

UK Election: What difference would proportional representation have made? - davidbarker
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32601281

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icebraining
I'm always happy to have a relevant reason to post a _Yes, Minister_ excerpt:
[http://youtube.com/watch?v=gmOvEwtDycs](http://youtube.com/watch?v=gmOvEwtDycs)

The episode is called "A Victory for Democracy".

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tormeh
"The universities. Both of them."

~~~
hackerboos
For those that don't know it's in reference to Oxbridge (Oxford and
Cambridge). The joke is that the rest don't matter.

~~~
tormeh
I'm a little surprised, in a way, about the seeming indifference towards
Imperial College.

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flurdy
The two biggest political parties in the UK by a country mile will loose power
if PR is introduced. So I can't see it happen as they will never back it.

Tories managed to successfully seem to offer the people the pretend choice
with the complete FUD that was the AV referendum, which means any other
referendum is not likely for many years.

~~~
ende
This begs the question: if a two party system is entrenched via FPTP/WTA
plurality voting system and unlikely to ever relinquish such power, what
recourse is there to change the political system? Elections won't do it
because election results are shepparded by the voting system. That poses as a
fundamental flaw in such democracies. The architechts of the US constitution
viewed simple elections as the only vector needed to institutionalize peaceful
revolution on a routine basis. When that recourse is denied, what options are
left?

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nsnick
No. It does not beg that question.
[http://begthequestion.info](http://begthequestion.info)

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thomasfoster96
I live in Tasmania (state of Australia) where we have 5 seats with 5 members
each (used to be 7 members per seat). It works pretty well for such a small
legislature, because the members of the legislature represent the overall vote
fairly well. It has particularly helped the Greens, who in any other system
would probably struggle to get a seat at all (indeed in the Australian house
of Reps around 10% of the vote gets them 1 out of 150 seats), to have a number
of seats in the parliament roughly proportional to their actual support in the
electorate. If the UK adopted something similar to Tasmania, they'd end up
with perhaps 50 or a hundred electorates electing 6 to 12 members.

Ideally in Tasmania we probably should also be thinking about abolishing our
upper house (Legislative Council) and adding more members into the House of
Assembly. The LC has ended up with around 70-80% independent members,
incumbents almost always win their elections if someone even bothers to
challenge them, and public engagement is almost non-existent. The Legislative
Council won't be abolished anytime soon however, because the Legislative
Council has to vote to change the state constitution and they wouldn't abolish
themselves anytime soon.

~~~
rdc12
That seems to be a fairly common problem for Green parties around the world,
popular in the global vote but not popular enough to be elected in the more
local votes (for generel elections anyway local goverment is another matter).

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notahacker
What the graph actually illustrates is that, leaving aside the number of
voting decisions that were tactical[1], we'd have the same party leading the
government, in a majority coalition with the more right-wing UKIP that would
leave those who had voted for the other parties even more upset by the
outcome. PR is certainly not a panacea for high proportions of voters getting
a vastly different government from the one they wanted. (personally I'd love
to see used in an elected House of Lords replacement with a lot less vote
trading but a lot more teeth to veto unpopular legislation, but that's a
different matter)

[1]Whilst many individuals' tactical decisions would look different in a PR
election, it's difficult to see the pattern of vote shares being hugely
dissimilar; with there still being a media-fed late frenzy of English voters
backing the right as an alternative to "being held" to ransom by coalitions
involving the nationalists

~~~
vidarh
You're assuming the Tories would opt for UKIP over Labour for a coalition,
which is not at all obvious. The Tory right wing certainly would prefer that,
but the Tory left wing certainly would not. The question would be which wing
of the party would hold the most influence. Cameron certainly is far from the
most right wing part of the conservative party.

And that consideration is also a reason why I don't think you can assume the
pattern of votes would be all that similar: You would not get rid of tactical
voting - you would get tactical voting in different ways where e.g. parts of
the uncertain Tory voters on the left wing would be more likely to vote Lib
Dem or Labour out of fear of a Tory/UKIP coalition.

I'm Norwegian, living in the UK, and in Norway coalitions are the norm these
days, and voting patterns certainly are _strongly_ influenced based on
perceptions about whether or not you're enabling a coalition you might not
lead. Currently we _do_ have the equivalent of a Tory/UKIP coalition, and it
has lead to a massive resurgence for our Labour party, and the centrist
parties that enabled the coalition have largely collapsed in polls as it's
clear a lot of their voters don't want to help prop up such a coalition again
(the parties does not have a majority but negotiated a supply agreement with
our liberal party and christian democrats).

