Voting Systems

[phl666]

Can someone explain, in simple terms, what is meant by "proportional representation" and how this differs from the voting system which is currently in use in the UK?


Many thanks.

[Loosehead]

There are several forms but it essentially awards the seats based on the % of the votes received by the party. So if we take the 97 election, Blair got 47% of the vote so he would get 47x659/100 seats, in Britain it would most likely be a hang Parliament. Some say that's not a bad thing.

[Oneeyedvic]

As at 8.00 am with 618 of 646 seats announced:

Labour have 353, Conservatives, 194, LibDem 59 seats
Share of Vots: Lab 36.4%, Con 33.1% LibDem 22.5%

So on the above proportional rep basis:

It would be:
Labour 235, Conservative 213, Lib Dem 145 seats

Bit of a difference really......

[Loosehead]

Of course I meant hung Parliament. Although Hang(ed) does look a bit of a Fruedian!

[jake-the-peg]

Of course that is assuming that people would vote the same way in a PR system.

Many people live in fairly "safe" constituencies and so know that their vote doesn't change much. Many people may feel that they can safely register a protest vote. This may be less likely to happen in a PR system.

I suspect that Labour would have polled a higher percentage of the vote under PR (although probably not high enough to give him a majority)

[banjo]

The current system is called 'First Past the Post' - its a majoritarian system whereby whoever gets the most votes wins.  This sounds fair, but in many constituencies, the winning candidate wont have 50% percent of the vote, therefore the majority of people WONT actually have voted for them. This is also evident with the national picture - Labour only received 38% of the popular vote yesterday (a clear mandate to rule??!!). Most PR systems take the results across the nation into account as well as well as those in individual constituencies, thereby seat allocation is a much more accurate reflection of the voting figures.

 

Proportional Representation in its simplest form takes into account every vote, and with most PR systems, there is an accurate reflection of how people actually voted, so there are less 'wasted' votes. 

[ianess]

Good answer from Banjo.   As things stand we now have yet again a virtual dictatorship whereby Tony Blair and friends have an overall majority even though 63% of actual voters didn't support them.  Proportional representation would in my opinion be a far superior system and would do away with petty party politicking.

A transferable vote system could easily be implemented until one candidate had 50% support by first or second choice options.

[flaming]

PR would be excellent but you might have noticed that neither of the two biggest parties say much about it as whichever Party wins the top lot of it heave a sigh of relief that the "first past the post wins" system abides, it being the one that got them there.  Thus, legislation in favour of PR is remote. Bet the PM is glad he didn't have anything to do with it!  The ones most for it, the third and proportionately under-represented LibDems, are the ones without governmental power.  If the LibDems were ever "first past the post" it would be interesting to see whether they still touted PR.  Hmmm. There are countries who use the system, and opposers of it here argue that you can have so many points of view to consider in Government that nothing gets done  (assuming that anything much gets done anyway).

[avis50]

We do have proportional representation for the European Elections - a regional list system.

This is why we have Greens and UKIP in the European Parliament but not at Westminster.