Posted on 07/05/2024 6:47:11 AM PDT by DallasBiff
What is 'first past the post' and why does it lead to results like this?
The reason for the apparent disparity if the UK's first past the post (FPTP) voting system - in which the candidate with the largest number of votes in their constituency is elected.
It’s a simple premise, but one that benefits Labour and the Conservatives.
According to the Electoral Reform Society, which is against FPTP, this system leads to a situation where “even if millions of voters support the same party, if they are thinly spread out across the UK they may only get the largest number of votes in a couple of these contests – so only win a few MPs".
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.news.yahoo.com ...
Well Reform got the 3rd highest vote total.
They likely received substantial support from rural constituencies, rather than urban. That would allow them a high support total without getting any seats, like California is situated.
Complaining about first past past the post inevitably means the author likely would have wante proportional voting, which concentrates power into the hands of the party leadership because they get to choose who gets to sit in their seat.
Lord Buckekhead got what vote?
In the UK they have a first past the post voting system, where it’s common to have multiple people running for the same seat in Parliament, the person who wins the most votes wins and quite often gets nowhere near 50% of the vote because of how it’s divided up among all the candidates running.
This type of systems greatly favors Labor and the Torries.
In France, they have rounds of voting, in the first round, the top two vote winners run against each other at a later date everyone else gets eliminated.
4 MP seats at 14% of the vote - But Liberal Democrats at 12% get 71 seats!
Go to BBC Reform is in the Other category
It sorta can work that way in the house too.
Because other than immigration the Reform platform sucks especially on economics. Liz Truss redux.
> In France, they have rounds of voting, in the first round, the top two vote winners run against each other at a later date everyone else gets eliminated. <
That’s an excellent system. It eliminates the spoiler effect, and gives third parties a chance. At a minimum, we should be doing that here for presidential elections.
It would have changed the outcome of a couple of recent Presidential elections IMO.
Think back to Bill Clinton getting elected the first time, I think he got 43% of the vote, Ross Perot sucked up nearly 20% of the votes, if two weeks later after Perot was eliminated, Clinton had to run against Bush Sr the outcome might have been different.
Read the Constitution. President is not elected by the overall popular vote, (thank God)! We are a Republic, not a *spit* democracy *spit*.
It’s pretty much the same as here. There are 435 seats in Congress and therefore 435 separate elections. If a party lost each election by one vote, the total vote would be very close to 50%, yet the number of seats won would be zero.
Reform split the right. If this article is to be believed, in votes, Labour did worse than in the previous election, but got more seats. Sunak’s timing was good, but he hadn’t reckoned on Reform hiving off such a big chunk of the Tory vote. It hadn’t, in previous outings. His mistake? He should have found a way to accommodate Farage, headed off the Tory schism.
This is what happens when big political parties forget they are coalitions of often contradictory interests, and that at least some nominal amount of attention must be paid to the interests of key interests. For Reform, it’s also a reminder that its faction is too small to get even 5% of the seats, let alone a majority, that it would be better off with the Tories.
Everyone knows that we were just discussing hypotheticals and the UK versus French voting systems.
It’s not rocket science and there’s no jerrymandering...
The British parliamentary system of government is rather simple. There is no vote for a party, you vote for a candidate that represents that party in the constituency where you reside. The candidate with the most votes within each constituency is declared the winner of that constituency seat..
The constituencies amount to the following:
England 543
Scotland 57
Wales 32
Northern Ireland 18
There are 650 constituencies in total and the party with 326 of more seats forms the government, and the leader of that party becomes the Prime Minister... If no party has 326 seats in parliament, you then have a minority government and coalitions between parties will be the usual result. The leader of the party with the most minority votes is typically chosen as Prime Minister.
Unlike the United States where 2 parties dominate your political elections, there are several parties in England and all of these parties suck up votes from the main contenders... The Conservatives and Labour.
At the end of the day, vote totals are of no consequence in the over all seat count... The seat count is based on individual constituencies. So while Reform may have received the 3rd highest vote total... That total is spread out over 650 constituencies throughout the UK.
Nigel is the British Trump, Sunak is the British Liz Cheney.
We have essentially the same system. Our two parteies are far more dominant. Except in POTUS elections and some local elections the minority parties are invisible. And even in local elections they act as spoilers. See NY’s Liberal and Conservative Parties.
In elections like ours or the UK’s pluralities win.
Do you think that results with appropriate representation in Parliament?
No, it’s simple majority wins—like the vast majority of our races.
[Nigel is the British Trump, Sunak is the British Liz Cheney.]
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