Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
We have had a referendum on electoral reform. It didn't go well for the reformers. Given that PR would result in endless coalition, and we have just experienced five years of coalition, I find it hard to see where the arguments are going to come from that might change everyone's mind on the issue.
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I think the arguments will come when the outcome of the election shows a wide discrepancy between votes cast and seats awarded. It's one thing to advocate first past the post in a two party system where 70% to 80% of voters have voted for one of two parties. It's another when only around 60% voted for them and the remaining 40% see but a handful of seats allocated to them.
If you take current polls and assume a uniform swing then the Liberal Democrats will win 8% of the vote but get 18 seats whereas UKIP with a projected vote share of 15% will win anything between 1 to 4/5 seats. The Greens will increase their vote share about 10 fold from 0.9% to 10% (again on current polling) but could well lose their only seat to win 0 seats for that share.
I don't think you can sustain the argument that FFTP is better when people are being allocated twice as many seats or more than parties that won far more votes. It's absurd that the Liberal Democrats can get less votes than the Green Party but get 18 seats to their none. The Conservatives can get twice as many votes as UKIP but UKIP will be award a handful of seats whereas the Tories would be given orders of magnitude more seats.
It seems to me that this system only works when the majority of votes goes to one of the two parties. When the vote share is more evenly spread then people are voting for coalitions anyway and all FFTP does is cause a big inequality to the process. You suggest that coalitions are a unfavorable result but for the second time running it seems that is what the electorate will choose. The arguments will come from the that we might as well make sure that the coalitions better represent the voters themselves.
Finally I suspect that a minority Labour/Lib-Dem/SNP coalition will make a referendum on this a condition of any agreement and insist the Labour leadership campaign for a Yes vote. This time they'll also have the support of likes of UKIP and the Greens in additional to the Lib-Dems and SNP. The electoral landscape has changed a lot in 5 years.
I think voters sick of the two-party system and more open to voting for minority parties will win that the vote for electoral change will be a lot closer than last time.