The Electoral Reform Society (of which I am a member) sent this commentary out in an email last night:
The Electoral Reform Society has modelled what the new parliament would look like after the general election under proportional representation.
The modelling shows what Parliament would look like under the Additional Member System (AMS) of proportional representation (PR), which is used for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments as well as the London Assembly, compared to the results under the current Westminster system of First Past the Post (FPTP)
Vote share AMS - MPs FPTP - MPs Labour 33.7% 236 412 Conservatives 23.7% 157 121 Reform 14.3% 94 5 Lib Dems 12.2% 77 71 Greens 6.8% 42 4 SNP 2.5% 18 9 Plaid 0.7% 4 4 A visual representation of how the results would look for PR compared to the First Past the Post results can be found here https://public.flourish.
studio/visualisation/18633267/ The Parliament elected under PR would far more closely reflect the way the country voted. It could lead to a number of scenarios politically, and likely lead to a government that represented a far greater share of voters. For instance, a Labour, Lib Dem, Green coalition under AMS would represent 52.7% of voters, rather than the just 33.7% represented by the Labour majority government.
I was pleased to note this additional comment:
In the coming weeks, the Electoral Reform Society will also be releasing a model of the 2024 General Election result under the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system of PR, which is the ERS's preferred system and used in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
I much prefer STV to the AMS system of PR.
The visual comparisons are:
If we had PR Labour should now be entering into negotiations with the LibDems and Greens to deliver a government that would, most likely, have represented a majority of the country, and would have done for some time to come. Instead, it has a wholly unjustified landslide majority.
I am not sure that our democracy can survive this for much longer.
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I also prefer STV to AMS. To be honest any form of PR is preferable to what we have now. We also need to push for more than this. We must make our politicians truly accountable to us and a form of reporting to us of what they have accomplished on their election pledges. We can have PR but if they’re not held accountable then everything falls flat. We also need to ban all corporate donations to political parties and to any lobbying by their representatives. Donations from individuals can be allowed but the amount restricted. We need to end this job for life for all politicians and the number of terms a PM can serve restricted. We just need to end this chaos.
The informed and serious discussion about which form of PR to adopt is long overdue – and I’m very glad indeed to see and hear people engage with this as the GE results have so strongly contrasted popular support (democratic voting intention) with the actual allocation of power. I’m most strongly inclined towards electoral forms that maximise voting intention, so one of the Open Party List (OPL) options – there are many different formulas employed to determine seat allocation for OPL which I won’t go into here. This is the most common form of PR (about 100 countries use it) and is employed in most of the Scandinavian countries who have long been considered to have the most robust democracies. On the downside, OPL can appear more complex than other electoral systems. This can be contrasted against the Single Transferrable Vote (STV) which is used by only 3 countries to elect their national governments. These numbers alone do not prove that the OPL is a superior form to the STV but it is a noteworthy consensus. My dislike of the STV system arises from its acknowledged bias towards ‘centrist’ parties. The upside of STV is its simplicity.
Reading through comments on social media by Reform voters gleaned that one of the most common themes is a feeling of being disenfranchised by our unfair electoral system which they (correctly going by the historical evidence) is rigged towards the two main parties. This has caused many to question the point of democracy while opting to support ‘anti-establishment’ (the irony, I know) or ‘strongman’ characters like Farage who absolutely thrive on grievances. Minimising bias while maximising voter desire are the paramount factors (in my opinion) to genuinely dealing with these complaints – how many times has the opinion of ‘my vote doesn’t count’ or ‘my vote is wasted’ been heard from people across the political spectrum? Viewing a recent broadcast of Novara Media I noted that Aaron Bastani favoured the German model of AMS. To be clear, there is no perfect electoral system as they all have their definite pros and cons.
I am very much looking forward to the discussions about PR and which form to adopt as I genuinely think that replacing FPTP with some form of PR will lead to an increase in political stability something that I think most people would agree as being a welcome affect.
Any discussion of PR has a tendency to get bogged down in the minutiae of the pros and cons of different permutations with different acronyms. It is like men who like trains discussing which model has the most efficient steam injection (amend as applicable – I know nothing).
The bottom line is that the first past the post system does not deliver anything like fair democratic representation. It doesn’t even deliver stable government. Any system of PR would be better. Lists. STV. AV. Whatever. Let’s just pick one. We can change it to something better if experience shows it doesn’t work for us.
We delivered the curse of FPTP to many former British colonies and overseas territories (including the US). Many have realised how stupid it is and changed to PR. As far as I am aware none has gone back.
