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First Past the Post, everybody:
That’s:
- Conservatives: 19.5% of seats from 22.9% of the vote
- Labour: 63.7% of seats from 35.2% of the vote
- LibDems: 10.5% of seats from 11.3% of the vote
- Reform: 0.6% of seats from 14.5% of the vote
- SNP: 1.2% of seats from 2.5% of the vote
- Others: 4% of seats from 13.6% of the vote
The two largest parties got less than 60% of the national vote but over 80% of seats. FPTP is preventing us from being what we are: a multi party democracy.
And the depressing thing is that it will never change because the only parties with the power to change it benefit from the current system.
You came so close in 2011. I wonder what could have happened if Clegg had stuck to his guns and insisted on a referendum on a proportional system, to remove the “progressive no” (to borrow a term from a recent Australian constitutional referendum) argument against the reform.
The Lib Dems got so excited about being granted a referendum that they forgot to take it seriously.
AV was a terrible system and arguably worse than FPTP. It’s a more complicated system for people to vote in, and would potentially lead to even more disproportionate results.
and arguably worse than FPTP
Sorry but no. Absolutely no. The only downside is the ability to use it as an excuse not to upgrade to a proportional system in the future.
More complicated? Yeah, I guess. But not enough to actually matter. Not unless you think British people are just exceptionally stupid compared to Australians.
More disproportionate results? Impossible. They’re both single-winner systems. The key difference is that FPTP allows a plurality to win while IRV requires a majority. It might create a situation where it seems less proportionate, but that’s only because you reduce strategic voting so people are voting their true beliefs, so candidates that weren’t going to win under either system end up getting more votes under IRV. But the ultimate result is that the candidate who wins in each electorate is the one who had the most support.
“The conservatives and lib dems look pretty proportional to me. 10/10 voting system” /s
The British were given the choice and voted against proportional representation. They deserve the duopoly and everything that flows from that e.g. terrible healthcare, the illegal war in Iraq, royals, pointless and expensive aircraft carriers. They chose to leave the only institution that is defending their basic freedoms. These bigoted Dunning Kruger morons cannot be told.
What an utterly moronic stance that stems totally from your complete lack of understanding of what was actually offered.
Proportional representation was never on the table, what was offered was single transferable vote, which would keep the first past the post system but add the option to transfer your vote to another candidate if your preferred candidate lost. There was never proportional representation stop with the false narrative.
Instant Runoff was on the table in the 2011 referendum. Very similar to STV, but generally STV is what’s referred to in a multi-winner situation. Australia uses STV in the Senate, as does the Irish Dáil. IRV is what Australia uses in the House of Representatives, and a few areas of the US, like Maine. STV actually is a proportional (or at least quasi-proportional) system, unlike IRV.
But you’re right that unfortunately proportional representation has never been on the table in the UK. I don’t agree with the guy’s more recent takes on comedy and “free speech”, but I have great respect for the fact that this is something John Cleese has been on about since 1987. And again in 1998. And most recently in 2018.
The reason a lot of people voted against it was that there was a concern that if it was implemented the government would consider themselves to have taken action and would just shut down any talk about proportional representation by arguing that we already had it. Even though we wouldn’t have.
The theory was that by not voting for the weak source option the idea of proportional representation could be floated at a later date, and to be honest I actually agree with the analysis.
Not an unreasonable concern, to be honest. In politics there is often a balance to be struck between “letting the perfect be the enemy of the good”, and “not allowing a weak compromise option that’s just not good enough to pass because it’s ever so slightly better than the status quo”.
We use IRV for our House of Representatives, which is by far the more politically significant chamber, and it sucks. Our most recent federal election saw just 4 Greens MPs elected after an absolute record performance for them (their previous best was 1). That’s 2.7% of seats from their over 12% of first-preference votes (not to mention votes for closely-aligned minor parties like Animal Justice Party). Labor (yes…we spell it the American way in this one specific context, for some reason) got 51.3% of seats from 32.6% of the first preference votes.
