Agree. America's awesome, London is worse than everywhere but Paris.

France* and germany and maybe italy

@@gileswilliams3014 Are you american perchance?

@@gileswilliams3014 paris is rank, amen

​​@@gileswilliams3014if you don't walk with your feet lmao Everything about america is horrifyingly unhealthy

Don't think this can be done with any degree of certainty though... Seems like dodgy stats to me.

It's difficult to gauge the math behind the estimate, but it'd be cool if we test it out for real!

Reform aren't Conservative thier vote share is highly demographic Libertarian economics + Nationalist and wouldn't vote Tory if you paid them

link?

PR encourages more people to vote (the vote counts) and more compromise between parties in coalition, with those parties more able to block the more extreme views of their coalition partners.

Under PR Count Binface, the Dalek Empire and the OMRLP could conceivably win if voters choose protest candidates. Can you imagine these three running the country? Under PR we have a responsibility as voters to vote for sensible candidates who we are certain will be capable of running the country.

@@stephengraham1153the protest candidates getting seats would at least be incentive for the serious parties to pull their socks up and start doing a better job rather than being a novelty act like they are now with no chance of getting in.

I might have done the same ngl.

@@stephengraham1153 under PR I would have voted differently. As it is under FPTP I voted tactically.

Think he’d have got votes wherever he stood.

It's smart though. Single Transferrable Vote is the way to go.

It is mathematically impossible to create a voting system that would meet all criteria. Some things must be sacrificed for other.

Agreed

You put an X in a box. That’s a tactical vote.

I just vote for the party I want. I don't think about who to block, or to support against another party I have no interest in.

Truuuuue

So you have to contact up to 5 people to get something done? Sounds like the local council system and it's hell if people don't value their constituents.

@@MsPeabody1231 It sounds more like if someone doesn't value you as a constituent, you have four more chances at finding someone who cares.

@@MsPeabody1231 No I can pick one of the 5 to get help with my issue.

Also, why does it matter.... MPs shouldn't be there to be your personal representative, they're there to pass laws and run the government. If we want people to have special advocates for their issues (like was indeed helpful during the post office scandal) we should create those as a separate role and elect them using STV or AV or something - we shouldn't combine those personal representatives with legislators.

@@phueal -- Yes -- but why would they need to be elected; having an 'official ombudsman' doesn't need an election it's just a bureaucratic role - it could be a side-line for councils, lawyers, accountants etc ?? We could then choose from hundreds who have most expertise in the area we need help. Having MPs and their spouses running support centres is ludicrous.

It's always the same people are in favour of PR but when First past the post works for them PR takes a back seat.

I’m all for the STV

Agreed. It also gets rid of the really extreme fringe choices. I think our current system keeps our two main parties closer to the centre. They can’t move too far right to chase the Reform vote as they will lose the centre vote. Probably the reason why when most of Europe is getting more and more right wing governments the UK is bucking the trend and going for a left of Centre Labour Party.

Shame we voted against it 😢

@@brooza664 no we didn’t. The referendum was for the Alternative Vote. It’s nowhere near proportional. So much so, they invented AV plus to make it a bit more proportional.

@@archwombat9250 left of conservative sure, but labour are not left of centre by any stretch of the imagination. they're still very much right of centre

This would be acceptable to me. My only objection to PR is the lack of local representation. I'd not considered this before. may I suggest we do it by county, instead of just 65 artificial constituencies, though? This way, we get to see some of the benefits of the American federalist system, whilst maintaining our political tradition.

There's another way that's even better for maintaining local representation. Have 325 constituencies, doubling the size of each one, and then have a party list that additional candidates are added from to make the result as proportional as possible. It won't be as proportional as full PR, but it can get pretty close. This is the system they use in Germany I believe. Obviously this is a sliding scale -- the larger the constituencies, the more proportional the outcome, but the less local your representative. So it doesn't have to be 325 -- that's just my suggestion.

Mixed Member is an easier way to gain a proportional chamber while maintaining local representation.

"local representation" With the party whip system, we have no local representation currently, they're not allowed to represent us. So seeing as we're effectively voting for one unit of a party, we might as well use PR.

Another option is what they do in Scotland, where you have local constituencies which are 1st past the post, and regional top-up lists, which which are elected proportionally with the parties represented in the constituencies taken into account.

It's still good to eliminate as much bias as possible from your perspective.

