Proportional Representation = Far Right???

[RobynRB]

I was listening to the radio the other day and they were talking about the upcoming election. In fact they were discussing tactical voting and someone said that if they introduced proportional representation then there wouldn't be any need for tactical voting.

I can understand the frustration of people who live in safe seats as I live in one myself. Even in 1997 we still had a Conservative MP and I'm sure probably always will. I'm not solidly for either party, but I do believe that voting for the same party blindly over and over again - while complaining that you don't like what they do is ridiculous. I also think that like in 1997 it's time for a change.

Anyway, someone on the radio addressed this call for proportional representation by saying that this is what they do in Europe and that's why they have the rise of far right political parties.

So. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what this person was actually saying is that really we don't want people to be able to vote for who they 'think' they want. What we really want is for them to only actually be able to vote for two fairly similar centrist parties who basically follow the script and give the 'illusion' of choice by allowing voters to vote for 'fringe' parties without any actual danger of them getting into power.

It's hardly surprising that the two main parties are so interchangeable (in the grand scheme of things) and that they don't really have any incentive to do anything truly 'different'. And it's hardly surprising that a lot of voters are apathetic about voting given the lack of choice on the table and the feeling that voting outside those two parties is just wasting your time.

So is it unreasonable of me to actually want my safe seat vote to count for something, or am I just a far right apologist who wants Nigel and his fascist cronies to get into No10.

Hitler didn't come to power under PR. I don't think Mussolini did either.

Yes under PR Reform or someone similar would probably get about 20-25% of the vote. However, there would almost certainly be a government without them.

And strictly speaking it's wrong to try and prevent politicians who represent people from representation- however horrific you find them - where would you draw the line?

I'm Dutch. We've got Geert Wilders, who is an abomination of a politician. Lots of people voted for him last November under PR, to the point where yes, he has to be part of the governing coalition.

And all the most abhorrent parts of his party's manifesto have been culled - he's conceded on them to have a sniff of power.

He'll turn out to be an utter incompetent, the political pendulum will swing and he will sink back into single figures.

I favour PR. Even the awful deserve for their votes to count because that's real democracy.

I don't know where they're getting the idea that you don't need to vote tactically with PR. I live in Ireland where we have a single transferrable vote system. This is a form of PR. The recent EU elections were a nightmare as there were 27 candidates on the ballot in my constituency. If you want to be sure of your vote counting, you need to go down all the way usually. You also need to think about whose votes are likely to transfer to who, who is more at risk of elimination in your preferred candidates etc. It is very tactical. And very onerous if done properly.

@pointythings is correct. Fringe parties may get in to government with PR but there will more than likely be a junior party. That means they have to concede on many of the policies that got them elected in the first place. This pisses off their voters and makes them less electable in the next election. In Ireland, there is a history of the junior party being decimated in the next election.

Well that just sounds like a kind of PR designed to achieve the same as 'first past the post' doesn't it? To make sure the 'right' parties get to run the show.

What happens in the UK is that elements of the far right and far left attach themselves to the only two parties which have a chance of forming a government.

No, it's not. It's about ensuring your vote goes to your preferred candidates. There are 5 seats in my constituency so I might give my no 1 to my second favourite candidate as the first favourite is a very popular and effective sitting TD. That can obviously bite you in the bum though so mainly I (and I think most people) vote in order of preference and any tactical stuff will be to try and ensure my vote will push down my non-preferred candidates by ranking them towards the bottom.

I'm probably not explaining it very well😁

Germany has a mixed form...some first pastvthe post seats, some PR seats. There is a 5% hurdle to overcome before parties get seats via the PR route, the idea being to stop extremist parties entering parliament.

It may be a long ballot paper, but the system in the Irish Republic does allow for you to be represented by several people (TDs). So you still have representation if a TD is ill, lazy or objectionable in some way.

I mean I can understand the desire to guard against 'extremist' parties (especially in Germany) but surely if any party is actual 'extremist' they should be banned. If they are not 'extremist' then you should be able to vote for them.

It's this idea that you are given the 'illusion' of a meaningful vote, but nothing ever changes that irks me. And leads to complacency on the part of the major parties. I mean the Convservatives may lose this election, but they know maybe 5 years, maybe 10 they will be back (once everyone sees that Labour can't make everything perfect again -because they need at least 50 years to undo the mess the Tories made..... yawn).

I think I realised how bad the FPTP system in the UK is after the brexit referendum. There were people being interviewed who said they voted leave as a protest. They figured it wouldn't matter as they were in a strong remain area.

I was shocked at how politically naive they were in terms of their understanding of how a referendum works but I can see how that might be the case if you are used to your vote being meaningless and the best you could hope for is a prog
protest vote by voting against the status quo.

Interesting that NI use STV for the assembly and local elections and Scotland use it for local elections. Scotland and Wales also use another form of PR for assembly elections.