But on the other hand, it is better than FPTP. Enormously better. Those 4 Greens seats would probably be 0 with FPTP, because who would vote for them? They first got into Parliament thanks to receiving preferences, and many of the new seats they won in 2022 were dangerously tight. I know even as an ardent Greens supporter, I would never have voted for the Greens under FPTP, because I’d be terrified of increasing the chance that the conservative LNP won instead of Labor.
If I were voting in the UK in a referendum like the 2011 one, I don’t know how I would vote. Probably yes, but the threat of stalling any progress to an even better system is strong enough it’s hard to blame people who vote no on that grounds.
The British were given the choice and voted against proportional representation. They deserve the duopoly and everything that flows from that e.g. terrible healthcare, the illegal war in Iraq,
And time travelling powers apparently 🤣🤣😂.
🤡
What’s wrong with Pointless? It beats the shit out of most game shows.
Pointless is a fucking great premise for a game.
But whoever they poll to determine the points makes me sometimes feel utterly insane watching the show. When they don’t know obscure Australian towns as well as me, that’s one thing, and not very surprising. But when major Disney Renaissance films, or some other thing that to me is part of the most fundamental 21st century culture, scores in the low 20s, it makes it very hard to relate to the show.
If the polling was done by an audience more representative of the general population in terms of age, instead of clearly skewing very old, it would be greatly to the show’s benefit.
It’s a Tory wipeout in Wales!
CON: 0 (-12)
Love to see it.
I’m watching the BBC program, currently just discussing the exit poll before any official results.
Exit poll shows conservatives losing 241 seats, Labour landslide predicted with 410 seats. Not a huge surprise, but a welcome start.
I did find it entertaining that the labour guest in the show is congratulating Kier Starmer and Co. On a job well done, when really this is almost entirely caused by Tory self destruction.
here is the entire exit poll for everyone interested btw:
Peter Mandelson? I think he had a point in that Starmer has changed the party from unelectable with Corbyn (which sadly, they were) to a more than realistic prospect for a sensible alternative to the Tories.
You’re right of course that the Conservatives have utterly fucked the pooch (not to mention the country) but Starmer has nonetheless made a massive change in making the party palatable to many, many more people (not that I personally agree with quite a lot of his policies and policy reversals)
Interestingly, Labour have less of the vote (proportionaly) than when Corbyn was at the helm.
I agree, and I do infinitely prefer Corbyn. I didn’t vote Labour this time. I think the nuance here is that Corbyn motivated Tory voters to vote against him, whereas Starmer was less threatening to them, so they didn’t worry so much about vote splitting or staying home
That’s a fair take, and yes it was Mandelson.
Just seen Count Binface arrive for the count, shit just got real.
I’ve just switched over to watch Sky News’ feed on YouTube. The allow chat, which for a serious news organisation is absolutely wild to me.
And the chatters are absolutely insane. Not in a good way. There’s no attempt to discuss anything, just people spamming “💙💙 REFORM IS RISING 💙💙” and “🟥🟥 Labour Forever 🟥🟥🟥🟥”. And weirdest of all, many variations on “netherite helmet trim”.
Wtf does netherite helmet trim mean?
Minecraft.
And the chatters are absolutely insane. Not in a good way. There’s no attempt to discuss anything, just people spamming “💙💙 REFORM IS RISING 💙💙”
Reform have an online army that swarms comment threads. Not sure how many of them are based in Russia.
Minecraft
Oh yeah I worked that out thanks to Google. But I don’t get the connection to the election, or why so many people were spamming it.
Trolls I suppose.
Maybe because of the fake Farage playing minecraft videos?
Honestly not very sure what else it would be.
Memecraft
the proper way to watch youtube chat is to click on the x.
Ha! Ok that got a serious laugh from me.
But honestly, other YouTube live streams I’ve watched have actually had really great chats. Lots of fun discussion with other chatters or between chat and the streamer. I wouldn’t expect a news org to be engaging with the chat themselves, but I would have hoped that chat could talk amongst themselves in a civil manner. It’s kinda disappointed how they’re not.
i’m actually only half serious since there are a lot of channels i watch that are great communities too. just not the political ones :)
Ree Smog is out! I repeat, Ree Smog is out!
