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.
I think it's a bad day to be criticising first past the post. Labour stole a bunch of seats from Farage with his kill-the-NHS policies, a turd who oughtn't to be allowed to attend D-day celebrations, given that he stands against almost everything that we fought the war for. Not sorry one bit for that disproportionality.
A proportional system would have been to Reform's benefit, but it would also have been to the Green's and SNP's.
IRV would have actually been to Labour's benefit in the two seats I randomly happened to notice. Though I'm sure there would also be some seats where it would've benefited the Tories.
But I think the most important thing is that belief in a better electoral system should not depend on which party world benefit. It should be about creating a more democratic outcome. And what we saw yesterday really highlighted how deeply undemocratic the UK is.
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 British were given the choice and voted against proportional representation. They deserve the duopoly and everything that flows from it 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.
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 yet many countries with PR still have crap governments and bad policies. You'll never have a perfect system since you're still expected to choose one party, but there's a large number of policies and issues to address, and the odds are that no party gets the mix correct for most voters. It's a one-dimensional system to implement multidimensional politics. So quibbling over the particular metric to use to allocate seats along that single dimension is missing the larger problem. Something closer to direct democracy might be better, but that requires an engaged, disciplined and educated electorate.
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.
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)
I don't want to see Reform get any seats really when it's filled with people like this.
They're just a live action version of the Daily Mail. They only believe immigrants and trans people are a problem because Farage and his crew tell them so. Otherwise I bet those groups of people have barely any impact on their daily lives whatsoever.
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.
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.
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.
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. 🤞
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.
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.
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.
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".
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. I'm kinda disappointed how they're not.
Considering some were suggesting a chance Sunak would lose his own seat, his victory is pretty overwhelming. Even if you try simulating an IRV vote where everyone apart from Reform preferences Labour, the distribution would still see Labour fall 5 thousand votes behind the tories before you distribute Reform's votes to the Conservatives. A 62% victory on 2 candidate preferred once all is said and done.
Happy to see the Tories get obliterated, but not feeling confident about the incoming Labour government. The fact that a bunch of Tories defected to them and they were endorsed by the Sun is a bad sign IMO.
After seeing the first few results come in, my main worry is how Starmer's Labour will react to the rise of Reform. If Labour cannot visibly begin to turn things around, and they also fail to effectively counter the building populist undercurrent, we could be heading for some dark times.
We will have to see what exactly Starmer's Labour will actually do once it has power.
Two Tories defected to them, and neither of them were standing for election this time, it was just a gesture against Sunak (although I do wish Labour had told them to fuck off).
And as for the S*n, they just put their weight behind whoever is going to win.
Labour and Starmer are far from perfect, but I think they will be far better, even if just from a competence and basic human decency standpoint.
And as for the S*n, they just put their weight behind whoever is going to win.
I was a bit surprised the S*n did switch to Labour. From what I've heard there still a grudge amongst Murdoch and his minions towards Starmer, due the prosecutions he pursued as DPP during the phone hacking scandal.
I wouldn't read too much into the Sun endorsement. Murdoch hates to be wrong, and they would have come out in favour much earlier in the campaign if they were actually ideologically aligned.
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!
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.
Yes, but I think you're overstating how right wing Labour pitched it. There were no claims to be anti woke. I think it was a pretty firmly centrist pitch. It's the Conservatives who are going to panic and try to out-nutcase Farage. Labour are going to try and be responsible and fix the broken ship. It's just whether they can do it fast enough for people to notice a big improvement in the cost of living vs wages problem.
Are you forgetting Starmers statements around women only spaces as it seems like it.
Farages entire point of existence is to drag the overton window to the right, which he succeed yet again, particularly around Brexit.
The other big concession Starmer made, this time because of the Tories, was not to raise taxes, which was also incredibly dumb. As was honouring triple lock.
My biggest issue with Starmer making claims like these is that he will stick to them. Someone like Boris is too lazy and an out and out liar so has no problem dropping things. Starmers big pitch to be different is that he will stick with what he says.
By sticking to what he said around terfs issues, Brexit, taxes, he really fucks his options in these areas, and for what? As you and I have both said, toil not out crazy Farage or be trusted by people who these are important issues for, so it's a massively stupid thing to do.
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?
Edit:
If we just assume proportional based on % of vote yesterday.
Tor 22.9%
Lab 35.2%
LDe 11.3%
Ref 14.5%
SNP 2.5%
Oth 13.6%
It is bloody hard to see how either party could form a viable 50% Lab LD SNP and a few independents would take it over 50. But honestly, it is hard to imagine that working with the politicians voted yesterday. Tory Ref would need all independents. So less likely to work.
But as I said. Voters would go to the polls with very different ideas about how to vote.
"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.
Their last two Labour MPs not only were kicked out in scandal, but also ran in this election splitting the vote. It looks like the Lib Dems also got a significant vote share which has helped 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.
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 the Conservatives, 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.
I'm watching the ITV feed on YouTube. Dunno what other people actually from the UK would recommend because I don't really know the British media landscape.
