Labour’s share of the vote barely changes but they double their number of seats. FPTP is a wildly undemocratic way to run elections.
(Yes, this is today’s “hill I will die on”.)
FPTP in a parliamentary system has a few graces. In particular, it’s sensitive to small changes in voting patterns like this, meaning you can truly “kick the bums out” when they’re past their best before date.
But the fact remains that Labour have a huge parliamentary majority from a minority of the vote, making a massive parliamentary gain from the most paltry increase in actual votes and 66% of the didn’t vote for them. It’s not made less awful because the conservatives lost popularity.
Yup. It’s a good mechanism for accountability, if not representation.
But game out how the current vote share would look in an MMP system. Labour + LD doesn’t get you to 50%, so it’s either a minority government or a coalition with some small fry pulled from the “other” category.
Yes, a minority government or coalition government with independents or a third small party is what *should* happen. There is reason coalition governments are so frequent around the world in countries that use more democratic voting systems. It’s not in itself a bad thing.
I weight perfect representation a bit lower, and weight accountability a bit higher.
I think the process of mapping voter preferences to party platforms is a messy process anyway, so even if the government is representative of votes cast, it's still an imperfect representation of voter prefs.
Weirdly, I prefer a strong government that can effectively implement its platform. And then in four or five years, the voters get a chance to yay or nay the results.
Now, I would like to see some electoral reforms. In particular, ranked choice ballots, which solve the strategic voting problem.
FYI, I'm Canadian, so while we have a broadly similar system as the UK, there are some subtle differences. My reform preferences apply specifically to the Canadian context. My general preferences on representation vs. accountability apply broadly.