@@lemurwrench6344 Yes, but it is even better to then be aware of and acknowledge that you still have a bias.

​@@lemurwrench6344'elimination' of bias is just changing your bias every body has a different view of what non biased supposedly looks like.

Facts

"I'm a bipolar transistor. I need to be biased to operate properly"

Not entirely true - They threw the most resources out of any seat at bristol central and brighton pavillion, precisely because they are scared of the greens. They also did a fair amount of campaigning in waveney valley. They would rather mean more tories because they know that the greens are threatening them from the left.

the thing with the lib dem / green areas is that those mp's are more likely to stand with labour than against. lib dem has become a lot more left leaning in recent years , a long way from their coalition government.

Same with the lib dems. I live in a Labour seat surrounded by former Tory seats that were Lib Dem targets. I saw absolutely nothing from the Lib Dems other than the name on the ballot paper, and the Lib Dems won all their nearby target seats.

I assume that the opposite is also true. In Canada parties that are pretty much guaranteed to win a particular seat (e.g. the Conservatives in a rural area) don't campaign much either. Similarly when governing, investment will primarily be directed toward 'swing ridings', so places where many parties have a chance of winning. Which in practices is often the suburbs around major cities. The city centres will never ever vote Conservative, so there's no point in a Conservative government investing there. And the rural areas will vote Conservative regardless of what the government does so no point in investing there either.

​@@IceClawz. not entirely. The Greens are quite disruptive and despite the Lib Dems and Labour leaving each other alone, the Greens went out to win and in some cases split the vote and lost a seat to the Tories

Political party tier list should be the name

This guarantees the winner in each constituency gets at least 50% of the votes which I approve of. There is something basically wrong when all the votes for all the other candidates add up to more than the winning candidate.

@@TheBrowncoatcat STV will also do this, but results in a more proportional result across the country, and a better chance that smaller parties will have MPs elected.

Hell yeah

in those situations the country isn't without a government. the previous government keeps governing while the coalition talk go on. so while the new coalition gets formed the previous government just keeps on doing their thing and keep the country going. but yes the "splintering" is something that should be acted against. maybe by having the seat go to the party instead of the person after a person leaves the party. but often those "splinter parties get barely any votes (only people really liking the person leading those parties vote for them) and the 2nd election after they split of people vote for "normal" parties, because the "splinter party" wasn't able to do anything so they rather vote for someone that can really influence things.

Perhaps using PR with a threshold, blocking parties that are too small?

​​@@catomajorcensor That creates the exact same problems that FPP have. Actually even worse it's easier to get even small voices heard in FPP than it is in PR with threshold (which by the way no longer really is PR anyway)

@@ChristiaanHW My understanding is that although the basic governmental functions continue during the coalition talks, the government isn't supposed to make any significant decisions. I don't think it would make a difference if one's seat stays with the party or with the person, because the dissidents can just splinter off at the next election either way. Splinter parties can absolutely get a lot of votes. The PVV was originally created in 2005 when Geert Wilders splintered off of the VVD, and they're currently the largest party in parliament. The current governing coalition also includes the NSC which was created when Pieter Omzigt splintered off the CDA.

@@OntarioTrafficMan common courtesy is that the "caretaker" government isn't supposed to make too drastic decisions, but they the still have the right to do so. after all the country still has to function properly. like the previous government promising funds for several things that will have to be transferred by the new government. they kinda wrote checks that the new government either has to pay or has to take back. that's not really nice to the new government, but it is part of governing so it was within the rights of the caretaker government to do that. yes those parties started as splinter parties. but they started because the party gradually shifted away from their promises and those politicians decided to take those promises and start their own parties to (try to) make those promises come truth. and you could argue that because those parties are now (some of) the biggest parties, apparently they did a good thing in splitting off. because a lot more people think their vision is a better one than the party they originally splintered away from.

Reform only got votes from Tory’s, when Tories get their act together they will flock back, where will the reform be then.

Tories betrayed their votes big time and they are not conservative anymore and they are not even on the right side of the political scene.

​@lesleylamy You're actually wrong about that assumption, Boris Johnson wouldn't of won by a landslide in 2019 had Nigel Farage not stood down his candidates in 2019, otherwise, you would'v seen something similar to what has happened on July 4th. The right wing voters have always been there, and it's only growing at a rapid rate, hence why the Conservatives now identify as a Right-Wing party rather than Centre-Right.

