So can anyone tell me, if there was PR already in place

[TheHouseofMirth]

what the result of this election would have been?

Good question... I've been thinking all day that the parties' results of total votes were so close that we'd be in the same situation anyway. May be wrong though and happy to be corrected!

That's what I was thinking but everyone's been so obsessed with electoral reform for the past 2 days that I thought I'd misunderstood the implications.

1 CON 36.20% 235 seats - actual 298
2 LAB 29.20% 190 seats - actual 253
3 LD 22.90% 149 seats - actual 53
4 Others 11.70% 76 seats - actual 46

(C+P from LL post yesterday)

No way to extrapolate.

You would have to account for tactical votes, people whose preference is a minority party eg Green, decide whether it was a purely national vote or a super-constituency and possibly account for STV.

Assuming everyone had voted the same way and you do it on a national level you can work out the seats by taking the % vote and reverse engineering it to fill 649 seats (1 constituency to vote).

Oh you mean in practical terms? The same pretty much. There's no clear majority and a coalition would need to form but the numbers would be different.

Also the exact representation if the smaller parties would need to he considered.

But effectively there would be no one party in overall control as we are used to?

Nope. And probably never would be. Even countries which seem to have a single party majority under PR (the UMP in France) are actually coalition parties if that makes sense? Germany has a lot of parties in a power sharing coalition and it works fine so it's not necesarily a bad thing. It just isn't the way our system works and the House of Commons would need a redesign to make it more coalition friendly. It's very adversarial at the moment.

It's interesting to speculate.

1 school of thought says more people would have voted Lib Dem but didn't because keeping Lab or Con out in a Lab/Con marginal is more important.

Another says fewer votes for the LDs who are 'the alternative' in Lab or Con safe seats.

1 says more power to the minority parties with more representation as a Green vote is no longer a wasted vote.

Another says you would need a % bar to prevent too many little parties getting in, effectively locking minorities with widespread support out but aowing those with highly localised support like the BNP in.

Then there's the questionof what happens to the Nationalists under a national PR vote. They tend not to get a big enough share nationally to be significant but they're obviously wanted at constituency level.

Too many variables in how it would be carried out to give a firm answer but coalition and negotiation/consensus almost inevitable.

But the bottom line is that we'd all have to get used to pacts, coalitions and a much more fluis type of government?

Fluid even.

Bottom line? Probably!

It's just a totally different way of doing political business.

I realise that and I just wonder how many people currently getting excited by the thought of PR have actually thought through what it means? I don't mean those who've been committed to campaigining for it but it seems many people have jumped on this bandwagon since Thursday without fully understanding it.

That said, I think the turnout and increased interest in politics is really heartening.

They haven't, and they don't understand it.

I've explained it so many times on FB my head is spnning. Fewer times on here, thankfully!

PR is not the magic pill, it wouldn't really have changed anything if everyone had voted tge way they did, in fact it could have made things messier. But of course the $64 million question is would people have voted the same?

Without knowing what form PR would take (and that's something else people don't understand) there's no way to say 'if we had PR this wouldn't happen' because it probably would...

Agree with you re: turnout and interest though.

I think if we had PR then the proportions of votes would have been entirely different. I think protest votes for extremist parties might be less common if there was a risk of them actually getting a seat. I think votes for the Lib Dems and the Greens would go up dramatically as people would not longer see them as a wasted vote or effectively helping a party they hate. So basically it's impossible to say what would have happened under PR.

But that Tory MPs assertion that the party advocating PR came third means that there's no mandate for change is entirely missing the point.

But that completely ignores the sector of voters who vote LD to keep a Lab or Con candidate out, gaelic. And it depends how the system works...

Agree with your view on the Tory reaction though. They are underestimating or willfully misinterpreting the LD result.

I think the opinion polls pre-Election show that many more people would have voted Lib Dem if they hadn't been scared off by the potential benefits one or other of the main parties.

frakkin - your posts are very good on this subject

Interestingly looking at the lists on Wikipedia it appears that the UK and countries that have had strong links with the UK in the past (ex-colonies in particular) are the main countries that use first past the post.

A very large number of other countries use one form or another of proportional representation, without having noticeably ineffective politics. The list is here.

Of course the degree of proportionality varies - I know there were arguments in Spain after the last election about how the electoral system there disadvantaged smaller parties.

I spent far too much time arguing this through as a student!

Polls are often inaccurate because of the way they're carried out. The Lib Dems poll highly because the demographic which supports them (18-35) is more vocal and willing to answer questions. Older people who have only ever voted Labour or Tory tend not to want to answer polls or political surveys.

Then there are people who are genuinely split - I agree with the LDs on sone issues, the Conservatives on others and I even like bits of Labour policy. That said I vote in a Toey safe seat, I know, like and respect my MP and I feel confident in him. That counts for a lot. However poll me on a given issue and there's an even chance I'll go for the LD option.

Rubbish in = rubbish out however you crunch the numbers.

Most countries have switched to a form of PR but it's had varying degrees of success. In France you have a majority govt which is actually an umbrella party, in Germany many different parties are working together, Austria has swung to the right and Belgium is just mired in argument. It does take a big change in attitude though and there really is no way to say how it would have turned out.

To answer the OP. The 'result' is debatable but the outcome would be very similar. In countries with a PR voting system when the polls close the wheeling and dealing starts. That is the norm rather than, as in our case, the exception. There is more than one system of PR, of course.

LDs were not 'scared off' by the potential benefits of the other main parties. The postal votes were much more strongly LD than the votes on the day. What changed in the intervening week was that Clegg promised to go with the party with the most seats as his first option.. i.e. the Tories. Given how much anger there is now from many LD supporters that their vote could help form a Conservative government, I think the prospect of 'Vote Clegg, get Cameron' was a big part of what scared them off.... even in places with a good LD majority.