May 7 was the most disproportionate election in British history,

[al**bear]

New analysis by the Electoral Reform Society (ERS)

Ukip could have won as many as 80 seats in the general election under a different voting system, according to a new report.

A more proportional method of allocating seats would have dramatically increased the size of Nigel Farage's party in the House of Commons, while the Greens could have ended up with 20 MPs.

Ukip and the Greens received five million votes on May 7, but ended up with just one MP each.

New analysis by the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) suggests that an alternative system of voting would have led to both parties picking up many more seats, while the Conservatives would have seen their tally of MPs fall by almost 100.

"May 7 was the most disproportionate election in British history," said Katie Ghose, chief executive of the ERS.

"It's about time we had a fairer system for electing our MPs.

[al**bear]

"We have an archaic and divisive voting system that leaves millions disenfranchised and forces millions more to feel that they have to vote for a 'lesser evil', instead of who they really support. The Greens and Ukip won 5m votes and just two seats between them. This is simply unsustainable - and can only end badly."

In a survey commissioned by the ERS from YouGov, over 40,000 people were asked how they would have voted in the general election had they been required to rank the parties in order of preference.

This is different from the current "winners takes all" system, also known as First Past The Post.

The survey suggests that not only would people vote differently under a more proportional system, but also that the current House of Commons would not look quite so dominated by the Conservatives and Labour.

Under an alternative vote system, where voters' preferences are reallocated until one candidate gets over 50% of the vote, the election result would not be that dissimilar, with the Conservatives winning 337 seats (an increase of six), Labour 227 (-5), the SNP 54 (-2), the Lib Dems 9 (+1), Plaid Cymru 3 (no change), Ukip 1 (no change) and the Greens 1 (no change).

But under a single transferable vote (STV) system, similar to the kind currently used in Scottish local elections, the Conservatives would have won 276 seats (-55), Labour 236 (+4), the SNP 34 (-22), the Lib Dems 26 (+18), Plaid Cymru 3 (nc), Ukip 54 (+53) and the Greens 3 (+2).

Under a list-based system of proportional representation, similar to the kind used in European elections, the outcome would have been even more different. Here the Conservatives would have won 242 seats (-89), Labour 208 (-24), the SNP 30 (-26), the Lib Dems 47 (+39), Plaid Cymru 5 (+2), Ukip 80 (+79) and the Greens 20 (+19).

"First Past the Post is artificially dividing the UK," said Ms Ghose, "giving the SNP nearly all Scottish seats on half the vote, while excluding Labour from the south of England and over-representing them in Wales.

"At the same time, cross-community parties in Northern Ireland got a tenth of the vote and zero seats, yet the DUP received nearly half the seats on just a quarter of the vote.

"This situation is unsustainable if the prime minister truly wants a 'one nation' Britain. Our voting system is breaking up Britain. The number of votes cast for parties other than the three main parties rose to its highest ever level on May 7 - the dawn of truly multi-party politics, but voters are being held back by an archaic and broken voting system designed for two-party politics."

The Electoral Reform Society's report, titled The 2015 General Election: A Voting System in Crisis, also notes that:

:: 50% of votes in the election (22m) went to losing candidates

:: 2.8m voters were likely to have voted "tactically"

:: The election saw an MP win on the lowest vote share in electoral history: 24.5% in Belfast South

:: 331 of 650 MPs were elected on under 50% of the vote, and 191 with less than 30% of the electorate

[upthecreekyetagain]

All the verbiage coming out of the Electoral Reform Society totally ignores the basis of our democracy - we vote for individuals to represent us not political parties.

All that the 'minor' parties have to do is to choose candidates that are more attractive to the voters in a constituency than other candidates standing for election.

If they don't and an opposition candidate gets more votes than they do then the people have spoken and the result should be accepted - it's no more democratic to claim that other candidates in the same party got votes as well and if we add them up we should have x number of MPs than it would be for a successful candidate to pass on the excess votes they received to a mate who needs them to win their election!

If you want 'proportional' representation based on party affiliations then the only true method would be for the party leaders to draw up a list of potential MPs ranked in order of preference - we could then have a single election where we all vote for the party we prefer and the MPs would be drawn from the party lists depending on the voting pattern.

I don't want that kind of system.  It's no good claiming that various different proposed methods of PR keep the system where we vote for individuals because they don't and those calling for PR don't want it to.  They all want representatives based on political parties.

[cee-dee]

The same applies to many things, people don't like the result of something so bleat that the "rules" are "wrong" so should be changed to ensure that what they want gets done.