We can say the same about the Cons wins; Lib Dems, Greens, etc split the left vote. Also, some Reform supporters identify as politically left and for some reason believe Reform are on the left!

⁠@@clarkeysam I voted Lib Dem’s. This was my first time voting as I am 18 and so many people my age I spoke to said the Green Party was their favourite however reading their manifesto I realised how idealistic they were. It was nice in theory but seemed like the economy would be funded by borrowing but nothing else, however Lib Dem’s their manifesto to me was more for people and more realistic and had somewhat of a plan. I wish more people would give Lib Dem’s a chance, I sometimes wander what the country would be like if Reform, Lib Dem’s or Greens would be in power.

Same...

Yes! I'd say 90% of my friends voted tactically ie not for who they wanted. It'd be so interesting to see what parliament would look like with PR

Well, coming from a country that does have a fair voting system (proportional), tactical voting is still a thing. Although technically there is nothing that states that the biggest party must be in the government and deliver the next prime minister, they do have the lead in trying to form such a coalition and in all but extreme cases do lead the next government. Thus, people still vote tactical to try and make sure their least desired party doesn't become the largest. This is mainly a recent thing, since the center parties (that everyone can sort of get along with) aren't guaranteed to be the biggest and the parties on the edge of the spectrum are far more controversial.

@@evan More Greens, Tories, Reform and SNP, and less Labour this election would be my guess. No idea about Lib Dems though.

@@aks7698 definitely not more SNP, they're finally back down to where they should be. Lib Dems it's very hard to say - they're probably at about the right level now. They used to do very well in European elections which were PR, getting something like 20-25% of the vote I think from memory, but some of that could well have been protest voting. They also normally do very well in local elections, but those tend to be on local issues. I suspect when people are voting for national parties, on their national platforms, and to form national governments, the Lib Dems would probably be getting about 15% of the vote most times. But also it's worth noting that both Tories and Labour would almost certainly split under PR, making it even harder to say...

Just because the SNP didn't get much coverage in England and Wales doesn't mean that our ears weren't deeved with them up here.

Reform are being backed by wealthy interests that want deregulation, private healthcare insurance, more fossil fuel use, and low taxes for the rich. These backers also have a lot of media influence.

implying that the lib dems didn't get much coverage when for the last two weeks all you heard about on the media was about Ed Davey dancing about is insane. SNP got a lot of coverage in Scotland. The only party that didn't get much coverage was the Greens.

A lot of that coverage was very negative though...

Reform was also referred to as a new party. Given it's just rebranded UKIP one could argue it's gained 1% popularity since they last run.

But some people are one too ;D not u bbz

it depends whether the speak out of it!!!♨🌋👺

Was thinking the same thing. How much in favour of PR would you be for America?

The two parties have always entertained several factions who, in the end, still settle on a 'Yes' or 'No' vote in coalition building.

US insanely complicated though, do you have PR for senate and congress? What about the local representatives? Can't really have PR for president, can you? Electoral college would have to go, or some sort of hybrid system? I think federalism is a good improvement on the UK constitution (obviously America has the size to pull it off better than we). America would be tough.

Regrettably, this isn't true. As part of the coalition agreement between Cameron and the Lib Dems, Cameron agreed to a national referendum on introducing a form of PR in place of FPTP. The vote was held in 2011 and 68 percent of voters wanted no change. Only 32 percent supported PR.

@@t.a.k.palfrey3882 Recent YouGov UK poll (Jan 2024) show a 45% preference for PR with a 26% preference for 'First Past the Post'. The rest of the people polled 'didn't know'

@@ianz9916 Actually, Brexit itself was a case of turkeys voting Christmas! The communities that voted the most for Brexit suffered the most from its inevitable consequences.

I think that might be the general idea... :D

Of course, the UK could fix the terrible turnout simply by making voting compulsory, right?

are you coming from the algorithm of legend

The right wing press causes that negativity.

You have a proper republic in Australia, though, don't you? So the head of the winning party isn't the executive, right? Works slightly differently in the UK, so if we went full PR, we'd have an absolute democracy which sounds terrible! I personally think executive power should be reserved for the king and that the House of Lords should return to the aristocracy, then have PR or not, I don't care.

Yes. I voted Labour. Under PR, I would have voted LibDem.

