Proportional meaning every district/constituency has roughly the same number of people, like congressional districts here? I would have assumed they already had that but did not know that is not the case. So the constituencies there have different populations? Interesting. If they go to a PR system though it sounds like it still would be very difficult for one party to gain a majority. Or are they looking at some kind of alliance between Labour and the LD’s? That would guarantee leftist government I guess. Quite sad.
On a good note I see that Jacqui Smith, the minister who put Michael Savage on the banned in Britain list, was defeated. Mr Savage must be thrilled.
Proportional in the sense that seats in the House of Commons would be assigned roughly according to the level of the national vote.
Currently, each parliamentary constituency is a first-past-the-post individual election, like our elections in the US. The person in a particular constituency with the most votes wins the race.
Thus, even if your party gets, say, 30% of the vote across the board nationally, if it comes in second or worse in every constituency, none of your candidates will be elected.
This is what has traditionally happened to the Liberal Democrats, and what happened yesterday. They got 22% of the vote, but only 57 seats out of 650, because their candidates didn't get the most votes in many constituencies.
Under proportional representation, their national vote of roughly 22% would translate to some number of seats in Parliament (probably something north of 22%, since in this sort of system, very minor parties that don't get beyond a certain threshold don't get any seats at all, thus plumping up the totals of the major parties).
I've read also that the individual voting constituencies do vary in size more than one might wish, but don't really know how much they vary by, nor how big a problem this really is.
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