More than 70% of the people who voted on Thursday…

@LlynTegid Then we get into horse trading, refusing to compromise and stalemate! It’s been a feature in Israel for decades and Germany too. No system is perfect and FPTP suited 2 main parties. I can see that now we don’t, there’s a huge issue. However these awful parties might not ever work with others to form a stable government and it’s a huge risk. They might have to do this anyway in 3 years. We shall see.

That’s a very good result for Reform. I don’t believe anyone would vote for Green at the GE, they seem to be very low intelligence and a bit of a joke.

People vote strategically due to the FPTP system though.

In my council ward a vote other than Lib Dem or Reform was pointless.
This is unlikely to be the case in a general election (where voting Lib Dem is largely pointless).

You can't tell from my vote how I would vote in a General Election.
You can't tell from my vote (even in a General Election), what my preferred party is.

My ward also had 3 councillors elected - 2 of them were from one party and one from a 2nd party. So some people must have split their 3 votes between parties, presumably because they were undecided.

In each constituency. I'm now musing whether it would be possible to not have the highest % overall, but win the most seats.

Yes, it is (thanks, Google!): https://electoral-reform.org.uk/more-votes-but-less-seats-surely-youre-joking/

The sooner we have a form of PR for all elections in the UK, the better.

It will not stop a party from being able to say they had the most votes or most seats (Geert Wilders did in the Netherlands in 2025 as an example), but having to work cross-party and represent the views of the majority of voters will prevent elected dictatorship.

@herbalteabag That’s awful in my view. It’s just another extreme to muddy the already muddy pot of extreme parties. They are not the eco warriors of the past. They have over 30 ongoing inquiries into anti semiotic views held by candidates! How can people vote for this new far left rabble?

Because I'd rather have virtually anyone than Reform and voting elsewhere was too risky.

@herbalteabag How can you vote Green with their far left policies that will bankrupt taxpayers and ensure our dc having a huge debt to service? Why not vote for a mainstream party that’s surely closer sanity and not anti-Semitic?

Yep and by op’s own metric Labour are wanted by even fewer people in the electorate.

@Safarisagoody
Line up the green voters or the Lib dem voters and they also wouldn't have a clue what they are voting for.
I read the Lib Dem manifesto yesterday and there isn't a single clear policy.
It says things like help everyone reach their potential and enable businesses to thrive. Who doesn't believe this? It doesn't mean anything.
I have also read the Greens manifesto. Do people who vote green know that they want to end formal testing in secondary schools-so does this mean children won't get GCSEs or A-levels? Do people know that the Greens want to give up nuclear weapons-have they considered that the outcome will be that we just get nuked by Russia and Iran? Do people know the Greens are anti-semitic? Do people know the Greens want to just open our borders and let everyone who wants to come here in? Do people know the Greens want to stop the police being able to stop and search? If the Greens got in-the UK would be in total anarchy.

That’s the problem, though, with these arguments about electoral reform. It comes down to discussions about which party it does or does not benefit and why it might be a good thing if the result doesn’t reflect the voting.

If the reality of people’s votes is not reflected in the result, then that’s not democracy and there should be no pretense that people either want or actually live in a democracy because it’s a deliberately and blatantly skewed system. Not only is it demonstrably unfair, it feeds into the feelings of resentment and mistrust that are already at dangerous levels. Those feelings, themselves, already skew people’s voting.

Turnout was higher by 8% or 9%

The winning party doesn’t need a majority % though in our current system.

They just need a bigger %than anyone else. So a 30% share could still be a win if the other 70% is divided between lots of other parties to the extent that no-one else has 30%.

The vast majority in my area didn't vote Reform and I knew they wouldn't, but still they managed to come second in a lot of wards because the left vote was split almost equally 3 ways. I ended up voting Green just to stop Reform, as it seemed to be what people were doing. Even on my walk to the polling station I was still deciding. Turnout was between 40-59% in my area depending on ward.

Yes, but 30 percent did, and with 5 parties it was enough to take it.

the galling thing is line up those reform voters and ask them to explain the reform policies and most of them would not have a fucking clue whay they voted for.

Yep.

This is good news but I'm very scared for 2029.

I'm a civil servant with disabilities and if I can't work from home it's likely I can't work, at least not without having no life at all outside of work. It's a scary thought.

@WallaceinAnderland Turnout was around 40%. Less than a GE by a long way. So who kept their powder dry? Who got their maximum vote out? We don’t know! 20% of 40% might be the tip of an iceberg or the maximum!

Well don’t get too excited as Labour polled only 33.7% of the vote in the last election and still won.

How can an electoral system that gives a result that most people didn't vote for, ever be considered a good thing in a democracy?

OK it may favour the Party you support on one occasion but it could equally favour the Party you are most against on another occasion.

True, but sometimes that’s a good thing!

That’s often the case with first past the post and constituencies. We need electoral reform and proportional representation.

Do you know what the turnout was OP? I read somewhere it was low but I can't find it now.

That's brilliant. The animals will definitely make it easier for some people to understand.

and Labour won the last general election with 33% of the votes, aka ‘massive landslide’