The problem with strategic voting is that you don't know really how other will vote and so you get skewed voting because everyone thinks there is no point. You should always vote what you like and what you think and not worry what others may do, you are only responsible for yours. Imagine if you get to a point where your vote would have been needed to elect the people you actually wanted, how heart braking would that be? I know pollsters tell you different, but people should vote the policies they like.

It's so awful that the current system makes these situations happen where you have to vote for someone that has policies (transphobic) that you are so strongly against tho

how is he transphobi?

Yea, coalitions are terrible :D People with different opinions having to find compromise with other parties is hell. There is one serious downside to this, and that is that such a coalition inevitably ends up somewhere in the center of the political spectrum, even if everyone is sick and tired of the center parties, they are pretty much unavoidable and no major change will take place, making some believe that voting is pointless anyway.

I think the problem with PR is that it starts to remove the whole voting for a person idea with the MP way of working. That's why I think its better to vote for the STV system which helps create a system where voting for a party like green is viable without having to risk letting the Tories take the seat.

The MMP system used by Germany or New Zealand solves this by having constituencies elect their local MPs using FPTP and then "topping up" parliament with candidates put forward by the parties themselves such that proportionality is ensured.

@@pmas1 The same thing happens in Scotland.

You can just use AV though... or if you want multiseats you can use PR-STV like in Ireland which is well known for its very local politics (called "parish pump politics"). I don't even think FPTP is that bad (Irish people are obsessed with it like you can't do a simple election with 3 people running and 20 votes with FPTP nope people want PR STV for everything even though it takes forever to count. AV or PR-STV is the only voting system for ANYTHING in Ireland you're basically seen as a democracy hater). I don't think you're very versed in PR if you think localism doesn't or can't exist in PR 😂 you seem to think PR = list system

@@hucklebucklin What's AV, please? What I'm talking about isn't local politics, I mean I get to vote for a local candidate, whom I can get to know before the election. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but under PR, since you don't know the proportion of votes before the election, you can't actually vote for a candidate, just a party, right?

@@pmas1 I'll loop into it. What does MMP stand for, please?

ooooo

@@evan Very similar to the number who supported brexit and look how that turned out. People think it will be all sunshine and roses until they actually experience the downsides themselves. While PR has a lot of merits, it can often lead to unstable coalitions making governance difficult.

@@abcdef-uc1rj The most stable time in the previous 14 years was when the Tories were in coalition with the Lib Dems. The least stable was when they were in coalition with the DUP, and the previous 5 years when they had an 80 seat majority weren't particularly stable either. I don't think you can say that First Past the Post delivers stable government, or that coalitions don't.

I wouldn't pay too much attention to a single poll. As recently as 2011 we had a referendum to make a minor change to our voting system to make it slightly more proportional (Alternative Vote method) and it was overwhelmingly rejected 68%-32%.

@@harryishatless Every expert opinion that I have read on AV (the system that was on offer) has stated that it is not a proportional system. In fact, some opinion states its it can give less proportional results in certain circumstances. Why the Lib Dems agreed to a referendum on it is beyond me.

Yes!

63% percent of the voting areas preferred Labour than any other party

Using the same logic 90.7% of all the potential voters in the country didn’t vote for Reform UK. 100 * (1 - (3,726,224 / 40,426,736)) 100 * (1 - (Reform UK votes / Total electorate))

@@nigelanscombe8658 and because me and most of the the rest of the UK voting public are to thick to follow your maths we like FPTP no math needed just the one with the most votes wins

IF there was PR of some kind then the number of , and distribution of votes, could well differ,

Similar stats when Thatcher was elected

There is PR systems with seats for example MMP.

This is a fallacy, while in theory its accurate, in practice it doesn't make a difference, MPs are party members and as such will follow party rule.

That's kind of lost already though - very few MPs actually have a majority of the votes in their constituency any more. A hybrid system where, say, votes are done on a regional basis and then the region's MPs are assigned to constituencies would allow most of the benefits of pure PR, while retaining constituency MPs, who I agree are for the most part a very good thing.

With the party whip system, we have no local representation currently, they're not allowed to represent us.

@@cyrilthefish that's overlooking the tons of constituency work that most MPs and their offices do. Yes they're whipped to generally vote on party lines, but huge chunks of their job are dealing with their constituency, intervening in council screw ups and the like, handling petitions from the public in their area and more. The constituency office is an often overlooked foundation stone of British government.

MMP in New Zealand gets round this somewhat.

There are more proportional systems, like MMP and STV, that keep the local constituency link!