@ChrisW
I’ve been involved in recent work on comparing alternative systems, a joint effort by LD and Labour supporters: you can find links at https://www.lder.org/the-change-we-need
And my own paper linking basic democratic criteria to alterantive systems at https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.15310
I’d be interested in why you think STV has an “acknowledged bias towards ‘centrist’ parties” – can you give a reference for this? STV does encourage collaboration between parties, through transfers to voters’ second preferences; and the other side of this coin is that extremist parties do a little less well than their first preferences would suggest because they attract few second preferences. Many people, myself included, think this is a plus for STV.
As to Open Lists, they are indeed preferable to the Closed Lists of which we have experience in the UK for Euro elections (though NI used STV), and which Labour have insisted on for future Welsh Parliament elections. But you can improve Open Lists further by letting voters give their preference order for several candidates rather than just voting for one, and then yet further by letting them go cross-party in these preferences; the resulting system is STV.
Thanks for sharing this
My argument for STV is a variant of the ‘simplicity’ case, but would emphasise the electorate’s conventional understanding of how politics works; given that 40% of the electorate no longer vote at all; which means that we have already lost 20% of the electorate to any participation in politics at all, in two generations (80% in 1945). We are a long way from OPL PR as used in Scandinavia. We may move there, because I do not have the British obsession with the permanence of conventional wisdom. Politics is a matter of permanent adaptation, or it fails the test. My objections to the Holyrood de Hondt system is made elsewhere today, and in many previous comments; sufficient here to say de Hondt only happened because it was the system chosen by Labour and Conservative in their Party and Westminster Cartel interests.
Under First Past the Post, Labour got 63% of the seats from 34% of the votes. That is not democratic.
The only problem with recalculating Labour’s share under a different voting system is that people may have voted differently.
I voted Labour in order to overturn (successfully) a Tory seat.
I would have voted Greens if I thought my vote would be more meaningful.
I suspect others would have too.
Accepted
What you’re saying is most definitely true, but these comparisons do give an idea to every observer how undemocratic and unrepresentational fptp is.
Turkeys voting for Christmas. The Labour leadership would rather get occasional periods of absolute power than the opportunity to participate in coalitions more often. Which is to say that they are prepared to lose elections, have no influence on policy, and see all of their changes undone.
Someone will correct me if this is not right, but I think the last party to win an absolute majority of the the popular vote at a general election was the Conservatives in 1900. Every later government with an absolute majority of votes was a coalition.
I have to agree with your first para
They are playing roles in government designed to deny choice
Because they are protecting the interests of a two Party electoral cartel. What they seek is the protection of being the only alternative; which means they are discounting the need to change much at all. Labour and Conservative are like old fashioned department stores with out of date stock, but little choice for consumers, but them (think of the digital revolution like PR; something both wish to block). The stock never changes; but they regularly change the window dressing, which looks amazing. The shopper never sees the deceit until they return home with the new purchase, and realise that outside the store, it is the same old stock. Reeves is just a left-liberal Conservative selling the same old neoliberalism; and we can see it has failed by greater and greater margins the more we invest in it – over forty years.
In the scenarios you discuss about forming Government under PR you never mention Reform which would have just under a 100 seats. How can you align giving groups with much smaller electoral support, such as the greens, a presence in Government but not Reform? How is that democratic? Or is it that “democracy” only holds when it suits your agenda?
Do you know how coalitions work? They don’t include everyone. They are built around common interests. Reform seems to have common interest with no one.
“Reform seems to have common interest with no one.”
Except large swaths of the electorate. They will now receive proper funding and there is a very good chance they progress into being a genuine political party. The left calling them racist isn’t going to work. Farage, single handedly upset the establishment and all the political parties by getting the UK to leave the EU. He is undoubtedly the most successful politician of our time. By the time of the next election Reform will have an electoral pact or will have even merged with the Conservative Party. There is a strong possibility Farage will become the next PM.
20% is not large
And they as a party are racist
So are many of that 20%, I suspect
And most people aren’t
And that is his problem
The difference between the AMS (de Hondt) system in Scotland and STV is that AMS puts the Additional member’s into a List System, which is controlled by the political Party (the Party selects the members), while STV allows the constituency voter to make the choice from the candidates offered. In STV it is more difficult for Party to parachute or manipulate the members selected. The Electoral Reform Society in my opinion is wrong not to see through this attempt at manipulation by Party, even if PR.