They're currently discussing the issue of Scottish independence. I must say, I find it very frustrating, including from Nicola Sturgeon. As a complete outsider, it would seem to me the number 1 reason in favour of a second referendum is very simple: "you'll not be allowed back into the EU if you secede from the UK" was a major campaign point during the first referendum. And then 2 years later England voted to leave the EU anyway. How is Sturgeon not bringing this up?
I’m watching the ITV feed on YouTube. Dunno what other people actually from the UK would recommend because I don’t really know the British media landscape.
ITV will be just fine. The Beeb's coverage is usually pretty definitive.
Unfortunately BBC doesn't seem to be live streamed on YouTube. Or if it does, it didn't turn up in my search. I was choosing between ITV, Sky News (I know Sky in the UK isn't quite the same as Sky here in Aus, but the stink of that name is very hard for me to shake off), something called "TalkTV", and two separate feeds from "The Times and The Sunday Times". Oh, and CNN, but that's just silly.
They bring that up regularly, but it's a false equivalence. At the time of the independence vote it was absolutely true to claim that voting No was true best way to stay in the EU. There was no expectation, none, from anyone that Brexit was on the way. So, at the time, if Europe was the issue then voting to stay in the UK was the logical choice to make.
As for now - well, Swinney (and before him Sturgeon herself) was talking in terms of winning a majority of seats being a mandate for opening independence talks. That's clearly nonsense, since a majority of seats is possible with a fairly small plurality of votes. And, it's looking like it's a moot point anyway, since the SNP seems to have taken a right good kicking this time round.
So Sturgeon is probably not bringing this up tonight because she'd look ridiculous to do so given the (apparent) results in Scotland tonight. If this was a referendum on independence as she and Swinney have suggested, then the result would appear to be a solid No.
According to the conversation tonight, not even a majority of seats, but a plurality.
Anyway you're absolutely right that given the tact that they had chosen it's hard to read today's projected result as anything other than a failure. But I was speaking more about when the conversation turned away from the direct outcome of today's results and more towards the general longer-term future prospects for independence. I don't recognise any of their other panellists (pic attached below), but the guy on Sturgeon's left (camera right) and to a lesser extent the other panellists were making reference to the fact that the previous referendum failed and how no future government would ever allow another referendum (with the exception of if Labour relied on the SNP to form a minority government, which was thought possible a year ago). That's when it would have seemed obvious to me for Sturgeon to point out the false promise that led to the result in 2014.
Gosh what an absolute bloodbath for the Tories. While I knew the Tories would lose and massively and that Reform would have impact I didn't think this is beyond what I was expecting.
The one thing i can agree with reform on is electoral reform. unfortunately all the racism, homophonia and general goose-stepping made it so i couldn't vote for him.
Plus lib dems are better placed to actually make it happen.
unfortunately i was one of the absolute tools that voted no on the AV vote back in 2010ish
73 in Keir Starmer's electorate voted "for more than one candidate". I'd love to see what those ballots looked like. Or to speak with those voters. Was it a change of mind that they thought they could just cross out? Did they think they were doing an IRV vote? Approval voting? Was it just a deliberate nonsense protest vote?
This year's general election, after all the votes counted, has a
Sainte-Laguë index of 48.36, and a
Gallagher index of 23.75.
This makes the (dis)proportionality worse than HUNGARY's (my home) FPTP component (SLI = 36.96) – a component of the mixed system which allows our ruling party to get 2/3 supermajorities each time, every time, with sometimes less than 50% of the votes, and which ultimately transformed our country to an "electoral autocracy"
You guys need electoral reform desperately. And do it before someone cheats with the current rules deliberately.
(PS: I calculated the electoral indices using the python package voting)
A recount is called if one of the sides requires one. Obviously if you only had a difference of 10 votes, it'd be daft not to demand recount, but technically it only happens if a candidate requests one.
Remember the votes are technically recounted already. They are counted three times, by three separate people, who don't know what the other two people have found as results, so they cannot be influenced by their number. If all three people get the same answer, the count is probably correct, discounting incredibly bad luck, which is statistically unlikely.
If a recount is requested then three new people perform the task just to discount the possibility of collusion.
Am I calculating this correctly that it's now been nearly 4 hours since polls closed? How have we only heard 2% of results? You don't even have preferences to distribute.
But how is it so slow? We'd have far more results than that in Australia, despite a much more complicated process where we have to do the first count just like this, and then additionally distribute preferences. And then also count the Senate results.
Does your electoral commission just not hire enough people?
Majority just means a larger number. The word has nothing to do with above 50%.
It is just used so in parliament because all non government seats can vote against the government, so to have the largest voting block you must have more then any other group.
As that is not the case in a constituency election, 1 vote over each other party is a referred to as a majority.
With the projected majority, he doesn't have to lurch anywhere. It's the Tories that are going to feel forced to get nastier and it could be the final nail in their coffin. JRM has already been on suggesting they've neglected their "core", which seems to be racists.
Agree with both points here but wrt. the possibility Kier lurching to the right I particularly agree. Left wing pals on whatsapp and folks online are being way too pessimistic about the prospects of the labour government not delivering left wing policies. Having played it safe during the campaign, Kier has a majority which gives him way more latitude to implement whatever policies make sense.
I wish people could be able to take the W and enjoy it for one night without cynicism or pessimism.