You can have both! look at the GLA for example.

Why do you people freakin care about constituency link so badly 💀💀

This is a wrong way to look at it. It snot mandatory that you would just create one electoral region and then just divide things up in proportion. Normally you divide the country up and instead of having say 10MP being elected in 10 small counties you make 1 electoral region that elects 10MPs and divide those up proportionally. Most countries then even apply a slight skew to parties with more votes to favour majorities, its called the D'Hondt method. Alternatively, if you really want to use the more direct option, you could do the French version of FPTP which requires a majority vote to elect an MP in the first round. If a majority is not obtained a second election takes place requiring parties to meet a certain percentage to be eligible. Still saying that FPRP saves you from having parties just decided who they send to parliament is a weak argument, because its the parties decide who they run in any election anyway and once in parliament they follow party rule just the same.

ExCUSE ME?

That's still not democratic and representative. What we need is Proportional Representation.

@@coolbanana165 Agreed. Stupid comment from @ArtyFactual_Intelligence.

STV works best with multi member constituencies. No reason we can't go back to the 2 member ones we used to have.

Exactly I'm finding media comments about this really annoying and I'm not against changing to PR I'm just concerned about what version to use

Of course the votes would be different if the system was different from the start, and I do believe there would need to be a more extensive research to do a proper comparison between the two systems, but, all in all, I don't think it's useless to make this sort of comparisons, saying "this is how the Parliament would look like if we used a different voting system". Now, whether or not you can draw any meaningful conclusions regarding how the Parliament or the government would actually look like, or if it would be a cause for concern or relief for each party, that's up for debate and open to interpretation, but at the very least, I think it would be educational and informative on how different voting systems affect the constituency of a government using the same votes.

AV would still be very non-proportional in a lot of cases. The best system is likely one like Germany's. We would increase the size of our local constituencies, and then the rest of the MPs would be selected from a party list based on the popular vote to get the final result as close to PR as possible. In terms of stagnation, it just means parties have to form coalitions sometimes, which works very well in some countries. Considering the UK public's like of stable government, I think they'd be incentivized to not let chaos reign.

@@d_dave7200 coalitions don't work. It almost always ends up with the largest party dictating what to do. We have evidence of that from 2010 and I have seen it happen in other countries too

I like the system Australia uses, preferential voting, or ranked choice voting. If a >50% majority isn't achieved, the lowest candidate is dropped out and their 2nd choice is counted, this process continues until one candidate has more than half of the votes.

@@Jwm367tThe largest party should mostly dictate, but they have to give up something to form the coalition, even if it's only small concessions. Better than what we have currently where there are no concessions at all. I don't agree with a lot of what Lib Dems did, but they got multiple good policies passed in that coalition that the Tories would never have done

What you also didnt care to read that it was put forward by the lib dems who broke their manifesto promise of not increasing uni fees. It was a protest vote nothing more. By your logic here 100% of people who voted for brexit wanted it fully because that was the result.

Yes that's when the Nick Cleggs Lib Dems proposed it, it's been 13 years now, things have changed. The you gov poll suggests 54% in favour and 16% against. Both right wing Reform voters and left wing Green party, lib dem, Plaid Cymru, more left leaning Labour voters now want the change.

@@desertels5119 The LibDems actually proposed STV. But the Tories ruled that out, and said that they could have a referendum on AV.

Surely STV ends up with a similar situation to now though - IE: reform voters will probably put reform 1 and either labour or conservatives 2 or 3 depending on which side of the aisle they're on. Greens and lib dems will eventually put labour as their choice as 2 or 3. Or the voters for those smaller parties won't put any further parties and their vote will be discarded. All the votes still get transferred over to labour or conservatives in the vast majority of English seats, unless people tactical vote which smaller party they put first which is one of the things I despise about the current system. This means if you're truly a proponent of one of the smaller parties, you aren't getting any more representation than you are at the moment, you've just had more hurdles to jump to get to the least-worst option, which is essentially what people are voting for under the current system. Not sure what I'd say the best option is really. But I don't see STV as being any better than FPTP except that it allows people to pretend the country had more of a say than they do at the moment for the same final result.

