From the BBC:
According to analysis by polling expert John Curtice, if the results of Thursday's polls in Wales, Scotland and 32 county councils in England were repeated nationally, the Conservatives would be on 38%, Labour 27%, the Lib Dems 18% and UKIP 5%.
With some form of PR, the best being probably multi-member constituencies, there'd probably be a slight left/centre-left majority in the House of Commons, which is the opposite of the slight Leave majority in last year's Referendum.
Not sure who'd get the missing 12% of the votes, presumably the regional/nationalist parties, SNP, Plaid Cymru and so on, who tend to be (seen as) more on the left.
Saturday, 6 May 2017
Fun with numbers/FPTP
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9 comments:
Not sure what method you are using there. You probably can't make a national proportional representation estimate based on fptp constituency council results.
Imho there are two things wrong with PR
one, it hands power to fringe players. Two coalitions which is what all governments under PR sre never work. They are the worst of all worlds
"one, it hands power to fringe players"
Is that necessarily a bad thing? The electoral map would look totally different under PR, not just the same votes applied differently to the same parties.
"Two, coalitions which is what all governments under PR sre never work."
What do you mean by "never work"? Do you mean that the government doesn't get much done and isn't that a good thing? IMHO far too many of the ills that beset this country are caused by government meddling.
Forgive me if I say that your comment sounds very like the current Tory mantra of "strong and stable". The strongest and stablest form of government is a dictatorship and the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship, but it's impossible to organise a dictatorship that is guaranteed to be benevolent and almost equally impossible to get rid of it if it turns out not to be. Since you can't make sure that the government is going to get it right, the next best option is making sure that the government doesn't get it wrong, which means the opposite of "strong and stable", a weak coalition governing largely by consensus.
B. I despise Toryism as much as i despise sociaism in all its forms ( of which Heathian Toryism is one)
The evidence of history is that coalitions level down to their constituent parts lowest common denominator. The centre, the middle ground, is by defibition wrong. Better to have a clear difference between liberty and socialism and have clear arguments.
Plus coalitions always hand executive power to unnaccountable bureaucrats who then run things for their on self interest.
B. (Off my phone and on a pc now..) I agree about the dictatorship points. Democracy is not very good but it is the least worst option.
Consensus is failure. Consensus is just where neither side wants to be. The consensus argument is mostly posed by those who have lost the argument but still want to derail it so use the consensus tactic to sound reasonable. Well, mankind only advances thanks to the efforts of the unreasonable.
I hold up my hands here, in launching my business I was considered extremely unreasonable by my then partners who constantly deployed the consensus argument to thwart my ideas and plans. Needless to say we did not advance until I got control. And the evidence of the progress of my sector over the last thirty years is that I was right.
Thatcher was unreasonable, as I hope is May. Neither support the consensus even though May mouths off about One Nation Toryism.
Look at the EU Parliament. An archetypal PR assembly. Where does the power really lie? With the EU Commission. Is the EU Parliament successful in prmoting wealth and happiness and unity? (Rhetorical question).
Din, clearly I am making the assumption that people would vote the same. You know as well as I do that with some form of PR there would be less tactical voting for more votes for smaller parties.
L and B, it turns out different in different countries. Germany has had full on PR for decades and their political landscape is surprisingly similar to the UK's. In some PR countries like Italy, there are lots of smaller parties who come and go. NL seems to be a fair compromise. We won't know until we try it.
"Consensus is just where neither side wants to be."
No, because both sides hanker after dictatorship, to be able to do what they want untroubled by any form of opposition. IMHO the whole idea of having large political parties with a majority in parliament is a form of political corruption. No-one listens to the speeches, the majority of them know how they are going to vote before the debate starts. Look at the House of Commons on the TV most days and there's hardly anyone there, they've all "paired off". It's an elected dictatorship, not a democracy.
"Look at the EU Parliament. An archetypal PR assembly. Where does the power really lie? With the EU Commission. Is the EU Parliament successful in prmoting wealth and happiness and unity? (Rhetorical question)."
Look at the UK Parliament. An archetypal FPTP assembly. Where does the power really lie? With the Civil Service. Is the UK Parliament successful in promoting wealth and happiness and unity?
B. It's the other way about.
"It's the other way about."
What is?
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