The Case For And Against Proportional Representation

[sp1814]

Does last night's results for UKIP strengthen the argument in favour of PR (2 million plus votes = 1 MP, so far).

[mikey4444]

SP...not having PR hasn't stopped the SNP from surging to a landslide victory in Scotland, so I fail to see why it would help UKIP. The SNP won because they were widely and hugely popular, and UKIP isn't.

Anyway, the only Party that can bring in PR before the next Election is the Tories, and they have shown no inclination to do so, ever.

[Retrochic]

mikey give it a rest -UKIP got twice as many votes as the SNP so how can the SNP be 'hugely popular' while UKIP is not?

[mikey4444]

Retrochic...within Scotland, the SNP were hugely popular, As I have just explained on another post, UKIP only got 12.6% of the popular vote.

12.6% is quite respectable but can hardly be seen as "hugely popular"

[Retrochic]

and the SNP got 4.8% of the national vote -hardly 'hugely popular' -statistically less than half as popular as UKIP ! :-)

[Duncer]

Or, to take Scotland in isolation, why should the SNP, with 50% of the vote in Scotland, have over 90% of the seats?

[mikey4444]

Retrochic...is there something you don't understand about the SNP ?

Of course they only got 4.8% of the popular vote in the UK ! They only fielded candidates in the 59 Scottish seats, and won most of them !

UKIP could have fielded candidates all over Britain and most did, but only managed to get 1 MP.

These are facts, which I can't change ! UKIP lost !

[steg]

Last time round the LD had less votes up here than the SNP but double the seats. It's the way it is, it's the way it was.
Alba gu brath

[sp1814]

I've just been reminded by a colleague at work (and I have to admit, I'd completely forgotten this) - we had a referendum on PR a few years ago, and we rejected it.

Therefore, no party can really call for it now...

[sp1814]

Baldric

When I looked at your post, this thread had already been moved over to News. It was shortly after that that I noticed the AB Editor's post.

Hence my initial confusion.

[humbersloop]

so my 10.21.post was invisible then sp?? I wondered...

[lindapalmara]

Boundary changes. Make each constuency the same size. This was what the Tories wanted in the last Government but the Libdems vetoed it, after, I believe a promise in the original agreement, to support it. The Tories should bring that back now the tail isn't wagging the dog! It reduces the number of MPs also. We have a dispropropriate number of MPs for the size of the country, especially as most of our laws are made in Brussels.

[scowie]

I am sure that the vast majority of bills put to the vote in parliament will be non-constituency-specific, so it makes sense that the commons is made up of people who represent the country as a whole (PR) and not just the individual constituencies.

[jim360]

I think its important to preserve constituencies in some manner, because a party can be fairly popular but not its senior figures, who would then be protected under pure PR. The sensible thing to do is to switch to a system of voting that still has (redrawn) constituencies, but in which voters can express preferences rather than having to commit all their support to one candidate. How the system deals with these preferences can vary, but if they are there then the full nuances of a voter choice can be at least more completely considered, as opposed to being hidden under a single "X" next to a single name or party.

Even with these subtleties captured it might not change the vote much. In a huge number of Scottish seats nothing would have stopped the SNP. Perhaps that's a good thing; as it is, while the overall Scottish result is disproportionate it's also true that none of the main parties fared well at all. In a pure PR system Labour would still have held 14 seats. That's probably about 10 more than they should have got last night.

A better electoral system should be more proportional, but not exactly so.