Yes, despite many leftists decrying Labour’s centreward shift, I think this is a good result. This result was helped by that shift in no small part.
Starmer is very well spoken and his morning after speech does well to inspire confidence.
Top hat wanker! Truss lost too, this is amazing.
Oh good, so now Truss can now piss off too the US and moan about the apparent conspiracy that was against her all she likes, and it won’t inconvenience her constituents anymore.
And of course no one in the US will really care, because will have no idea who the hell she is.
Is she that head of lettuce who killed the queen?
Countdown to Smog reappearing as a Reform candidate?
This is clearly a great result, but I think that given the popular vote, that it’s important to accept that this election was anti-tory, not pro-labour.
Labour have five years to make a substantial tangible change in people’s lives or we may very well find ourselves back where we left off or even worse.
I’m in maidstone, as blue as it gets. i’ll be watching everyone else turn red with envy
NW Cambridgeshire here, it’s never been anything but Blue since it’s formation, I still doubt it would change.
That really is a razer thin win. congrats
I’m not too far away and I’m hoping the area has some common sense, it’s always blue here as well. Although my wife said many votes have been lost as some people didn’t know about voter ID. Bloody Tories, it hasnt helped here though has it!
Sorry mate, still blue by about 1500 odd votes.
tbf Helen Grants majority has been significantly reduced. i can take solace in that at least
Jacob Rees Mogg suggesting Conservatives were demolished because they weren’t far right enough. Interviewer says “don’t you think maybe it’s because you let down the centre?” And Mogg is like “no way. Maggy Thatcher is based.”
😬
I mean, I hate him, but he’s right. Reform are basically the newest farage far right party, so the rabid nazis of britain aren’t satisfied with the bullshit the tories are serving up.
EDIT : they got fed up of still seeing ethnic minorities after brexit, and don’t want to vote for an ethnic minority for prime minister. It’s disgusting.
Except apart from the proud ex BNP the motives for voting Reform seem to come from a scared impotent scarcity helplessness. It’s a “all these immigrants taking my stuff and my opportunities and there isn’t enough to go round” - if they’re paid properly and the NHS works the far right is less appealing. 🤞
I hope you’re right
But would he win more electorates by pandering to the further right, or by giving the middle a reason to be enthusiastic about them?
My favourite quote: ‘Rees-Mogg congratulated the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, on “what seems to be a historic victory”, adding, as his final thought, “from the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success. So thank you very much everybody, and good night.”’
I can only read this as him admitting publicly that he and the Tories are a complete disaster.
all the socdem use of rose as a symbol makes it only better
So looking forward to the next five years…
Looking at how Reform and Lib Dems made significant gains in vote share you have to wonder if its still worth Labour chasing after the right wing vote that Reform achieved. I just do not see the where the voters who voted Reform actually believe Starmer on the key issues that Reform campaigned on, immigration, anti “woke”, and Brexit. I cannot see Labour ever gaining the lead on those issues over someone like Farage who will always position himself to the right of whatever Labour or the Tories campaign on. I cant even see Labour being trusted at the voting booth on these right wing issues over a rebuilt Tory party. Its a fools errand to try.
The Lib Dem vote share, as with Reform, boosted by previous Tory voters but Lib Dems campaigned on almost the opposite of Reform (with some tactical, local, NIMBYism) and achieved way more seats on a lower overall percentage vote than Reform. If you are going to pick a direction to go in, wouldn’t it make more sense to move towards the Lib Dems position to shore up in time for the next election?
Labour did worse total percentage of the vote than 2017, its more that the Tories collapsed losing about 20% of their vote that caused this swing in seats. The Tories will rally next time around and a lot of the seats look winnable for them with only a small local swing. The current stance of Labour simply isn’t popular enough to be a vote winner against a rebuilt Tory party.
As an Australian, I have to once again apologise on behalf of my nation for the turd in a tuxedo that is Rupert Murdoch.