Not sure why I'm seeing multiple people in this comment section conflate AV with STV. AV elects a single representative. STV elects multiple per constituency. Under STV with three MPs per constituency, if the three most popular parties came in at 33%, 30% and 28%, you'd end up with an MP from each. A constituency that had 60% for 1 party and 25% for another would end up with 2 MPs from the former and 1MP from the latter. The more MPs you have per constituency under STV, the smaller the share of the vote a party needs to get an MP. Basically it tries to achieve proportionality within the constituency rather than the country as a whole. AV is simply FPTP with ranked-choice voting.

The other thing that PR does, which often isn't mentioned, is that as well as breaking the local constituency link, it also formalises political parties within the consitution and changes a voter's relationship from being with an individual who they vote for (even if that individual has a party label) to being with a political party. Now, that's not to say that these are good or bad things necessarily, but they are both fundamental changes in the constitutional arrangments and assumptions of our system, assumptions that a lot of constitution is buit upon. Single-member constituency STV, for instance, would be an election system that gave voters more power and choice, without changing either of those principles. STV with multi-member constituencies would weaken the constituency link to some degree, but the personal representative would remain intact: you'd still vote for individuals, not parties. PR would both break the constituency link and formally insert political parties into the constitution. We could currently have a House of Commons of 650 independents, in theory, and nothing would break constitutionally. In PR the "proportional" bit is the proportion of _party_ votes, so that parties are no longer optional collaborations between individual citizens and political representatives, they're necessary for the system to even work! (STV with multi-member constituencies is actually really neat in terms of the role of parties, because obviously what I've said above is what is constitutionally true, and is important, but in reality lots of voters actually want to vote for parties, rather than specific individuals. With multi-member STV, if voters, as a general mass, decide that they don't particularly want to pay much attention to political parties, and vote for individuals without taking any notice of their party label, then you get a result which does not have any link to proportionality in terms of parties. If voters decide, as a group, that parties are the only important thing, and only vote based on the party label, you get a result which is proportional to the party vote shares. And on a sliding scale in between those two end points, the more and more voters make their choices based on party labels rather than individual candidates, the more and more party proportionality will be enforced by the electoral system. The voters get to choose, by the sum of their individual actions, whether parties should be the basis of the electoral calculus or whether parties should be irrelevant to it. Who could argue with that?!)

@zak3744 I like the way you think!

@@elfemem You're correct up until you start to take into account Labour and Conservative voters. Those will also start ranking the smaller parties in some cases leading to the smaller parties picking up more seats. As an example you could see most Labour voters putting Lib Dems at 2, Green/Reform at 3, with Conservative voters putting Lib Dems/Reform at 2/3. Those smaller 'populist' parties will then naturally get more seats. Personally am not a fan of removing FPTP from national elections but for local council elections this is such a brilliant system to ensure a good balance of strong government while allowing for more representation (favouring the smaller/middling parties).

Hell yeah

I know France isn't PR... I just like the two rounds system

NZ and MMP is great. Would strongly advocate for it here.

@@svartmetall48 Yeah, it keeps MPs or 'electorate' as it is in NZ and is proportional because of the "top-up seats. MMP is probably my favourite system atm alongside with single transferrable vote.

MMP as already used in Scottish elections......

@@Idk-ys7rt The turnout though I found way too low. Today the second round it's about 26% or something like that? The voting system is interesting and I agree the two rounds system I think is helpful but something else needs to help that turnout

True, only the electoral college system used in the states is even less proportional than ours

US is even worse because not only do they not use representation voting, they also have stupid gerrymandering which is akin to cheating to get elected. Its bonkers. @mickylee82 Its actually the exact same system in most states, more votes = win. With some exceptions where the electoral votes are split proportionally, think Main does that and some other are doing it too. But for House and Senate its FPTP with some cases of runoff elections if you didn't get 50%.

yes and no that's only for federal elections and that's not too screw over small states and alienate them as the population of America is overwhelmingly on the East and West coast the middle of America is basically empty. So I get what you're saying but the electoral college makes sense FPTP doesn't. Like how does Reform get 500k more voted than the Lib Dems yet only get 5 seats but they get 72? It's maddness

@@mickylee82and that’s barely scratching the surface. There are other things that make things less ideal. 1. gerrymandering- ruling party within a state draws district boundaries to favor themselves. 2. Party primaries- only allows extreme, well-funded party candidates to actually be on the ballot, filtering out moderate candidates within the party. 3. Voter suppression laws, regular purging of voter rolls, number of polling stations disproportional to population density, elections held on a working day (UK also does this one) instead of a holiday or weekend.

