OK, fess up time: I ams till struggling with the implciations of the First Past the Post system on the current elections. Cruising various
online tools, there appears to be some tipping point at which, say, a majority vote for Lib Dems turns from simply "more seats but not a commons majority" into "runaway domincation". Is this where the tool has
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Birmingham: Labour 40, Libdem 30, Conservative 20.
Surrey: Conservative 40, Libdem 30, Labour 20.
...etc. Thus a party with a demographically spread vote can have bugger-all representation under a constituency, first-past-the-post system.
This is becoming more obviously unfair as British experience of Euro elections indicates the difference in system; on the other hand, Brits kinda like the clarity of the system even if it sucks.
If it happens with this election, after such a strong Libdem surge now, there will be a lot of voices calling for electoral reform. If there's a hung parliament, a commitment to reform will probably be the Libdem price for cooperation.
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And yes, the lib dems are definitely the leftmost of the three these days.
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"Clegg said he would not prop up Labour if it came third in the vote yet secured the most seats. He said: "It seems to me that it's just preposterous, the idea that if a party comes third in terms of the number of votes, it still has somehow the right to carry on squatting in No 10 and continue to lay claim to having the prime minister of the country."
In Andy's example above, each party has the same proportion of the vote. What scenario yields an outcome where overall Lib Dem's or Conservatives have received more votes, but Labour win the most seats?
I could just about imagine if we had 100 constituencies, and 99 had 3 voters each, and 2 voted labouer, 1 Lib Dem, and in the other constituency, 59 million voters, all of whom who voted Lib Dem, Labour would have 99 seats and Lib Dem's 1 seat. But are the consituencies really like that? How else does a party end up with less votes, more seats?
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The system is tweaked all over to hellenback, so broad analysis is very tricky and full of gotchas.
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If you asked me to explain it now, I think I'd probably fall down at explaining how the second and third (and more) seats are allocated, where second preference votes come into play (is that even PR, or was the London Mayoral election different again?) and why there are even different numbers of seats for constituencies in the first place. FPTP: There's a seat in a constituency, anybody there can stand, everybody there gets one vote. The guy with the most votes wins. Democratic electoral procedure - done. (slightly simplified, but even so...)
FPTP for parliament and PR for local and European seems a reasonable mix to me.
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