This is as late as I can stand. I’ll check back in the morning for the final scores. If it was anything resembling a closer election I might have stayed up. I’m hoping the exit poll has over estimated the tories and reform, with a few extra opposition parties.
Rise and shine.
Reform only on 4 instead of ~17 from the exit poll and the greens got 4 seats instead of 2! Happy days.
I would be a bit worried about proportional representation for parties like reform as they seem to have come second in a larger number of constituencies.
That’s how I’m feeling. I need my kip and some of the major heads I’d want to see fall won’t be toppling until much later.
Looks like Reform got a lot of votes despite not getting many seats. Those nasty cunts aren’t going to shut up about this for the next 4 years.
Not really a bad thing. Reform plus the Lib Dems attacking fptp. Means both right and right of centre. (Pretty much the only views available under fptp ). Will have strong options for voters to switch vote and split the fptp possibility of a win for them. This may end up the final option that forces PR of some form.
Honestly, as close as both sides are. It’s the first time both the government and the opposition has had parties truly risking a future split in the vote.
The entire C4 panel laughed at Nadine when she just couldn’t stop talking about Boris Johnson
Anyone got that link that recalculates the results of the GE by different voting systems? For example if we had a form of PR how would this election turned out? I swear it was posted here a few days ago.
Direct proportional representation is easy enough. Just look at the number of votes each party got, and assign that percentage to their overall parliamentary representation. That roughly gives you the answer.
IRV is more interesting, but more complicated. It relies on some assumptions (e.g. Green, SNP, LibDem, Labour all preference each other 100%, Conservatives & Reform preference each other 100%) and takes a lot of effort to do on a seat-by-seat basis. And of course it all assumes ceteris paribus, when in actuality people would vote differently if the voting system were different.
As one example, here’s the seat of Tatton:
Under IRV, with the above assumptions, Labour’s Ryan Jude would have won with 26,005 votes to Conservative Esther McVey’s 25,904. But tweak those assumptions just slightly (give 90% of LibDem votes to Labour, 10% to Conservatives) and it could go the other way (26,365 CON to 25,544 LAB). There are dozens or scores of seats where these sorts of interesting hypotheticals can be asked and analysed. IRV is actually, in my opinion, the next-worst voting system after FPTP (if you exclude weird and rarely-used ones like approval voting, range voting, etc.), but it’s one of the most interesting to do analysis with.
STV is an utterly impossible comparison to make, because it relies on multi-seat electorates, which would probably be done by merging existing electorates into groups of 3–8. STV is a more generalised case of IRV so if you decided on how to do those merges, then you can get even more interesting analysis. As one example, if we imagine a merged electorate involving West Ham, East Ham, Ilford North, Ilford South, Leyton & Wanstead, and Stratford & Bow. Some assumptions are necessary to make this work, my assumption is that anyone whose party name says “workers” or “socialist” preferences Green and then Labour, while those mentioning religion preference Conservative, and if I don’t know, I’m giving them to LibDems then Labour. I’m also assuming all voters for a named party vote as a block, preferencing the same candidate 1st, 2nd, etc., while independents get the votes as they were actually given. This is somewhat realistic because ballot paper design can be set up to encourage this in an STV context (see how Australia does it with “above the line” voting in the Senate, for an example). I’ve merged the minor parties named “workers” or “socialist” into a single party.
A detailed explanation of my calculation is contained here.
In our merged hypothetical under STV, they win 3.03 quotas on first preference, Conservative wins 0.88, Reform 0.41, LibDem 0.28, Green 0.78. So Labour immediately win 3 seats, before 0.03 quotas are distributed lower down in their party. After numerous more rounds (my attached spreadsheet simplifies multiple rounds that by eye would obviously not result in a new quota being reached being merged down into 1), the LibDems win a quota. I’ve decided to distribute their excess 50/50 to Green and Conservative, since Labour has already been eliminated. To be frank, after that I’m not sure what to do. LibDems having been eliminated, the 3 remaining independents can’t go to them as was my initial plan (the basic thinking being independents are probably more centrist, but LibDems and Labour being eliminated already. I’ve decided to give them 50/50 to Conservative and Green, but the reality could be so, so much more complex. After one of those is eliminated, Conservatives get a quota. One final independent distributed to Conservatives/Green and the Greens win the last quota.
