news just in...definitely hung parliament...no chance of conservative majority

[Heathcliffscathy]

according to the bbc

Now can you exaplain what proportional representation means?

(because I'm not actually too sure )

Disclaimer; I know what the word proportional means and I know what representation means, just not what it means in political terms/implications.

TooPragmatic I understand what you are saying but I am thinking that under a pr system people would have voted differently,I certainly wouldnt have voted in the way I did,I didnt vote for who I wanted to represent me and I certainly didnt vote for who I wanted to run the country.

Ah, I kind of get it but will still need an access course through my local college before I really understand it.

Thank you.

But isn't the LibDems share of the vote distorted by all the tactical voting? I voted LibDem but wouldn't necessarily if there was PR

its distorted, but probably downwards rather than in their favour.

All PR means is that parties would have a number of MP's which was directly proportional to their share of the popular vote. So if the Lib Dems got 30% of all votes, they would be allowed 30% of MPs in Parliament. The opposite of this is our first-past-the-post system where the party only get an MP if they win a constituency.

So, under the current system if the Tories get 10,000 votes in a constituency, and Labour and Lib Dems each get 8,000 votes, a Tory MP is elected. (The 16,000 votes for the Lib Dems and labour are effectively lost or useless.)

However, as Said points out, people would vote differently if we had the very different PR system.

sorry, not very good at explaining things!

Parliament isn't resuming until 23 May rather than the usual week earlier, to ensure they've finished faffing by then.

NC has always said electoral reform (ie looking at PR of some sort) would be a prerequisite for him being in a coalition. The Tories have always said they would never consider electoral reform. So him telling them "OK, you got most votes so have first refusal - try to form a coalition government" is basically saying "Ner ner" to them.

I hope the LDs don't give in, but doubt it - most of the country seems ripe for electoral reform, but on the other hand everyone wanted reform of the House of Lords except that any proposed solution was even worse!

sorry, x-posted LL

I just read about it and there are different forms of PR.

You could end up with eg if party A got 30% of the vote, Party B, 31%, Party C, 20% and Party D, 19%, then,

in the House of Commons you would have 30% A MPs, 31% B MPs, 20% C MPs and 19% D MPs.

So that when they voted to pass new laws, they would be voted on by a more representative (of who the electorate supports) mixture of MPs.

Or you could vote by marking your order of preference for candidates in your constituency and if the one who wins doesn't get at least a 50% majority, they take into account 2nd choices etc until they get a majority winner.

And there is another version where you put down 2 choices.

There are lots of different variants on PR: some are designed to maintain some sort of local representation; others to exclude very small (usually extreme) parties - eg a 5% minimum before you get anything; theres the sort where you list preferences (so discriminating against the most disliked parties)

Oh yes, we'll need education!

aha that explains it, thank you

sorry please keep chatting i'm enjoying lurking

lol at itsmeitsmeolord

MintHumbug
Presumably we could avoid the BNP scenario if we were to go with PR system that allows small parties to be discounted, as per the earlier posts. (On the other hand, that approach would undermine PR's claim on being more democratic.)

hold on a minute

so why did we have a local and national election

one election was to vote for your MP in Westminster. The other was to vote for your local gov't.

I would imagine the alternative vote system would be better for 'nice' smaller parties eg Green and less good for nasty ones. If I was given a list, I could imagine putting green but never in a million years BNP - I suspect that goes for the majority of people.

And there's still scope for tactical voting with PR. Remember the Euro elctions when the Greens urged voters to vote Green to keep the BNP out. It backfired and let the BNP in.