Can we talk about the complete, abject, failure of First Past the Post in this election?

45 comments

1. Yep. It’s indefensible

2. This isn’t really an unpopular opinion. Perhaps a slightly risker opinion would be that we blew it by not voting for AV back in 2011. While it wasn’t perfect by any means, it was a step in the right direction.

   But, on the flip side, we actually seem to have shaken off a consequence of Brexit with this election. Prior to Brexit the combined Con/Labour vote showed a pattern of decline, only to go up again because of Brexit. A result like this does put pressure on the main two parties to look at a different system, but it’s definitely a marathon more than a sprint. I’d be interested to see the results of an election five years from now.

3. Abysmal when you consider the tories got 45% of the vote and labour ran on ‘we’re not the tories’.

4. Yeah mate but try and do something about it. There won’t be any movement on it this term

5. Was there such a call for FPTP to be abolished when the SNP’s representation in Westminster was so exaggerated? Which, BTW, is not to defend FPTP – it needs to get in the bin.

6. 100% agree but can’t see it ever changing as it would require one of the two beneficiaries of the system deciding to do the honourable thing and stand on a platform of changing it.

   Moreover, I’m not sure we’d ever win a referendum on PR for Westminster, your analysis is a good job and makes perfect sense but the tabloid press in England would utterly rip PR to shreds in the run up to any vote, same as the did to the EU.

7. The fact that Labour’s voteshare is almost identical to 2019 but they have double the number of seats is crazy to think about.

   The Financial Times described it as the most disproportionate result in British history.

   But I don’t think it will change, there’s no incentive for it to.

8. A few years ago, I crunched the numbers from a couple of Holyrood elections and the Additional Members system (complete with it’s complicated arithmetic) generally returns an excellent correlation between Share of the Popular Vote (combined across both papers) and Share of the Seats.

   Voting reform came up at least twice on the telly last night (we were channel hopping) and nobody mentioned this

9. I spotted the problem and I’d like to use your figures to create an informational graph. I would of course credit you.

10. It does feel wrong, but it stops fringe lunatics getting a seat at the table.

11. It’s a shit system but something I can’t figure out with PR, is how do you decide your local electoral representative?

    I’d much rather see a proportional balance where every vote means the same and we have a fair split of MPs by vote% but then who represents me in parliament if I can’t vote for my local candidate?

12. Hmmm I kind of disagree, and this is someone who thinks a more proportional system is required.

    Everyone knew the rules of the game, those who played the game better got better results.
    We seen Labour, Lib Dem and Green pouring resources onto specific seats and being rewarded for that.
    If the rules were different there strategy would have been different and you likely would have seen a very different % vote share for each.

    Contrast this with Reform, they basically did a quick half arsed job finding anyone willing to stand in every constituency, then focused on a couple of key seats.
    Yup there broad messaging had more cut through in terms of losing vote share than Lib Dems or Greens but there lack of focus is in part a serious contributing factor to not achieving electoral success.

    The parties and public know the rules of the game.
    If the parties choose to use them tactically they can achieve success. Same as the public know the rules so in many places may be more willing to lodge “protest” votes effecting vote share but not results.

    For me the argument for electoral reform is to make people think there vote will always count

13. Jeremy Corbyn being hailed as un-electable,while getting more votes than Kier in 2017 and 2019 is an abject failure of every level of democracy.

14. The thing is though if you put in that alternative system sure there will be greater representation of the snp, but it means it could give wider representation of other parties that you may not like and would be potentially bad & damaging for the countries interests, yes FPTP has its faults but it’s better to have it than not have it

15. FPTP is sensible as it keeps the lunatic fringes away from power, look at the state of France right now. If you want the right wing to take over then ditch FPTP, it’s not perfect, but the alternative will only lead to a mess

16. Just to be clear I dislike FPTP and think it needs reforming, however it goes both ways.

    Last election labour had 18% votes with 1 seat to the SNP’s 45% with 48 seats. That was equally completely unfair and they took that as a mandate for independence, despite not even having half the vote share on a pretty poor turnout anyway.