Someone wins a race by a short head in the last yard, the losers then complain they would have won if the race was shorter?

Where does it end?

[fallen-archie]

The notion that we vote for an individual is fine but flawed, in the last century there have been just a handful of truly Independent MPs elected (The Dr who twice won Wyre Forest being one and Martin Bell was another). The UK remains a two party state and one or the other will always hold sway under the current system. When you examine the sums it seems hardly democratic furthermore the two parties are vulnerable to splinter groups within their own structures wh can further influence legislation the very few of the electorate would support. All of this makes a lost of people apathetic toward our democracy, It's all very well if you are a devout Tory or Labour supporter you will at some stage get a result but what of the majority? What about those with strong views on Defence strategy, The uncontrolled growth we endlessly pursue, those who pay high levels of Tax as motorists but who spend their lives dodging pot holes.
Somehow these views need to be accommodated and weighed fairly against other priorities.I can see no reason why anyone in a truly democratic society could object to fair representation.
As for using sporting analogies I seem to recal the stubbornness of FIFA in dismissing calls for goal line technology, it was introduced in Tennis with great success likewise Rugby codes accepted it too, it finally did get into soccer but took far too long and enormous pressure not bleating to make it happen. As for FIFA well we all can now see what sticking to the status quo brings, corruption,deceit, maladministration, bribery and the loyal fans left powerless to act, Sound familiar?

[cee-dee]

What of the majority who did not vote for these also-ran parties?

Is their majority to be ignored to favour these here-today, gone-tomorrow has-beens?

The gang of four were going to do wonders to hear them talk and what happened? Failed and hooked up with the Liberals. The Lib-Dems had their chance and what did they do wth it? Where's the BUP now? Are they in disguise under the UKIP banner? The Greens? PC?

All of them make claims about the voting system but the long and the short of it is that the majority of people in the country just do not support them and that's that!

[jd.linklater]

My vote always goes to the party I want to see in power. I have never voted for an individual to represent me personally. As I said on a previous thread, we are no longer a two party electorate and haven't been for many years. The current system leaves far too many people unrepresented which is why we have such poor turnouts.

[cee-dee]

But why should "losers" claim they're not represented?

They're not representative of the majority view anyway, they're a minority. If they had a more appealing point of view they'd get more votes.

[suzieseaside]

I wonder what proportion of the electorate neither voted for which candidate they preferred or which party they preferred, but rather felt they would have to vote tactically to try to stop the party they didn't want to get in.

I don't know which system of alternative voting would be fairer as I haven't considered them in detail, but it seems mad to me that the current system encourages tactical voting rather than 'positive' voting (for want of a better word).

[cee-dee]

Consider also the tactics of those who didn't vote at all? What are they thinking?

Remember that people have one vote and one vote only so how can their choice of the way they voted be considered as tactical voting when they've absolutely no idea whether anyone else will do the same or whether their "tactical vote" will have any effect whatsoever?

[suzieseaside]

They might not know if a tactical vote would affect an outcome, but there was plenty of info in the media about the close-run constituencies that could be affected by tactical voting.

Tactical voting has always been around, according to Dr Stephen Fisher, an expert in political sociology at Oxford University. He estimates up to 9% of voters mark their ballot papers tactically, influencing the results of about 45 seats in the process.

Also, it seems, there were thousands of pledges for vote-swapping.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32410531

[cee-dee]

I don't think vote swapping is done on a large enough scale to make any difference and voting in a constituency other than your own is hardly the right thing to do?

That fellow "estimates"........ he means "guesses" dosn't he?

On the subject of those who don't vote, those who love statistics will come up with a pecentage and some might say that percentage of voters are unrepresented......

You can twiddle with statistics and make them mean what you like if you're that way inclined and saying that the "large" numbers of UKIP voters who only "got" one MP is just another play on statistics.

[fallen-archie]

The world has too many losers, 4m votes = 1 seat those people certainly were losers but by default. If that number of voters felt so strongly about the policies of UKIP it is folly for them to be ignored. This isn't a football match it is a rigged competition where real choice is restricted to two parties. Even as a society we are broken into socio economic groups and Marketing companies will disect to a far greater degree In both instances this is to reflect either our place in society based largely on wealth or to closely align individuals to products because we do have differences far and above the offering of two parties. It is important that groups are represented to have a progressive and inclusive democracy. Those who support the status quo do so because their views have a good chance of being aired, Time to change, time to accept the point of view others put forward, that might be a painful thought for some but it is the logical and correct thing to do.

[jd.linklater]

---

@cee-dee wrote:

But why should "losers" claim they're not represented?