J S W @ 9.16am
In Scotland we also have the Single Transferable Vote system to elect our councillors where we can choose from named candidates.
Our Parliamentary system is AMS which you refer to with constituency (fptp) and also the regional (list) votes.
The UK system – fptp – seems very outdated by comparison and the most unfair system with regard to representing as many voters as possible in parliament.
I thought ERS recommended STV not a closed list system (d’hont).
I’m intrigued by the open list system, but know nothing about it. I do know the AMS system as used in Wales and Scotland is the party Apparatchiks delight. Hence, Welsh Labour insisting it’s used in the expanded Senedd. Essentially the party selects the MS the electorate will be ignored, and if central HQ decides someone should be replaced they will be, even if much admired by their constituents. My experience is you almost never get a response from a list member.
ERS favours STV
Under PR the Greens would certainly have fared a lot better than they did – in many areas supporters of the Greens voted tactically which under PR they would not have to do. A combination of FPTP and tactical voting has delivered Starmer’s Labour party the least convincing ‘landslide’ ever.
We do need PR – that is clear.
However, we can’t just take Thursday’s votes and translate the percentages into “PR seats”. Voters vote according to the system they find themselves in and would vote differently under PR.
First, turnout would rise. Under FPTP why bother voting in a “safe seat”.
Second, “wasted” votes for smaller parties would no longer be wasted – it would help the Greens enormously.
Third, this effect might boost the Reform vote… but I am not so sure. I was shocked at the first results announced in the North East – huge Reform Vote in seats that Labour won. Now, if they thought that their vote was actually put Farage into a coalition government would they really register their protest vote as they did? I don’t know.
Fourth, if I am not so sure about Labour and PR (Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas etc.). If I am a moderately senior Labour MP I would feel far more comfortable about my career prospects if I am high up on a PR “Party list” than playing roulette on FPTP every few years. Jonathan Ashworth and Thangam Debbonaire might think so – even Wes Streeting after his brush with disaster.
In short, it is dangerous to read to much into the result
Agreed
Voting patterns would be very different
I would have voted differently
But this data at least shows the result would not be the same
Voting in a PR system would have delivered different data – all this shows is that FPTP does not value all votes equally. “Translation” is meaningless
I know that Heather
The point is to show that our ones would be different
I am not sure what is wrong with that
Scotland uses the De-Hondt system where the first vote is FPTP and the second for a party. When voting for a party the voter has absolutely no control over who they are actually electing as the winner will be picked from the party list.
In the last SGE the Scottish Green Party got undue influence in Holyrood and was pushing Trans issues rather than anything Green so this system has it’s own problems. (I’m not going to say what I think about that or I’ll get banned!)
W J @ 9.54 am:
“In the last SGE the Scottish Green Party got undue influence in Holyrood and was pushing Trans issues rather than anything Green so this system has it’s own problems. (I’m not going to say what I think about that or I’ll get banned!)”
This is a misrepresentation of what actually happened in the current (not the last) Scottish Parliament. This is the fact of the matter on the Bill to Reform the Gender Recognition Act:
On 23 December 2022: A final vote was held on the Bill, which passed with an overwhelming majority of 86 votes for to 39 against, with supportive votes from members of all FIVE parties.
In other words, a democratic vote was held and the Bill passed. More than 2/3 voted for it.
I have never voted for the Scottish Greens but it is wrong to paint them as some sort of devil incarnate.
I don’t really know what the Green party truly stand for apart for their support for environmental issues. I’m not happy with the direction their European counterparts are heading as they appear very right wing and gung ho and pro US in their stance, especially the German Greens. I hope I’m wrong about our Greens in the UK and are not going in that direction.
Why not find out then? In this case it really isn’t hard.
This comment is pure nonsense. Please don’t call again. I do this stuff in my free time and you’re wasting it.
An easy way in my opinion to make AMS better is to turn it into AV+. Once could immediately do that in London, Wales and Scotland. You rank your constituency candidates in order of preference and then vote for a party on the list ballot. List allocations would take into account constituencies already won.
Lists regions could cover multiple constituencies or be nationwide.
Closed party list PR is simple in that seats should closely match votes, but you would need large constituencies for proportionality. Open lists enable voters to name their preferred candidate on the list but could be more complex to explain.
