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> yes, that is a feature (not a bug) of a parliamentary system. A complementary feature is that parliamentary systems tend to have representational seat distrib
by mcintyre1994 4y ago
> yes, that is a feature (not a bug) of a parliamentary system. A complementary feature is that parliamentary systems tend to have representational seat distribution. So a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats.
Important context since this is about the UK: we don't have a representation seat distribution like that, we have first past the post. In the last election (2019) these are the results for each party with at least 10 MPs:
- Conservative Party, 43.6% of votes, 56.2% of seats (outright majority).
- Labour Party, 32.1% of votes, 31.1% of seats.
- Scottish National Party, 3.9% of votes, 7.4% of seats. The SNP only campaign in Scotland and win most seats there, which makes them extremely over-represented by FPTP.
- Liberal Democrats, 11.6% of votes, 1.7% of seats.
- Beltalowda 4y agoIn 2015 UKIP got 12.6% of the votes, making it the third-largest party in terms of votes cast by quite some margin, and they got just one seat. In 1983 the Conservatives had 1.5% fewer votes compared to the previous 1979 election, but ended up with 7.7% mote seats resulting in the largest majority in decades. I think it's a real missed opportunity that the Blair government didn't change anything when they had a large majority in the 90s/00s. They said they would, but it fell by the wayside. The problem is that Labour always thinks this time it will be different and this time they will come out on top. And for a while they will, right up to the point they don't.