As someone pointed out in the comments section:
Labour 2019: 10.3 million votes. 32.4% vote share. Result. 220 seats and the leader resigns.
Labour 2024: 9.6 million votes. 33.7% vote share. Result: 412 seats and a landslide victory.
Now, I think Reform UK are absolute tools, but under a proportional systems, they have would have a lot more seats, due to the number of people who support them, and I think that would be fair.
There’s no ideal system really, that presentation was completely framed in terms of parties when elected representatives don’t have to have an affiliation. If 90% of people vote for independent candidates standing in their constituencies, how is that managed?
Then it’s divided up between a larger group of parties, and you don’t get two big blocks.
You are absolutely right about there being no perfect system.
But those people wouldn’t have voted for parties at all, so why should any party get their votes? To clarify I am talking about people voting for independent candidates who have no party affiliation.
Elections of representatives predates political parties so having a system with parties firmly baked into it seems restrictive.
Then you end up with people being their own party, and the ones who get the greatest share of their local vote end up getting a seat.
Some of them will be bumped out by the collective vote of those who choose to orgainze parties.
Of course there are many way such a system can be operated.
These fine details are the kind of thing that are also missing from the current system.
It’s a spanner in the works for sure, the independents would be left in a FPTP situation. I’m just uneasy about a party political system being aided by the voting system any more than it is already. The less hob-nobbing the better imo.
If 90% of people vote for independents in a proportional system, there are only a few independents who can be bumped out by collective votes for parties.
Yeah you’re right, 90% was a silly number I shouldn’t have said that. I mean more like 30% of people voting for independents would result in 0% of independents getting seats through a party based PR system. Random selections of independents to fill 30% of seats would be better.
You could count independent as a party, and then divy up the spots between them, awarding seats to those with the highest proportion of their local vote.
Yeah, that would be better. I’ve not heard of something like that being part of current PR systems though, it seems to be all about parties.
Well, parties do very much like things being about parties!
But even being about a more representative number of seats for the parties is still more representative than the existing FPTP system as far as I can tell.
Yup. It sets the bar quite high when a national org is effectively required to win one seat which almost entirely closes the door on popular local outsiders getting in.
I’d prefer the current system but where any government action not explicitly outlined in their manifesto has an instant digital referendum. With strong security, auditing and validation. Phone a section of the population up afterwards to verify their choice, that kind of thing.