For now, my first preference is AV+, as long as the number of list MPs is at least 30-40% of the number of constituency MPs. They could replace the HoL
Just do STV
So much better – and constituency based even if big constituencies
In Ireland we have STV with multi-member constituencies, for local, national and EU elections. Works well, good engagement, takes time. For interest: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2023/754620/EPRS_ATA(2023)754620_EN.pdf
Oh, the irony of a Party leader (and PM) having been elected by PR (STV) yet denying his Party their democratic choice of including it in the manifesto…
But don’t appreciate the irony for too long. If Evans (Party Secretary, previous Assistant to PM Blair) and Blair get their way, when the Party is in government only MPs will be allowed to elect the Party Leader.
The current Labour Party describes itself in Clause IV – but it is now neither democratic nor socialist.
@Anne Cruise
And Keir Starmer is prepared to back STV when it suits him –
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/30/keir-starmer-wins-change-in-labour-nec-election-rules
Thank you so much for that. I didn’t know. What humbug of Keir Starmer to demand STV PR for his own NEC and ride into office with an obscene majority based on his operating cartel with the Conservatives in Westminster; and ensure a Party list system in Holyrood. What a sham our politics has become. You can’t trust anyone. You just can’t.
Starmer declares himself a socialist – for the many not the few – but won’t give the many genuine policy choice even when Labour Party members vote for it. So many people in the UK incapable of smelling a rat!
Everyone who is a progressive should be concerned that The Tories, despite everything that has happened, and Reform UK got 38% of the vote between them.
Shockingly, the turn-out was only 60%.
40% did not vote.
Labour got 33.7%
Tories/Reform 38%
Given that the likely Tory candidates for Sunak’s job are Badenoch, Braverman, Patel, Cleverly, Atkins, Jenrick, Hunt, with Tuganhadt the only one who might be considered “moderate”. They seem to think we need to go further to the right, and that what they were doing in power, was not right wing enough.
Voter apathy, which I think the Tories like, a new right wing Tory leader, plus I suspect a Tory deal at some point with Reform, means that fascism is on the march. FPTP will reward it in time.
We need PR to stop it.
After the local elections in May 2023, the Electoral Commission estimated that 4-7% of possible voters did not vote because of the photo ID requirement. In the GE of July 2024, it can probably be assumed that the number of those not voting for photo-ID reasons was the same. An electorate of 46.5 million people, where approx 5% (2.3 million) were unable to vote, doesn’t deserve the name of democracy.
Agreed
That is wrong and shocking that so many people have been disenfranchised. When you add that statistic to those who did not receive their postal ballot papers I start to wonder whether the election should be considered valid at all. It’s disgraceful.
Here in Scotland, as far as I am aware, there has never been a big problem with voter fraud. The instances have been very small in number. In our own Scottish Parliamentary and council elections, we don’t need IDs. Long may that continue.
Yes, ID has fairly been described as a solution looking for a problem; there was no serious voter personation issue (persecutions were extremely rare), and it appears to have been introduced solely further to rig the system favourably for the advantage of the Conservative Party. The Electoral system we have is slowly destroying our politics. The system’s sole defenders are the Party beneficiaries of the system. This is totally corrupt.
Prosecutions. I am being persecuted by autocorrect. I demand autocorrect shows me its ID before correction.
This analysis presupposes that everyone would have voted the same way if we did have PR. I’m not sure that’s a realistic approach.
It isn’t
As noted in these comments, the pattern may have been very different
But that’s the point: even without allowing for that the outcome should be very different
I would suggest that if we have a change to the electoral system there needs to be some sort of legislation about how parties select their candidates?
Why?
How would you enforce it?
In 2011 the British public were given a referendum to decide whether to change our voting system. A majority voted against. Many of the same people who don’t want a second referendum on Europe now argue we should have a second one re the voting system.
Mark
These are comments revealing a remarkable lack of analytical thought, let alone understanding of democracy and processes of change from a person I’ve always thought to be very intelligent. What are you trying to say, and what is the evidence for you claims? This comment is baffling.
Richard
Merely trying to expose the hypocrisy in some quarters Richard. That being those who were against reopening the debate re Brexit but who want to reopen the debate re PR.
I voted for PR in 2011. And would do so again. .i was against Brexit and doubt we will ever see sufficient benefits to justify the damage it has done to our economy.
I admit, I still don’t follow your first para Mark.
I want both reopened and I think most here do
What he is saying Richard, is that the Kippers who bemoan a rerun of the Brexit referendum are now actively campaigning for a rerun of the PR referendum. Quite a contradictory position!
