PR and other political systems

In a democracy the government can only rule with support of the majority of voters. Sometimes these voters voted for two or more parties which agree to work together.

Under FPTP a government can get an overwhelming majority of MPs although with support of only a minority of voters.

That is NOT democracy.

👍 varian

makevotesmatter.org.uk/

The representation issue has been problematic for many years - despite huge majorities . most of the governments since the 70s have polled between 35-43%

I don't remember people wailing about the lack of fairness to Jeremy Corbyn when Theresa May formed the government with 43% and he got many fewer seats with 40%

I also think that in a FPTP system that you cannot assume the voting statistics represent true voting intention. Many people vote tactically and negatively - ie they vote against who they don't want for a "better" party who might win.

Doodledog I don't really understand your reasoning about rural areas versus cities. Currently constituencies are based (approximately) on populations, so a densely populated city area is much smaller than a rural constituency, but both still have one MP. For their area, cities are already over-represented.

It would be possible to divide the country up into a number of areas (bigger than current constituencies) all of whom returned a given number of MPs. Everybody would be entitled to a vote, but it would mean that parties which consistently come second (and therefore lose out completely) would have some MPs.

Germany has had PR since the end of WW2, but no party polling less than 5% is entitled to representation, which means that the very smallest parties don't count. The Nazis' rise to power was facilitated by PR and loads of small parties, but it wasn't the only reason. One advantage in post-war Germany and the "list" system is that senior politicians have been in power no matter who the Chancellor is (as a result of coalitions), which has enabled some consistency when governments have changed

David49 I totally disagree with you and I stand by my view, which is a view of the Silent Majority in this country.

I think that something that allowed those who constantly come second to have some say would be good. Would a ranking of candidates help towards that? So there could be (say) a Labour government with a Lib Dem presence of some sort - I'm not sure what form that would take - as opposed to a Labour government with the Tories as the main opposition (in an entirely fictional hypothesis)?

I do think the idea that PR would lead to extremism is simplistic, which is why I started the thread, really. Looking back, my O level History teacher was good at getting the interest of otherwise disaffected kids, but he was far from impartial. I had a totally different experience for History A level - he read from bandered notes which was tedious, but gave a more balanced account.

I don't think that moaning now about the results of an election fought under the rules of FPTP is reasonable though. All the parties knew the system, and campaigned with that in mind. If we did change the rules (unlikely, I realise) it would have to be done well in advance of another election.