General Election - 4th July 2024

[SWP's back]

It would have decimated their support last night if they had.
I agree with you but that was never going to happen.

They could have announced just about anything in their manifesto and they’d have taken a big majority. It was one of those once in a life time opportunities to get a mandate for anything they wanted.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

Just done a quick calculation on vote share versus seats won, and translated that into how many seats each major party would've won under 'pure' PR (i.e., percentage vote = number of seats).

FPTP
Labour 411
Con 121
Reform 4
LibDem 71

PR
Labour 219
Con 154
Reform 93
LD 79

This is kind of like when people try to work out what the Premier League table would be like without VAR though. The fact that it exists and makes a decision affects how the teams approach the rest of the game. Same with this. If we've learned anything from this election, it's that the Lib Dems are far better strategists that the bunch of amateurs that are Reform.

PR would almost certainly increase the turnout, as people are more able to positively vote for what they wanted. So many people don't vote because they only have a realistic choice of two parties they don't like. The Lib Dems and other smaller parties would almost certainly see an increase in votes under PR. Reform is harder to judge, because this time they've arguably acted as a protest for people who are right wing but are fed up with the Tories. We've seen in the past these far right parties ebb and flow based on what's happening at the time.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

They could have announced just about anything in their manifesto and they’d have taken a big majority. It was one of those once in a life time opportunities to get a mandate for anything they wanted.

Or get elected and have no responsibility to deliver anything, which is the option they took.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

It would have decimated their support last night if they had.
I agree with you but that was never going to happen.

Not so sure it would. Might have decimated the Liberals though.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

This is kind of like when people try to work out what the Premier League table would be like without VAR though. The fact that it exists and makes a decision affects how the teams approach the rest of the game. Same with this. If we've learned anything from this election, it's that the Lib Dems are far better strategists that the bunch of amateurs that are Reform.

PR would almost certainly increase the turnout, as people are more able to positively vote for what they wanted. So many people don't vote because they only have a realistic choice of two parties they don't like. The Lib Dems and other smaller parties would almost certainly see an increase in votes under PR. Reform is harder to judge, because this time they've arguably acted as a protest for people who are right wing but are fed up with the Tories. We've seen in the past these far right parties ebb and flow based on what's happening at the time.

You're right of course, plus there's no guarantee that Reform votes came solely from people who would otherwise have voted Conservative.

 

[Withnail]

Proud as punch watch a northern working class person from a council estate walking into one of the top political jobs in the UK.

Well done Angela Raynor and good luck.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but I like her and as you say great to see someone from unpriviliged background do well in politics.

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

Swerve from what? Fella hasn’t even started and he is already being criticised for the most stupid thing.

As I say, criticise him for how he runs the country, not what make of car he is picked up in.

Only on blue moon

Well we both know you deliberately swerved my question.

Perhaps you should read my initial post before you jump to conclusions.

 

[MillionMilesAway]

Thanks. I only looked at the numbers for the major parties.

I was thinking that you'd obviously not crunched everything as you were 80ish seats short.

Impressive crunching though - of course, a PR vote may not result in the same voting behaviour as it means different things. LibDems may be more keen to vote in places where they're a distant straggler.

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

Just done a quick calculation on vote share versus seats won, and translated that into how many seats each major party would've won under 'pure' PR (i.e., percentage vote = number of seats).

FPTP
Labour 411
Con 121
Reform 4
LibDem 71

PR
Labour 219
Con 154
Reform 93
LD 79

So under PR you'd maybe have the right-wing of the Tory party collaborating with Reform and the majority Labour government having to rely on the LibDems for support. As we saw in 2010, when the LibDems made a huge mistake in committing to a coalition, that doesn't make for good government.

The other what-if factor was that Reform was second in 9i constituencies. I might do the maths later for individual seats but let's assume that in 74 of those the Reform vote made the difference between the Tories losing and winning, and that 50 of those went to Labour, and 24 to Lib Dems. Assuming negligible Reform support, or no Reform at all, that would have made the final result (bar the 2 missing results):
Labour 326
Con 196
Lib Dem 53

Corrected - So the barest Labour overall majority of one.

Interesting that PR works fine in the majority of governments round the world. But it will never change in the UK as Turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

I might add that I do kind of agree with you and don't have a massive issue with FPTP system. Although it does tend to allow the minority to impose their will on the majority at times.

 

[The blue phantom]

Same school as me....and Phil Foden!

Talking of Schools my Daughter is in the same class as Angela's son.