They're not representative of the majority view anyway, they're a minority. If they had a more appealing point of view they'd get more votes.

---

I simply cannot see any logic in your argument ceedee. 12.6% of votes cast went to UKIP and 3.8% to the Green Party. That's over 16% of voters (all 5million of them) who between them have secured two seats in Parliament. Two MPs amongst 650, what possible weight can those two voices carry on any issues raised. How the devil can you say they are being represented? It is only the failings of the current system which has left them with so few seats, this has to change. 
 

[suzieseaside]

I daresay that the expert in Political Sociology at Oxford has more than a guess behind his estimate.

Maybe vote-swapping doesn't make much difference overall but It can and has made a difference to a few seats - such as these two in 2001.

Tactical voting and internet vote-swapping have had more impact in the UK (than USA), though. In the 2001 election, the Lib Dems captured Cheadle in Cheshire from the Conservatives with a majority of 33. Online vote trading had seen 47 Labour supporters in Cheadle agree to vote Lib Dem. Assuming they kept their bargain, these vote-traders turned the tide on the Conservatives. There was a similar result in South Dorset, where a Labour majority of 153 followed 185 internet vote-trade pledges.

[That Labour MP in South Dorset was IMO the best MP we have ever had here.]

Whether it's the right thing to do I think rather depends on whether you think the voting system is a fair representation in the first place.  Many people are likely to feel frustrated by knowing their vote is meaningless and think that vote-swapping is good for democracy.  Unless it is made illegal I suspect that vote-swapping will increase in the future thanks to the internet.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7330-voters-empowered-by-internet-swap-shop.html#.VWxp2XDbLIU

[cee-dee]

The sooner vote swapping is made illegal, the better. People who do that are purporting to be someone they're not.

Why should a bunch of losers force the will of a greater majority to suffer someone for whom a majority didn't vote as their MP?

Twiddling with the current system is only a way of bringing in some off-beat minor parties to cause lots of delay in getting anything done, that is if anything ever does get done.

An old joke about committees was that the only thing they agreed at their meeting was when to hold the next meeting. Sadly. it's often true and so it will be if a "government" was comprised of a way-out collection people who'd been forced on the rest by a change in the voting system.

[jd.linklater]

---

@cee-dee wrote:

The sooner vote swapping is made illegal, the better. People who do that are purporting to be someone they're not.

Why should a bunch of losers force the will of a greater majority to suffer someone for whom a majority didn't vote as their MP?

Twiddling with the current system is only a way of bringing in some off-beat minor parties to cause lots of delay in getting anything done, that is if anything ever does get done.

An old joke about committees was that the only thing they agreed at their meeting was when to hold the next meeting. Sadly. it's often true and so it will be if a "government" was comprised of a way-out collection people who'd been forced on the rest by a change in the voting system.

---

Making disparaging remarks about those who disagree with your line of thinking is no way to win an argument. It's little better than swearing,  it just shows a lack of intellect.

[merehazle]

---

@jd.linklater wrote:

---

@cee-dee wrote:

But why should "losers" claim they're not represented?

They're not representative of the majority view anyway, they're a minority. If they had a more appealing point of view they'd get more votes.

---

I simply cannot see any logic in your argument ceedee. 12.6% of votes cast went to UKIP and 3.8% to the Green Party. That's over 16% of voters (all 5million of them) who between them have secured two seats in Parliament. Two MPs amongst 650, what possible weight can those two voices carry on any issues raised. How the devil can you say they are being represented? It is only the failings of the current system which has left them with so few seats, this has to change. 
 

---

Neither can I see any logic in it.    (I'm reminded of that word ''microscopic'').

And these idiots who call Farage a loser need to wake up. UKIP had 3rd biggest votes.  

We are the losers - our political system is broken. Everyone knows the system is unfair- and makes a nonsense of us calling ourselves a democracy. 

And neither can I understand why we need 650 MP's, plus another 750 MEP's, and 1000 Peers in order to run such a small economy, when the same result could be achieved by half their number? Think of the savings. 

[cee-dee]

I'm not trying to win an argument. It's not "winning", it's stating a fact (or three).

As for diparaging, none of my comments were about any poster on here. They were statements of facts about those (amongst the wider population) who want to change the rules to suit themselves because the majority do not share their line of thinking and on that score, they were a bunch of losers.

Farage was a loser, he was not elected.

Coming third is also coming in a loser.

[astrologica]

Does any of this actually matter? When the UK is just one of the United States of Europe, and we are ruled by obscure persons in Brussels, all our MPs will be unnecessary and out of a job, and Westminster will become a museum.