For my British friends …

@helenS Labour share of vote went down too so doesn't seem just that. Lot of Tory voters switched to right wing Reform UK party.

@helenS I disagree. I think a lot of Tory voters have switched to reform. Reforms vote share has increased massively and I don’t believe that the vast majority are “new” voters, particularly since conservative slumps have been almost offset by a proportional rise in Reform votes.

@OldBrit I really would want to see the popular vote. Parliament seats don't tell us much about that.

@SW-User Thank you – I naïvely assumed that a party with only 4 seats can't have many voters. I forgot to take the FPTP principle into account.

@helenS Labour got 34% vote share approximately which is lowest ever to form majority government.

It's our weird first past the post system that delivers a 170+ majority with that vote share. Actually their vote share is lower than when they lost in 2019.

@OldBrit That first past the post system is quirky and it needs to be replaced by proportional representation in the UK as soon as possible.– If I lived in the UK I would probably support the Lib Dems, but whether voting for them would or would not make sense would strongly depend on my constituency. My vote for them would be lost in the wrong constituency, so I might be tempted to vote Labour instead, although I'm not a big fan.

@helenS Well the latest figures are Labour 35%, Conservative 24%, Reform 14%, with just a few seats still to declare. Labour has a huge majority, but the lowest share of the vote of any winning party since 1832 (ie, in terms of elections decided by popular vote, ever). The Tories similarly have the smallest number of MPs ever, even though they did a little better in the popular vote than the polls predicted. Reform got fewer votes than the polls predicted, and only 4 seats, but had a huge impact on the number of Tory MPs.

@helenS That’s why we need proportional representation - the only thing that I’m in agreement with Reform about.

@helenS I gave up campaigning for PR about 10 years ago after a botched referendum on it. There is no appetite for it in the UK sadly. People can't see how coalitions work after 2010 - 2015.

@MartinII There is something wrong with a voting system where %votes do not translate into seats. I know that proportional representation will always be connected with problems too; you mentioned one yesterday.

@OldBrit At least the Lib Dems campaign for PR! Which is one of the many reasons why I would vote for them (if I were British).

@helenS but vast majority of UK voters are against it

@helenS And yet, first past the post did produce what almost everyone would agree was the "right" answer, ie a Labour government and a hammering for the Tories.

@OldBrit

That’s not true.

45% were in favour as of January, more than FPTP 26% according to yougov

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/should-we-change-our-current-british-voting-system

@OldBrit 34% lol. The tyranny of the minority

@helenS Well, votes did translate into seats yesterday, albeit in a very exaggerated way. Remember that there was a huge amount of tactical voting in particular constituencies. Had it been a PR election, the proportions of votes for each party would have been very different.

@SW-User yougov polls are consistently young in representation. If we had a referendum now I'd doubt you'd get 30% in favour. More likely in the 20s

@OldBrit nevertheless I see no evidence that people want to stay with fptp and I’m not (particularly) young.

@SW-User erm. From Wikipedia

The United Kingdom Alternative Vote referendum, also known as the UK-wide referendum on the Parliamentary voting system was held on Thursday 5 May 2011 in the United Kingdom to choose the method of electing MPs at subsequent general elections.

The referendum concerned whether to replace the present "first-past-the-post" system with the "alternative vote" (AV) method and was the first national referendum to be held across the whole of the United Kingdom in the twenty-first century. The proposal to introduce AV was rejected by 67.9% of voters on a national turnout of 42%.



That's when I left The Electoral Reform Society as it was clearly never happening in my life time.

@helenS Parliament seats tell us that a clear majority of local Labour MPs won the competitions in their constituencies. The overall party share of the vote is not particularly relevant in our parliamentary system. Adopting PR would mean a radical shift to a presidential style democracy (which many people apparently think we already have or should have).

For my part, I am extremely grateful this morning for first past the post as we are not contemplating having to form a coalition with a party of racists funded by millionaires.

@OldBrit The Alternative Vote system has a lot to recommend it, but it is not proportional representation. It's a more sophisticated version of first past the post. Had yesterday's election been under AV, I guess the main difference would have been more Tory MPs with lots of people voting Reform first choice and Conservative second. But there would still have been a large Labour majority and the Labour share of the vote, including second preferences, would have been much more respectable.

@MartinII I accept it was not what I'd campaigned for for 20 years but that was all on offer. Be 30 years before there's another chance to change it.

@SunshineGirl Not all smaller parties are fascists or racists. The Greens may be a good example. Who would vote for the British Greens when that means your vote will go straight into the trash can? Who will campaign for the Greens, when it's 100% safe to assume they will never be relevant? In some countries with PR the Greens have about 10% of the seats.

@helenS It is a price we pay. Sacrificing exact representational democracy for political and social stability. Notwithstanding, nearly 2 million people did vote Green yesterday and they ended up with four seats, the same number as the swivel-eyed loons.