    The system doesn’t work, however let’s not act like the SNP are some poor victims in this one, the wheels just turned the other way this time

17. Because you vote for a mp not a party. First past the post is the fairest method.

18. The problem is that when you have a goal to achieve a result that’s what the teams set out to win. If you changed football to 3 points for a draw and 1 point for a win, you’d have a huge change in how teams set up and played their game. An extreme example but it’s not fair to change the goal posts then try to see who might have been the winners

19. I totally agree. We need PR but that has its own set of problems.

20. The SNPs majorities at WM in 2015 and 2019 are a perfect example of why we need to change the system. I mean 56/59 on less than 50% of the vote in 2015 was fkin nuts

21. Always been the same. Won’t change whilst it has the capacity for the two biggest UK parties to have land-slide victories with not necessarily a correspondingly great deal of voter movement. See 2019 and 2024 (and in 2017 Mr Corbyn’s Labour Party actually won a bigger share of the vote than Starmer but lost that Election).

    FPTP is a mess.

22. You never gave a fuck about this in 2015 when SNP won 56 seats despite getting 50% of the popular vote in Scotland.

23. FPTP is and always has been a complete clusterfuck of a system. Labour have zero incentive to change it though.

24. One of the weirder facts as well, Labour have LESS votes this election than in 2019 but won over double the seats this year compared with 2019

25. We compromise our beliefs in choosing the candidate most likely to win and closest to our own viewpoint with first past the post. With PR, we choose the party that is closest to our beliefs who then compromise their manifesto to gain power. Each has a compromise. I believe in direct democracy; end party politics and narcissistic psychos representing our best interests. I’d make leadership of local government akin to jury duty, make the House of Commons the people (utilising direct democracy and technology), ten year funding plans for critical sectors such as health and defence, and finally, an elected council (Lords) of people truly accomplished in their field to scrutinise our laws. Edit: Elections would be for the council, cabinet & PM.

26. Actually, the vote was highly tactical and efficient in getting the Tories out. What’s the point of getting a large vote share like Corbyn that did nothing in terms of power, it just doubled down on already safe seats. Labour succeeding in winning seats it needed. It wasn’t failure, it was a tactical vote. https://x.com/Samfr/status/1809229368960422391?t=K-hwnPl0CESawcgVRj2_-A&s=19

27. it’s this system that promotes tactical voting and ultimately a party that no one across the uk really believes in coming to power and it really reduces the value of individual votes. really sad state of affairs.

28. I agree with this post. FPTP is an antediluvian relic.

    That said, I sincerely doubt that Keir Starmer has electoral reform in his top 1000 of issues to address. In fact, didn’t he actively prevent PR from getting into the Labour manifesto?

29. Considering a 60% of people voted, labour was voted by approx a 25% of the people. They have a big majority in seats, but in the streets they are outnumber 3 to 1. It’s going to be difficult for them. 

30. The more incredible stat for me is that Labour can go from a historic low to a historic high in terms of seats won off the back of a 1.6% change in the vote share. It’s a truly baffling system at times and perhaps indicates the victory is a rejection of the Tories rather than a ringing endorsement of Starmer’s Labour.

31. Percentages should be shown from TOTAL voter count NOT just as a percentage of voter turnout. Let’s show how little these parties are actually supported.

32. Proportional representation would clear that up a bit, but it more frequently leads to hung parliaments or coalitions where small parties have outsized voices (DUP, anyone) or which collapse in acrimony. Everyone jokes about Italy having more elections than hot dinners, but it highlights an important outcome.

33. Being saying this for years. Also abolish the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Offices and the 1st minster of each serve in the UK cabinet and are consulted as part of COBRA. Two party dominance has served the UK poorly. However Labour will be entirely uninterested in electoral reform after this.

34. It’s served its final useful purpose.

    I’d like to see a constitutional convention that addresses this, the unelected second chamber, and entrenches devolved powers and interactions between the governments.

