Do you know how votes translate to Seats?

[Woj]

Labour got nearly twice as many Seats as they did Votes (by percentage).

That's not right, surely?!?!?!

You vote for your local MP. If they get one more vote than the opposition, they get the seat. If that happens everywhere, theoretically one party could have 51% of the vote (or less!) And every seat.

Its good for local politics but can be unrepresentative across the country.

There was a referendum in 2011 to see if we wanted an alternative voting system and those that bothered to vote decided in favour of the current fptp system.

The solution to this is proportional representation but that does tend to lead to the sort of governments where 3 parties or so have to thrash out a coalition because none of them achieve a strong majority.

Of course it's right in a FPTP system.
If you want a proportional representation system with more (unstable) coalitions and smaller niche parties having the balance of power then you need to campaign for it.

Ok, taking this on face value.

UK is broken up into local constituencies (areas) everyone within that area votes for who they want their local MP to be. The winner in each area has a seat in the House of Commons. So the winning party is the effectively the most popular in the majority of areas, not necessarily the most popular across all voters as a whole.

The system is called first past the post. There are other alternatives used in other countries.

It's what happened when there were three main parties, Labour, Tory, & Lib Dems - the vote is divided three ways and the party that gets even only slightly more votes gets the seat, and the other two parties get nothing.

The next GE will be different with Reform in the mix.

A lot of tactical voting will be in order I hope!

It’s because we have First past the post - which worked extremely well when we had just two parties, and not too badly when were three. The advantage of our system is that you have an MP linked geographically with their constituency - if we had PR, not only would we end up with weak, coalition governments doing trade-offs so that they were ever further removed from the voters and nobody would know what you would actually end up with, it would also be even more London-centric than it already is. At least with our system, those representing rural constituencies have to take an interest in farming and the concerns of those in the countryside (lack of public transport, effects of pylons, difficulties of young people wanting to stay in the area etc). The shocking thing is that our Labour government with its large majority was put there by only 20% of the electorate, and only 32% of those who voted.

Reform was big in a lot of elections last year.

Yes they were but not to the extent that is predicted, according to polling, for the coming year - they now seem to be a fixture in the system, rather than fringe as they were last time.

Goodness, OP hasn't come back 😮

@MotorbikeStuntRider to be fair it wasn't a very well worded referendum. Not a great choice of options.

I agree - it was lumped in with local elections which have a very poor turn out and wasn't promoted (either option). If it happened now, with social media there would be a lot more interest and hopefully different options. But... we did have the chance to change, whether it offered a better option is a whole other debate 😁

Very true.

Not sure that people who don’t understand how the system works should be allowed to vote…

How many people actually voted though. That’s the biggest problem. Low turnout. Then everyone moans about the party in power but didn’t actually vote

That's how it works in the UK. It's always clear in election coverage.

Unless you are very young or new to the country, have you been living under a rock?

Of course it can be argued as unfair, but many of the alternatives are also unpalatable, eg giving proportional power to extreme parties.

Or if they didn't understand what they were voting for.....

@MotorbikeStuntRider , as I recall we were offered an alternative specifically which people voted against. We were not asked if we favoured an alternative per se.

There are PR systems where you still get a local representative, so that's no reason to keep the current (FPTP) system.

The problem with FPTP is exactly as you point out - THE opposition, singular. It only works with 2 viable choices.

Were it goes wrong is that there has always been more than 2 Parties you could technically vote for, and by now there's more than 2 viable choices!

^https://www.change.org/MakeVotingMeaningful^

Assuming that those that turned up had an idea what AV is...

I call it FPTP+ in that it's basically the same with 1 small (but not unimportant) improvement. It's still "winner takes it all" :-(

It was largely a non-choice although I voted for AV on the above basis.

^https://www.change.org/MakeVotingMeaningful^

The options are:

1. A single Party gets elected with ~1/3rd of the votes and then 'decides' what happens to all of us.
2. A coalition of Parties who have to figure out compromises (which is exactly what we all do in everyday life) so that everybody gets a bit of everything, in proportion to how many people wanted what.

Most developed Countries have gone with Option 2.
Most of those still using FPTP are ex-British Colonies!

^https://www.change.org/MakeVotingMeaningful^

I have been, for ages, and still am :-)

Polls indicate that more than ever people find FPTP unfair.

^https://www.change.org/MakeVotingMeaningful^

First past the post is only used in Belarus and the UK of those countries in Europe that have voting.

It is not only unrepresentative in my opinion when it comes to vote share. A system of PR I think would allow more for a personal vote, and I think there would be more women and a wider age range of MPs chosen.

The record for an MP being elected on a minority is 24.3%!!
Belfast South if I remember correctly...

^https://www.change.org/MakeVotingMeaningful^

Yes. I was taught this in school 30+ years ago.

and we had a referendum on this in 2011.

we voted to retain FPTP

we have various versions of PR currently in use for devolved governments and local elections