.

 

[bishblaize]

Don forget a change in the system would likely have changed peoples votes. Less tactical voting, perhaps.

Indeed, and probably less protest votes too.

 

[rcoobc]

I don't agree. It reinforces two party politics more than FPTP and isn't a proportional system. Its only advantage over FPTP is that it avoids split votes.

It's not my preferred method, and there is no "perfect" method. But it has the following advantages:

1) Any Candidate has to get 50% of the vote to be elected, keeping the wackos out. Currently, a BNP candidate could get in with 30% or less if the vote was split.
2) No wasted votes. Vote for the Green if you want to.

 

[rcoobc]

I disagree and voted against it because what you say about this system isn't true and you can play with terms all you want but in my opinion you have the whole thing backwards.

Forcing me to vote for a second choice in order to stop a candidate I really don't want isn't giving consent to anything. All you are doing there is forcing people to vote tactically with their next choice. So which is it, tactical voting is either a good or a poor way to elect people. With FPTP you have the option to vote tactically or not, it is your decision it isn't forced onto you.

Each system has merit and problems there is no correct system and no agreement by those who want change as to which system they want to change to.

The basic question is wrong we don't elect a government to be the least offensive to everyone which is the X factor way and how many great acts, that have gone on to great music careers, has that actually produced compared to generic non entities? (I'm guessing more misses than hits because I don't know the answer as I have never watched the show).

If we look at the last election and as a Labour voter I am gutted with the result but I'm not going to cry about the system because under any other system it would have been as bad one way or the another.

Thats not really what you would be doing. In your case you've called yourself a Labour supporter (voter), so you want to see a Labour candidate get in.

But many people dont have a single preference. I might not mind whether the Greens, Lib Dems or Labour get in. I might prefer Greens, but normally vote Labour because the Greens would be a wasted vote. That's tactical voting. But doing a 1-2-3 Greens, Labour, Lib Dems isn't tactical, it's what I really feel. I dont mind which of the three go in, but I would prefer the Greens.

And you are wrong about the X Factor, the X Factor isn't designed to be the "least offensive" (how boring would it be if it was?!) it's designed to be entertaining and to get the best candidate to win. The X Factor comparison is stupid because it's not how the x factor works (the judges decide each week), but the good thing about round by round voting is you end up with 2 candidates, one who might have support of a group of 30% of the voters (because they are funny), and one that 70% will admit is the clear best singer.

 

[rcoobc]

Don forget a change in the system would likely have changed peoples votes. Less tactical voting, perhaps.

Indeed. More Green votes.