    Unfortunately the 2011 referendum was designed to fail.

35. You vote for the person who represents your constituency in parliament. That person chooses who they think should be PM. The parties aren’t meant to exist, or should atvlesdt be a loose affiliation of like-minded people.

    PR gives you the representatives chosen by the party. So you might mostly agree with one party but then they stick you with an MP who’s a dick & you hate, but is the untouchable in the party.

    I prefer option no 1. But maybe the HoL should be reworjed for PR.

36. Not only is FPTP broken, it suits the Tories more so than Labour.
    History shows how many Labour ran governments compared to conservative.

    It’s all a joke, almost as big a joke as Labour being on side with the workers.

37. 💯 agree I mean I’m in my 60s and we used Single Transferable Vote to elect our College Student Union Officers 50 years ago 😂

38. Saved us from having 20% ish being represented by Putin, oops I mean Reform. The system we have works perfectly

39. I’m glad you said “For the record I voted SNP”. We would never have guessed otherwise.

40. A risk with PR is that the politicians justcstayvin the cities when campaigning.
    If a party can get a majority in London & Manchester & Birmingham, why do they need to go to Scotland or Wales.
    Then we’ll just end up with the NI system. No UK wide parties & England officially rules the rest.

    Plus, who’s my MP under PR?

41. >These parties have voting reform in their manifestos: (Excluding national parties except the SNP just because I don’t have time to check them all)

    SNP
    Reform UK
    Liberal Democrats
    The Green party
    These parties don’t:

    Labour
    Conservatives

    Hello from Canada!  We’ve inherited the same problem, just swap Labour for Liberal.  

42. We had a referendum on it 13 years ago, and it was overwhelmingly rejected in favour of the current system. I totally agree with what you are saying, but for whatever reason, people don’t seem to want change. Unless something has changed since 2011.

43. We live in a country where we’re told Parliament is elected by a democratic process. But it’s not very democratic; the media play a far greater role in the decision-making process than is fair. The owners of newspapers decide who they want to support, & political coverage is heavily biased.

    First past the post isn’t a fair system, as OP has noted. Other countries manage to have systems where proportional representation works. It might mean that it takes a couple more days to tally all the votes & allocate seats fairly, but the results ultimately mean that coalition government represents the interests of the electorate, rather than the narrow interests of a political party.

    To the people who say that Westminster couldn’t function with a system of proportional representation resulting in a Coalition – it was used to govern the country during WW2. If it was a workable system of government during a crisis, where the onus was on cooperation to ensure government was fair, then it can also work during peacetime.

44. I’m with you, this system is flawed and doesn’t end up with equal representation. I don’t see why we can’t just have the amount of seats for the amount of votes.

    Does anyone know the reason they use this system? I’m not that clued up on this part

45. The most equitable election system in the world is said to be the Israeli and look what that gets!

    Religious Nutjobs & that’s putting mildy, who should should be as close to power as penguins are to polar bears, hold the balance of power so exert undue and unwarranted influence

    Voting reform is always seen as a good thing but as the proverb goes *be careful what you wish for, as you might get it*

    Only fools rush in, when looking at things like this, as history shows there can be a lot of downsides, unless you have decent safeguards

    examples

    * House of Lords reform – wholly elected leads to issues, see current US Senate deadlock and [the 100 attempts to repeal Obamacare](https://howmanytimeshasthehousevotedtorepealobamacare.com/) or the [Australian 1975 constitutional crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis)
    * Israeli parliament
    * French election at present
    * [Belgium without a government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Belgian_government_formation) for 581 days

    Could we do better, probably. Could we do worse, definitely!

    * Run offs – problem with two is it eliminates a third candidate that could be popular/compromise i.e. A’s voters don’t want B, B’s voters don’t want A both would be happy with C
    * ranked voting – depending on system if a candidate got virtually no 1st prefs but all 2nd prefs they get eliminated