This is Labour heartland and in FPTP Labour won all 6 of these seats. My calculation ends up with 3 Labour, 1 LibDem, 1 Conservative, and 1 Green.
MMP ends up with basically the same overall result as direct proportional, but can be interesting in terms of independents & very minor parties and resulting overhang seats.
Given, many systems require more than just marking one box. While, even those that do not, would drastically change how people choose their vote.
I am unsure any such site can give a realistic result from available data?
Tory Ref would need all independents
“Other” is not all independents. 6.8% of the vote share was Green, and 0.8% is between Workers Party and Social Democratic Party who, based purely on the names, I cannot possibly imagine would ever back the Conservatives. Unless LibDems were to support that coalition (which, after the 2010 Government I cannot imagine they’d be super keen on), there is no path to a Tory Government from these results under a proportional system. Labour can form a Government with just LibDem, SNP, and Green parties.
Exactly, total up left(ish) votes and you get about 54% ✊️
An independent (SNP) and unionist (Labour) party would be hard-pressed to form a government.
But again the whole idea of the votes being identicle under a vastyyly different system
Honestly the big question would be how government is formed. With seat numbers matching % of vote. under our current system. Labour could run a weak gov by depending on greens snp and others never supporting a tor ref vonc.
But with centre right lab, it is likely only ld and lab would be garmented to support most policy votes. Others, often refusing because it’s not left enough and not right enough at the same time.
Unfortunately, while the right has clasped over this election. The right has a long history of unity to fight the left.
the left much the opposite in fighting the right.
Holy shit the crowd’s reaction at Jeremy Corbyn getting 24,000. 😲
well, it is a crowd that includes a number of that 24k.
Labours majority is huge but vulnerable. It’s clear that Reform bled millions of votes away from the Tories.
I don’t see how that makes them vulnerable though. I can’t see the reform voters going back to the conservatives so reform are going to continue to split the conservative vote forever.
Similarly to what happened with UKIP, the Tories will just take Reforms policies, bring in new further-right leadership and support will come back.
Especially after Labour (who just got elected on a fairly bland centrist manifesto) won’t manage to magically fix things in 2-3 years. Conservative media will blame Labour for all the issues (even though most are the fault of the Tories) and Conservative voters will rally around the banner of “Labour out!”.
Or Reform just eats the Tories, which seems a but less likely to me, but either way the split won’t last.
I think that’s right. Tories will move further to the right on immigration and force Labour to move with them. Populism isn’t going anywhere.
But one of the main reasons that the conservatives are so unpopular is because they’ve been chasing the right and leaving the centralist politics basically defended, which is why Labour wandered over there, and they have clearly done well out of that.
while also dragging labour further right on immigration and culture wars.
Yes. Thinking that reform will always be there is extremely naive, reform can disappear just as quickly as UKIP did after Brexit.
UKIP disappeared because they were a single issue party.
I’ve personally not met anyone that voted Reform for who immigration wasn’t their top priority.
I know they’re not a single issue party unless you consider “the Tories aren’t right wing enough” as a single issue.
In 1993 in Canada, there was a Reform party that along with the BQ, split the Tories so much that the latter won only 2 seats. Though not as badly, the splitting was repeated in 1997, and 2000. Then they (i.e. Reform, renamed Alliance, and the Progressive Conservatives) merged. After that to present they were in government for about 9 years, over half as a minority. Presently 118 Canadian MPs are Conservative.
So if Canada is a guide, Farage might be replaced, then the replacement replaced by one maybe born in the early 1980s and one who will be compared to a Vulcan. Reform will merge with Conservative, and he will become leader, and will run the Conservatives for over 10 years. During this time, he will lead minority government for about 4 years and then a majority another for about 5 years; but all of this won’t happen for at least 10 years.