Primaries were used to change the Republicans from a staid conservative party into radical populists.

Still valid today. I think he did after the Coalition was needed?

We had a referendum on that in 2011? and it was rejected.

How is the electoral college more winner-take-all than the UK system? In both countries we end up with a single head of government who can make executive decisions. President in the US, PM who can act in the name of the king (or advise the king on how to act and expect their advice to be followed 100% of the time) in the UK.

I wish we had Ranked Choice and no electoral college here in the states.

Some US states have changed this right? Where if 1/3 votes democrats, 2/3 vote republicans, then 1/3 of the states electorals will be democrat? Or something? I guess most states still have winner takes all

Exactly what I thought.

@@barneylaurance1865 If you can't see the difference between winner-take-all and simple plurality in single-member districts then I'm not sure what more I could do to explain it. @ltpinecone I wish the US kept the college but introduced PR for it, but it's not my country so feel free to campaign for whatever system you like.

Yes I think a Germany style system is the way to go. Agree

Or leave it alone and elect the house of lords proportionally. Let the parties pick the upper house based on there vote share then require a 3/4 majority for the commons to overrule them.

As someone that comes from a country where we have no representatives for each district, I do wonder what you think that such a thing adds. Say in my city party A is the biggest, but I personally support party Z, and don't feel in any form or way represented by whatever A does or want, how is that guy my representative? It is not like I can go and call him and say "ohhh, vote for proposition X or else I will not vote for you" since it is clear I won't ever vote for him anyway.

@@ThePirateParrot We will end up with a situation where the two houses battle each other and nothing gets done. For a parlimentary system like ours a single transferable vote system is the most logical. It might actually get people looking more closely at policies across parties rather than just believing the nonsesne that the tabloids spout.

​​@@EikenhorstAs I understand, in the UK, the parliamentary constituency is composed of roughly equal size of populations. It's not really the best system, but I don't know what you would suggest instead? There is no system which is perfect as people we are far from perfect. Maybe, there could be some sort of ranked choice based system, but I think that would be too difficult for much of the electorate to comprehend.

Yeah we see Nigel Farage who enjoys being buddy buddy with Trump for who he is.

We've seen what the Greens did with power in Scotland under a PR system. Their crazy policies have had a big hand in the SNP going down from 48 seats to 9.

At my age I find the idea of a labour government very worrying especially with such a "boring, nondescript" leader. This time I'd have been more than happy to sack all MPs and insist that they were all replaced with genuine people that aren't in it just for the money and power.

tory hell? the "tories" ran a leftwing rule... why leftwingers are complaining about them i will never know u will have identical results in this term

@@gillfox9899 After Blair, Cameron, Johnson, Truss and company, I'll take boring and non-descript for the rest of my lifetime. It is people's obsession with charisma that has got us into the mess we are in. We are electing a government to run the country, not entertainment for media consumption.

@abcdef-uc1rj Hear! Hear!

Yup. Reform shouldn't be allowed to be a party for the crazy things they want, but since we are in democracy, it's unbelievable that a party with so many votes gets so many seats

Even with the 5 seats they won, that translates to ~800,000 Reform votes per seat. At that rate they'd need 328.8M Reform votes to get the same number of seats as Labours 9.7M. Ridiculous.

@@no_name4796 what crazy things do they want?

It was worst for ukip when they had 3.5m votes and one seat.

@@Zomerset terrible system. 2/3 of the population didn't vote labour yet here we are

Tiring, isn’t it. Lost a subscriber over that comment

@@goldengoatfilms98 Yeah, it betrays the slick production and makes you question everything he says. Is he this lazy when he researches other things or is it said deliberately in the full knowledge it’s not true? The media tried this with Trump. They only needed to report what he said and did. As soon as they tried to exaggerate or deliberately take things out of context they lost.

Okay, but we were given a choice between eating sand or gravel and opted to keep with the sand. That doesn't mean people wouldn't prefer cake.

The problem with UK referendums is the rules on honesty and misrepresentation are laxer. That's why both major ones we've had were screwed over.

Hmm yes and no. Very similar issue in PR as know the bigger and harder policies are ones they can conveniently compromise on as part of coalition. Very hard to have a reason not to follow though with super majority. I should add on balance I would prefer PR despite the 'stability' of super majority being unlikely.

I feel ya! But I’d like to think that with PR, you’d have more coalitions, and broadly centre political parties are less likely to get pulled to the fringes.