Ah…
OK, got it now
And in that case correct
I just did not get it
Massive amount of comments which I didn’t read because I figure it’s still election fever, but do you think it necessary to have a referendum on any change to the voting system?
Obviously we don’t have it, but wouldn’t it be preferable to have a constitution that can only be changed by a 2/3 majority, which could be trusted to control changes rather than a plebiscite? Or should we go Swiss, and have much much more decided by plebiscite?
Answer, no.
Ken Coates was a Labour MEP for East Midlands. He was a thorn in the side of Tony Blair. Blair got rid of him by making him the number 6 in the Labour list for the European elections. Under the d’hondt system that made it impossible for him to keep his seat. The d’hondt PR system gives control to party leaders.
Any more complicated system will also need some voter education – the number of weird ballot papers I saw on Thursday night was quite worrying. Apart from the deliberate spoilt ballots, there were a signi variations in voting, most by trying to put X’s against the names of multiple candidates.
Mind you, the funniest one was the write-in vote for Divine Intervention, followed by the person who had taken one of the A3 example ballots off the wall of the polling station and put that into the ballot box as an extra vote.
STV was already available at a Polling Station in Glasgow. “Glasgow is miles better” and ahead of the curve
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24431425.glasgow-incorrect-voting-instructions-removed-polling-station/
Commenters, some of whom have doubted the usefulness of the ERS projections under a form of PR, may be interested to read the report they issued on the 2019 election (pub.March 2020) in which they modelled AMS and STV PR voting systems, based on some YouGov polling, which had not been released at the time. The Report is quite extensive and includes notes on the methodology. I haven’t read it all, but it seems a serious bit of work given all the caveats which they fully recognise.
Press Release: https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/latest-news-and-research/media-centre/press-releases/report-on-decembers-general-election-reveals-scale-of-tactical-voting-and-voters-systematically-ignored/
Report: https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/2019-General-Election-Report.pdf
Thanks
Every voting system has blemishes, clearly some more than others (fptp). The way to compensate for these is not necessarily to create a more exotic variant but to apply the most democratic method to the lower chamber (probably STV) based on single member constituencies, and a different method (say, proportional, maybe AMS) on multi-member regions etc for the upper chamber.
Obviously the relative power of each chamber would need to be constitutionally ‘balanced’ to reflect their respective roles.
What on earth is wrong with multi member constituencies?
How can a system really work to represent all without them?
I’m sure most, if not all, contributors here realise that the voting patterns would be different under a PR system so the extrapolations prettily depicted above are only approximations of what might be or might have been the composition of Parliament.
I’m heavily in favour of PR. Here in Scotland in the Holyrood elections I am enabled (empowered even) to vote for what I want and don’t have to consider tactically voting for the lesser of two evils. (Unless we admit defeat and deem all parties to be evil). Why voters in England are not up in arms demanding the same right is mystifying to me. I put it down to successful PR (the other PR: public relations) by the two main parties.
The only downside I can see to PR elections is that we would have been robbed of the ‘Portillo moments’: Chris Patten, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees Mogg and feel free to add your own personal favourites.
Ruth Davidson, I think I’m correct in saying, Led her party in Scotland and was rewarded with a seat in the House of Lords without ever being elected other than on the list system. Murdo Frazer is another loudmouth who has never been elected by his constituency. I think the only solution to this particular problem is to allow no more than two terms without winning a constituency approval.
Having lived under AMS in Scotland and STV in OZ then FPTP in U.K. I would definitely say STV is by far the most equitable system because the voter can actually rank candidates in a manner where their least preferable option can be ranked very last. Something I and many would wish to do with the likes of Tory or Reform candidates
But in AMS here in Scotland Tory or any other despicable lot can still possibly command a seat under the AMS list system. So we have the bizarre situation where a Tory who for years has never been able to win a seat by popular vote (totally on the nose obnoxious) has still gained a list seat.
The personal ranked preferential choice of STV is infinitely better and one gets the feeling that your vote does actually count, and encourages voting.
FPTP is a total abomination and when it realistically boils down to a choice of two it’s depressing and probably discourages voting.
Thanks
I’m so torn on this. I can absolutely see the advantages of a more representative parliament, but I don’t think the British public are ready for the realities of it, and parties need to be wiser than the LibDems were in the 2010 coalition.
It leads to centrist compromise, trade offs that work worse for the smaller parties involved, political insecurity and means much political investment is spent trying to broker deals rather than get on with the job of government. Parties may form into power blocs like in the EU parliament, and then we’re back to square one anyway!