To think PR would be more democratic

[MoonriseKingdom]

I feel that first past the post is a big element in why so many people feel disenfranchised.

Con 331 seats 11.3 million votes
Lab 232 9.3m
SNP 56 1.4m
LibD 8 7.9m
DUP 8 184k
UKIP 1 3.8m

These figures seem grossly unfair. I am a very lefty labour voter living in a safe labour seat. My lib dem voting DH's vote barely matters.

Now I can't stand UKIP and don't want them to have influence. However, there are apparently millions who disagree and why shouldn't their vote be represented? Why should Scotland and NI have such a disproportionate number of seats?

My only reservation about PR is that I like the idea of a constituency MP as someone who ordinary people can go to. However, I am sure there are ways around that.

AIBU - why should we not change?

On the other hand, some of our constituencies are huge, in terms of geographical area, compared to constituencies in more densely populated areas. I'd imagine much of Scotland is the same. It would be hard to reduce the number of MPs and still have people properly represented, because the issues that are relevant where I live are not the same ones that concern people 40 miles up the road, yet we are all in the same constituency.

NI isn't over- represented per head of population. According to wikipedia, total population of UK is 64.1 million, of which NI has 1.8m, so 2.8%. 2.8% of 650 MPs is 18, which is exactly the number allocated to NI.

Thanks treaclesoda. That is very interesting. it shows one of the downsides to FPTP is the ability to draw constituency boundaries to suit a particular outcome.

I think too many feel disenfranchised under the current system, so yes I think PR would be better. It would be a courageous move for any single party government to introduce it though, because it would be like shooting themselves in the foot. I would like labour to rebrand themselves with a new name. Social democrats or something, and have PR as a key policy. That could change politics in this country forever. It won't happen though, while they still think they can win outright.

That is an interesting point Sally. Clearly some of the 1.8m will be children but do you get really low turnouts? Or are votes split across lots of parties? Does the NI assembly function well? It must be hard for people to work together given the differences. Still, it is not that long ago that a NI assembly would be unthinkable/ unworkable.

Thanks OP for this post - I was thinking along the same lines. Whilst I think 1 UKIP MP is 1 too many, it does seem unfair to the 12% of the country who voted for them to only get 1 MP. It also seems very unfair that whilst 6 times as many people voted LibDem than SNP they get a 7th of the seats.

I too live a very Tory area and nearly didn't bother voting (I still did though) as it will never change under the current system. I used to be against PR as it may lead to unstable governments but if ConDem coalition worked (to a certain extent) then maybe PR is the way forward.

I think it is being mooted that the boundaries be redrawn so that there are 600 MPs, not 650 as at present; and that each constituency has roughly the same number of people. This is supposed to iron out some of the problems.

These are the turnout figures
UK 66.1%
England 65.8
Wales 65.7
Scotland 71.1
NI 58.1

So NI had relatively poorer turnout giving the impression of seats being not so representative.

I detest ukip but also think the system has been vastly unfair to them

I voted for change in the referendum

My approx calculation of votes per seat:
Con 34k votes per seat
Lab 40k
SNP 25k
LibDems 300k
DUP 23k
Green 1.1 million
UKIP 3.8 million

sally thanks for that, I was wrong about us being overrepresented then! I hadn't actually sat down and done the calculations properly and when I did them in my head it seemed out of proportion. That is good news then, that it is actually just right.

yes NI turnout was crap, which is ironic considering how strongly people claim to feel about politics here. But there is a real sense of hopelessness. For starters, there are no unionist parties who have a broadly socialist type outlook, so if you would consider yourself a Labour party person, but also someone who is pro union, there truly isn't a party to vote for. The Labour party itself do not field candidates here.

And then we have PR in the Stormont elections, which I think probably does give a better overall representation, but then the flipside of that is that everything, absolutely everything, reaches a stalemate and nothing is ever done. Because part of the fundamentals of NI politics here is that you must disagree with the other side. Always. And these are important issues about health, education etc, all devolved issues, and still nothing seems to change.

A PR system without party lists doesn't help if the party support is split across the country, such as Green and UKIP.

It works in Ireland, caroledecker, where the Labour Party don't have much of a presence outside of urban centres. There is no list system there.

Whatever you think of the minority parties, I really don't think anyone can argue that FPTP is anything other than grossly unfair.
The referendum was on some weird voting system (the single transferable vote, perhaps?) that nobody really understood.
PR is the only fair way to give evetyone an equal say.

As Sir Humphrey Appleby once said: "What government is going to kick away the ladder which got them where they are - particularly when they're still standing on it."

Just worked out how many thousand votes each party got per seat:-
Con 34
Lab 40
SNP 25
lib dem 988
DUP 23
UKIP 3800

I wonder if the queen has the constitutional power to change the electoral system? Maybe so as she invites the 'winner' to form a government?

But it's not just about the total number of votes, ukip had over 620 candidates standing, SNP only had 59, so the vote per candidate has to be taken into account surely?

Per candidate ukip had about 6200 votes, SNP had over 24,600 votes per candidate ( if my maths is right!)

That assumes people vote for a candidate. Which I am sure some do but in reality most people vote for the party they wish to see in power. On that note i think there are many in England who would love to vote SNP for their left wing policies (Scottish Independence aside).

Bit you can only vote for a party if there's a candidate standing? So you can't extrapolate the number of votes cast for a party into how popular they are

The Irish system effectively only parcels up a small number of constiuencies, so you get PR over a small area. This is not PR over the country and still would not necessarily be much better. In Australia, smaller parties lose out in this process as well.

People did not just vote for who they wanted in power this time - they voted tactically to keep others out.

UKIP can go on about 12% of the vote, but they probably would not get 12% of the vote under PR anyhow - because under PR you vote for who you ACTUALLY want, not what gets you the result you want.

And with pr how do small parties get any seats?