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

[RobynRB]

How did LibDem get 70 odd seats and Reform 4 when Reform got 14% of the vote. I mean, I understand how it works... but it's hardly cause for LibDem's 'greatest result' ever is it? I bet Nigel is fuming. And rightly so.

A few points:

FPTP causes people to not actually vote for who they want (tactical voting). It also produces two party politics. It needs changing.

Voting for local candidates causes national vote share to not (necessarily) reflect seats won.

It's not FPTP or PR. You could keep local candidates and rank candidates for example. The current system is terrible. But it's better for the two main parties it produces. And most people don't understand the voting system well enough for it to change.

Comparing the votes to 2019. It crudely looks more like a collapse in conservative vote than a ringing endorsement of labour. Conservative vote dropped from 14 mil to 7. Labours has barley changed.

Could she spell his name?

"The differences between PR and FPTP have absolutely nothing to do with how the vote looks proportionally at the national level."

Would you mind explaining that before I go off on one

I never said I was pss'd off. It doesn't matter who it is, I didn't think it was fair on Lib Dem either. I think everyone's vote should count. I voted last night, but as expected we returned a Conservative MP - as we have for about 100 odd years or something. It doesn't matter whether I support Conservative, Labour or whoever, the fact is my vote is worthless. It will not change.

@IClaudine Was just about to say that. The determination of some posters to misspell his name is quite something.

That you, Nige?

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)

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?

No I'm sure he wouldn't as I'm sure the LibDems won't be considering the huge gains they made from it. But that doesn't change the fact that a lot of people are effectively voiceless (see my last comment)

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

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

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))

I voted for change in 2011. It's nothing to do with Reform. I would make the same comments if it was the other way around. I am not steadfastly behind any party, I have voted for Labour and Conservative in the past

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.

I doubt it, seeing as I couldn't.

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 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.

Well good for them. At least they have some principles.

Or maybe they just wait a while.... too obvious. Right?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The funny thing is I thought Labour always moaned about how the boundaries always favoured the Conservatives, so will they continue moaning about that now or will they quietly put it behind them?

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