To think that the election results don't add up?

Spot on

the childish us v them school debating in HOC is tiresome & out of touch.

“I disagree” isn’t enough from opposition. What don’t you agree on? And where do you agree? (Spoiler: it’s not a good thing if you never agree). And crucially, what would you DO differently about it? What are your policies, your solutions, your visions. Not your pithy jibes 🙄

I've seen a table of how the results would work out if PR was in place currently.

Reform would have got 93 members, Labour would have got something like 212.

The upshot is that if the voting system was different many people would have voted differently.

The LibDems got their seats because of tactical voting - they had most of their votes in places where they had a real chance to win/ get the Tories out and not random, 'wasted' votes in constituencies where Labour were strong contenders.

Reform supporters just vote randomly with no idea how it all works. I imagine many of them didn't get to vote because they didn't know what ID to bring either. And if they had won/ had more seats it wouldn't be right for anybody - they do not know what is good for them, and are only united by their hatred for anything and anybody.

Quite honestly, anyone holding views like this are the ones that shouldn't be allowed to vote. Who are you to take away democracy?

Labour did not have a landslide victory, on individual peoples votes.
They had a landslide victory on seats only.
Averaging around 23k votes got them a seat.

Lib Dems also did very well on seats.
Less so when you counts the individual votes.
Averaging around 49k individual votes gained a seat

Reform did better on individual votes.
Not matched up with seats.
Averaging 1 million votes per seat.

But it's the FPTP which makes the difference.

Yes, I do. I was just highlighting the disparity in the numbers. It's ironic that the LibDems were all about PR, I bet they've changed their tune now.

No, they have consistently supported PR. One more successful management of the current system won't change that.

If the right wing vote remains fractured I'm sure Reform will get smarter at managing the current system as well.

this

if we didn’t have fptp the popular vote would be very different I think so I don’t think we can read too much into it

We vote for our local MP. I agree with this. We need to vote for someone local who represents us. I am glad our local MP is really good and does what he cans to sort issues at a local level. That is a key role for backbencher MPs.
In proportional representation I could have ended up with a local Reform MP that most people in my area had not voted for, and potentially someone who did not care at all about my local area.

Some of the commentary yesterday made the point that in FPTP there's a tipping point around 20-25% where a small number of votes in a few seats can mean significant gains (or losses).

The Liberals have been adept at focusing tirelessly on seats they can win since long before the merged with the SDP. I saw them in action at the Ripon constituency in 1973 though they only held it for a year.

One of the reasons Farage was reluctant to stand was becuase his party hadn't the local knowledge or networks needed to run a campaign on that basis.

The disparity in seats won compared to percentage vote should start a genuine adult debate about moving from FPTP to proportional representation.

Labour would do well to support change because whilst they benefitted from the system this time FPTP usually works against them.

Whilst proportional representation makes it unlikely that a single party will win a majority of seats it would be perfectly possible to have stable centre-left (Lab, Lib Dem, Green) or right wing (Tory, Reform) coalitions. And before anyone wangs on about single-party govts through FPTP being more stable and effective, 10 years of Tory chaos shows that is not necessarily what happens.

Other countries are mature enough to have proportional representation and it is time the UK grew up too.

And, yes, that might mean Reform have more seats but depriving their supporters of a voice doesn't get rid of them. Their views need to be challenged openly and directly, not ignored in the hope they go away.

You are not wrong OP.

MN is leftie corner. If the same had happened with a left wing party, then FTPT would be the worst thing ever.

The point is that this imbalance of votes vs seats will accelerate support for Reform. It plays right into the feeling of the popular vote not counting for anything. This works well for Farage. If he has won 30 seats, he wouldn’t know what to do with it and would get voted out at the next election. He won just enough to make enough noise and gather enough support without being held to delivering anything.

The fact remains people are not happy about sky high immigration and taxation. If they were Labour would have grown their vote share instead of Reform picking up the Tory disaffected voters.

The Lib Dems remain consistent in campaigning for change. It has been one of the most consistent policies they have had and it remains one on their website this morning.

Not necessarily

Constinuency boundaries are enlarged to return more than one candidate in PR.

But that increase doesn’t hate to be in line with the number of people who live in each area. (You could argue it’s in democratic if it isn’t, but for the reasons you mentioned, plenty of systems don’t base it on number of people living there))

Sorry about my awful writing but from this very simplified diagram am I understanding fptp correctly?

it's hardly cause for the Lib Dem's "greatest result" ever is it?

Of course it's a great night for the Lib Dems - they had a handful of seats and now they've got 71. They targeted their campaign very successfully

FPTP is winner takes all. Whatever party gets past x number of seats gets to form a government all by themselves, with no input from the other parties.

PR means the government is formed proportionally to the number of seats held. Depending on the parameters, the holders of power positions come from parties proportional to how many seats a party won. So the government might be a coalition between two, three, or more parties.

Both systems are based on a candidate for a party winning a seat outright. It doesn't matter whether 49% of the voters in every constituency voted for Party 2 and thus Party 2 got 49% of the vote nationally. If Party 1 got 51% of the vote in every seat, they win 100% of the seats with 51% of the vote.

Be careful what you wish for when you want a Parliament constituted based on the national share of the vote. That would mean every election would be decided by English cities. Because that is where by far the highest proportion of voters are. No voice for Scotland, Wales, or NI; no representation of rural affairs. You up for that?

Labour’s vote share dropped and they got a landslide.

Reform got more votes than Lib dems and got 4 seats.

Lib dems got fewer votes than Reform and got more than 70 seats.

All of it points to one thing being true, as repeated by John Curtis many times in the last few hours.

That Labour did not win more support (except for in Scotland), it’s just that people wanted Tories out and voted with Reform being the big beneficiaries of support and the popular vote.

What that says is that the electorate wanted proper centre right policies and what they got was a socialist government.

This will mean Reform support will grow for next election because people got the opposite of what they asked for (outside of Scotland)

That you, Nige?