Interesting that NI use STV for the assembly and local elections and Scotland use it for local elections. Scotland and Wales also use another form of PR for assembly elections.

the recent shenanigans in Wales and Scotland don’t fill one with confidence in their political system though? The previous Scottish First minister was forced to resign ( actually his predecessor was too), thé Welsh bloke has hardly been sworn in before they are trying to get rid of him….

Your vote still counts in fptp even if your favoured candidate doesn’t win, because the pressure of all the votes he/she didn’t get will influence his/her politics. So if I am a conservative and I win in a seat where a lot of people voted Reform, I am likely to try to cater to those voters in my political choices. I think it’s a good system because it means more stable governments can form but all votes do still matter.

Yes I think this is the system we should adopt. Re far Right/Left parties having to compromise, well if they are minority parties, then they should not be able to impose their views on the majority who didn't vote for them. This is what happened with the Lib Dems here.You can't govern by consensus the whole time. Nothing will get done.
The benefit would be that proples votes would still be counted and more effective than fotp but also that we may have more collaboration and compromise instead of this constant short termism where parties just lurch from one election to another achieving little.
they are not 'extremist' then you should be able to vote for them
You can vote for them, but as in any other voting system if your views are not shared by enough people ( and fewer than 5% is pretty fringe) then you should not have a say over what happens to over 95% of the people in your country.

There's also been a bit of a rotating door system with the PM in Westminster which uses FPTP so I don't think that's a reflection of the voting mechanism.

There is no perfect system. However, I think PR is more reflective of people's views than FPTP and is therefore my preferred system.

It's not just the "far right" that gets into power under PR.

In Scotland, they use a system that is very similar to the one used in Germany.

How it works is that you get two votes. One vote is for your particular constituency and then one vote is for a party.

Who ever wins on a FPTP basis in each constituency becomes the MSP for that constituency. In Scotland there are 73 constituencies and so 73 constituency MSPs

The second vote is then to decide which particular party you want to vote for and it is this vote that decides who the extra MSPs are going to be.

What happens is that they work out how many MSPs of each party there should be according to the party vote (it's called the Regional Vote in Scotland) and then award places to candidates from each party in addition to their constituency MSPs to make up the numbers to the percentage they got in the Regional Vote.

It's probably easiest to explain with an example.

The Conservatives won, I believe, five constituency seats (which is 6.8% of the constituency seats) but in the Regional Vote they got 23.5% of the votes and so ended up being given another 26 seats to give them 24% of the total number of seats.

The Green Party didn't win a single constituency seat at all, but in the Regional Vote they got 8.1% of the votes and so ended up being given 8 seats or 6.2% of the total seats without winning a single constituency vote.

The Greens were then in a coalition with the SNP and they are largely responsible for trying to push through some of the more loony things that have come out of the Scottish Parliament over the last few years.

So, it's not just the "extreme right" that you have to worry about.

I think I realised how bad the FPTP system in the UK is after the brexit referendum. There were people being interviewed who said they voted leave as a protest. They figured it wouldn't matter as they were in a strong remain area

On the contrary. The Brexit vote means that 48% of the electorate can completely be ignored in everything. Which is great as that includes Reform and the Tories.

You're missing my point.

FPTP has resulted in many people believing their vote does not count. That has caused many to disengage from the political process and has resulted in the level of political ignorance i described

I would rather the Reform party got a small amount of seats under a proportional system than the two main parties race to the bottom chasing votes of Reform voters.

FPTP has resulted in many people believing their vote does not count.

Because they can see it doesn't.

But sauce, goose, gander and all that.

48% of the people that voted in the referendum discovered they counted for fuck all. So it that's the way politicians want to play it, it would be positively rude not to accept it.

Deliberately missing the point seems to advance people and policies far more than nuanced and sensible debate around the desirable and achievable. What's not to like ?

I forget the percentages I’m afraid. But wouldn’t Ukip have a couple of seats if we had PR?

Political ignorance allows the status quo to remain.

That's not actually a major problem as a party with a few seats will have next to no power, even if they are part of a coalition. Voters then become frustrated that the people they voted in don't do what they said they would and are less likely to vote for them next time round.

In contrast, if you see the people you want to elect getting nowhere because of the political system, you are much more likely to see it as victimisation and the status quo preserving itself. I think that is much more likely to lead to civil unrest etc.

Sorry, but that is touchingly naive. I live in a very Tory constituency and my MP never took sod all notice of the people who didn't vote for him. A non Tory vote had no voice at all, and that is how FPTP works. There's a reason why most of the world uses some form of PR.

Back in the 2015 general election (just before Brexit) UKIP won 12.6% of the vote, making them the third most popular party after Conservative and Labour, but they only won one seat.

If the UK used a similar voting method as Germany or Scotland then they would likely have had 82 seats. But there again, both the Lib Dems and the Green Party would also have had more seats as well, so it all balances out.

This is what parliament would have looked like in 2015 under PR compared to our current FPTP:
...........................FPTP PR
Conservatives 330 239
Labour...............232 198
UKIP........................1 82
Lib Dems...............8 51
Green Party..........1 24

The likely outcome under PR in 2015 would have been a Conservative/UKIP alliance assisted by the DUP.