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Why 2024 Was the Least Proportional Election Result Ever

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Despite only winning 34% of the vote, Labour claimed a huge majority in the General Election which could lead to questions regarding over the UK's First Past the Post system. So was this really the least democratic vote in British political history?

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93 Comments

    • Depends on what you want to replace it with. Straight PR is even less democratic in practice, no matter how much small parties want to gaslight us into thinking otherwise. There are other systems that are probably better, but it isn’t anything like as clear-cut as ‘FPTP bad, PR good’ as some would like to make it out. The details of how the systems are set up make a HUGE difference.

    • Probably won’t, but they might make some moves in that direction. Keir Starmer will be aware that a large majority (like the one gained by Boris Johnson) doesn’t mean you can’t be thrashed at the next election, so reaching out to the Lib Dems and/or Greens by reforming the system could prove to be in Labour’s interests in the longer term. It’s certainly not a given, but I wouldn’t rule it out.

    • @@johnpotts8308 Seems unlikely. Coalition governments historically aren’t very popular with voters, and if PR were implemented, the Labour Party would probably be at serious risk of breaking up. It was only the political realities of our FPTP system that really kept it together in the latter part of the Corbyn era.

  1. I don’t like Farage, Reform, their candidates or their politics – in fact I’m on the opposite end of the political spectrum – but getting just 5 seats for 4 million votes is crazy.

    • Yes I’m such a leftie but the fact that some of us would argue that FPTP is good just so that it keeps out ‘extremists’ like Reform (who mind you 14.7% ppl voted for) is ridiculous, we should all accept the fact that FPTP is just not a viable method of voting anymore and cannot accurately represent the people (yk like how a democracy is supposed to work)

    • My favourite part of this election is that now the few anti-electoral reform people I know can’t just make the “you’re only saying that because Labour loses under FPTP”. Labour won, and I still want electoral reform. Reform lost out massively under FPTP, and I still want electoral reform. Because it’s not about making my ‘side’ perform better in elections, it’s about making democracy matter, and making sure everybody has their voices heard, even if they use their voice exclusively to say homophobic and racial slurs.

  2. you should have pointed out that reform got 14percent of the vote, while lib dems got 12, and reform got 4 seats but lib dems got 71…… couldn’t be any more undemocratic

  3. The thing I find the most hilarious is that CGP Grey made a video that came out 9 years ago about how the UK’s electoral system, in the aftermath of the 2015 general election, during which the Tories got a majority of seats. The Tories didn’t fix anything during those 9 years, and now their opposition, labour have a vast majority.

    • The system is DESIGNED to benefit Tories. The fact that today benefited Labor is a huge neon sign of how bad shape Tories are in… so of course they would never in your dreams change it! It’s like asking the Republicans to change it or the EC in the USA…

    • @@pinkblake 63 years to 37 years. And? Labour gets in makes everything far, far worse then get voted out.

      There is a reason Labour was kicked to the curb for 14 years after 13 years of Labour and that was mild new Labour not the leftist nutters that were the leaders before and after Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.

      Of the last 25 general elections excluding this years that go back to 1924 it’s 10 for Labour and 15 for the Conservatives.

      Both have called early elections due to issues of lack of faith by the public with Labour having them more often.

    • I do think a system like AMS would probably be a better solution than PR, since we do need the Northern Irish, Scots and Welsh to have their own regional representation [as well as the different parts of England ofc] on top of a more proportional representation.

    • Maybe Reform MPs should cast 822,857 votes in the division lobby and DUP members cast 34,410 – like card votes at the TUC, or shareholders’ votes. Then it’s less important how many MOs there are, the voters still get represented. And it would keep the constituency link.

    • No. Reform MP doesn’t represent 822k votes.

      The Reform MP represents their own constituency and that it. No one else.

      FPTP is a devolved voting system where MPs aren’t elected per total votes in a country but per votes in a given constituency.

      It prevents extremist shifts on a national level.

    • ​@@AlecBradyGet rid of the house of lords and instead the upper chamber is represented by a proportional vote. That way the house of commons represents constituencies while the house of lords represents the nationwide proportional vote.

  4. It’s not right that so many people in this country feel their vote doesn’t matter, or, that they must vote tactically.
    It’s not right that Labour automatically get into power because the “other party” destroyed themselves.
    It’s not right that so much support doesn’t lead to actual representation in parliament.
    It’s not right that the UK is almost the only country in Europe still with this system.
    It’s not right, it’s time we got it rid of it.

  5. Reminds me of, here in Canada, our current government had promised to get rid of FPTP but when they only got a majority thanks to FPTP, they magically stopped talking about it.

    • Trudeau appeared to favour ranked ballots, but the Special Committee on Electoral Reform came down on the side of PR which was… awkward… since it meant the chance of another Liberal majority in the foreseeable future was remote. So he backtracked. If he hadn’t, and had gone with some form of PR, the Liberals would be in a lot better position than they find themselves now.

    • Thats because all the Liberals do is talk about fairness and representation and the majority of Canadians, all while doing everything they can to not be fair, represent every day Canadians and the will of the people. They are too busy giving money to friends, raising taxes and virtue signaling to ever care about democracy.

    • ​@@Ironguy-gm6vfMy friend there are systems like mixed-member proportional that allows local representation whilst still having proportional partisan representation.

    • @@zahzuhzay6533 All PR does is break down the members of the party into different parties, nothing changes. All it does is encourage partisanship and no compromise because if you disagree on some minor issue you make a new party. The less parties the better

  6. Think about this. _Only one in six Brit voted for labour._

    They got one out of three votes, but with turnout of around 50%, that means that roughly speaking only one out of six people in Britain voted labour.

    • And Australia way back in 1918. Ironically it was a conservative government which did it to prevent splitting their votes with other conservative parties and allowing the Labor party to take otherwise conservative seats.

    • NZ took 2 parties to sleepwalk into it as they thought they could use the issue to get elected and not implement it. Had they both did what the UK and Canada did, there’d have been no reform.

  7. “slightly underperformed the polls” is a wee bit of an understatement, no? They got 33.8% and polled generally in the 42-46% range. That’s a massive underperformance not explained by voters staying home, which definitely occurred on the Tory side too.

    • They didn’t though – Labour barely increased their vote share from 2019 and actually won with their lowest vote share ever.

      Labour didn’t win because ‘everyone just voted Labour’ – they won because people jumped ship from the Tories to Reform – thus removing Labour’s only viable oppoisition.

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