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.

The Libdems made a referendum on the alternative vote representation a condition of coalition as their vote share has consistently been larger than the numbers of seats they secure in parliament. However there was a low turnout and landslide to retain FPTP. So the idiot saying there would be outrage if this happened to “leftie” parties is not terribly well informed and forgive me for being 🙄 about the revisionist arguments about Reform being hard done by.

Very curious, Farage is saying exactly the same thing as OP at his press conference. Maybe he reads Mumsnet.

If you have PR you vote for a party, you don’t have an MP that is accountable to you and small extremist groups can get into power and be a pita. There are ways around this but those are some of the problems with PR.

The 2011 referendum was for an AV system not PR. I think one of the reasons it failed was precisely because PR wasn't an option.

FPTP is a crock of shit bit it is what it is and Lib Dems have made the best of it.

They know where to target for seats.

Okay- I'm embarrassed to ask- but Mumsnet is mums net so help a gal out. I remember being told this when I was younger but can someone explain FPTP and PR to me in real simple terms.

Would help if you could use this elections numbers. So 412 seats means 412 candidates won their seat. That means there's 412 MPs sitting in Labour side of the House of Commons. Is this right?

You get just over 30% of the total votes cast but 60% of the seats, not a fair system but neither Labour or the tories would want to change it as it vastly favours them

Not necessarily true.
there’s many forms of PR (not just list PR)
Ireland has PR STV & you vote for a candidate

Most people vote for the party anyway in reality.

Everyone should have an equal vote. I live in a safe Labour constituency where turnout was extremely low because it's pointless voting.

This. There’s a few different ways to do PR.

I think one I read about once was you get two votes one for the “national” candidate/party to represent you and one for the “local” individual person to represent you. Then the seats in parliament represent a mixture of the MPs. It would mean larger constituencies though. Not sure what it’s called exactly but it’s the method of PR that gives the best of both.

For the same reason Labour got two thirds of the seats with only one third of the votes 🤷‍♀️

Labour didn’t increase their % of votes, but did increase their seats.

Its the FPTP system.

This is the system for the Scottish Parliament elections

As everyone except Keir Starmer seems to realise, this was not a Labour victory, it was people turning their backs on the Conservatives

You think he doesn't realise that? He's not thick you know. I think it was fairly obvious that he has a complete grasp of the situation from what he said in his speech - referencing those who voted Labour and then those who did not vote Labour.

So do those results mean 14% of the people voted for Reform?

It has everything to do with FPTP!

I said there are ways round it. I was explaining it in the simplest terms.

I said there are ways round it. I was explaining it in the simplest terms.

As I said on the other thread about this, if we had PR or another form of voting, people would vote in a different way.

I vote LD anyway, but I also voted LD because they had the best chance to beat the Tories in my area. But if we had PR, that consideration wouldn't apply and if eg I liked the Greens I might vote for them instead. I imagine the Greens would actually be the biggest beneficiary of a proportional system, rather than Reform or UKIP before them.

Yes - I only voted Lib Dem because that was the best chance we had in my area to get rid of the Tory seat (it was so close but Conservative just held it). But if we used PR instead of FPTP I would have voted Labour. Lots of people voted tactically, understanding the FPTP system, so you can't really rely on the percentage of votes to give a full picture.

Good point. I think you're right about Greens.

There are measures to combat the small extremist groups eg having a 5% or 10% threshold that a party needs to achieve to get MPs.

Yet a slightly higher vote share, and extra 2%.

I think there is a good chance that LibDems (who pushed for the 2011 referendum) are now thinking 'be careful what you wish for' and 'everything happens for a reason'... Disaster averted! The international press might otherwise not be reporting now on a landslide centre-left victory but on how the UK is another victim of far-right ideologies.

It's also worth noting that one of the reasons the Tories did so well in 2019 was because the Brexit party as it then was didn't stand. As I recall, they didn't get a massive share of the vote either, yet had a large majority.

Because we have a system in which you're really supposed to pick an mp who you think represents your consituancy best not just vote for who you want to lead the country.

Yes people can and do vote tactically but generally people won't vote in large numbers unless there is a good quality MP standing in their region who is going to advocate for their needs in the HOC. The LD's may have had less proportion of the votes but don't even try to tell me that Reform have more credible mps.

It's actually proof that the system works imo and is probably our best bet at keeping nutjobs out of politics