~~~
notahacker
Cameron is far from the most right wing of the Conservative Party, and I still
don't think he'd find it possible to work with anyone to the left of Tony
Blair (i.e. Miliband and the vast majority of the Labour Party), and I think
the reverse is even more true. It would be difficult enough to imagine them
collaborating on more than a single vote at a time, and basically impossible
to imagine Cameron preferring such a fractious arrangement to a deal with
UKIP, whose sole price of support is a referendum Cameron had already
promised, and whose views on other matters closely match factions within his
own party. Sure, the other cost of that coalition would be the risk of losing
the political centre ground to a Labour campaign, but that's still less likely
to be electorally damaging than the minefield of trying to work with his arch
rivals.

We didn't have PR in this week's election, but we did have near-universal
expectations that future governments would be enabling some form of coalition
or supply agreement. Ultimately the Labour campaign foundered precisely
_because_ voters anticipated the Scottish nationalists and other minority
parties extracting a heavy price for coalition. By contrast, the Conservatives
had shown themselves as able to dominate a coalition agenda, and the only UKIP
agenda that centrist or tactical Tory voters might have actually feared as
opposed to finding distasteful was promised to be decided by referendum
anyway; that wouldn't have changed if UKIP had been expected to win a sizeable
chunk of seats.

I'm not saying that votes wouldn't change at all, but I am saying that unless
the parties also radically altered their campaigns or more lefties turned out
to vote, a right-leaning, Conservative lead coalition would have been an even
more likely victor under PR

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tormeh
I'm of the opinion that majority governments are a problem. I would actually
go even further than PR in evening out the seats. That is, as a party wins
seats, each new seat should require more votes to win. Capturing more than,
say, 40% of the seats should be impossible, and the biggest party has to form
a minority government.

~~~
platz
Sounds like a recipe for even more gridlock. Seems like the party with the
most votes couldn't pass anything (i.e. satisfy voter mandates), even though
they won.

~~~
tormeh
No, remember that the opposition is similarly divided. The governing party
just have to shop around for votes, with a variety of smaller parties to
bargain with.

Promises to voters (which I think is what you mean with voter mandates) are
just the worst. They tend towards the unrealistic and assume party control
over a majority of seats without defectors. Everything about them is dumb.
Good riddance.

~~~
platz
I agree promises to voters end up being silly. Interesting ideas though, I'm
sure given enough thought (I certainly don't have the experience in these
theings) it could work.

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100timesthis
Interesting video on voting systems
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE)

~~~
iopq
Also leads to a two party effect because of the elimination property. You
should still strategically vote for Gorilla as #1 because otherwise you could
have Owl first eliminate Gorilla and then lose to Tiger, for example.

So if you prefer Owl > Gorilla, you still have to go with Gorilla as #1
because Owl might not have enough to beat Tiger. This means it still leads to
Tiger vs. Gorilla two party system.

It's already implemented in Australia and they still have a two party
government.

~~~
higherpurpose
AV/IRV is indeed not much better than FPTP. Approval/preferential voting is,
though.

Here's an example here:

[http://www.electology.org/#!approval-voting-versus-
irv/c1mmu](http://www.electology.org/#!approval-voting-versus-irv/c1mmu)

With IRV Obama would've crushed all of his competitors when he got elected for
the 2nd term. IRV seems to favor incumbents greatly, which is probably why
things haven't changed so much in Australia either - so not much better than
FPTP in the US. People still very much vote strategically with IRV.

With approval voting on the other hand, Stein (Green Party candidate) would've
had a huge chance in the election. Maybe she would've still lost, like the
chart predicts, but we would've had much better kind of debates than Obama vs
Romney.

Romney would've been crushed because he was _so disliked_. In fact many other
"fringe" candidates that were _liked_ in that election would've done much
better under approval voting than under FPTP or IRV.

~~~
iopq
I've examined the issue and that's why I like range/approval voting better.
Johnson did better in that simulation too.

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danmaz74
A proportional system means that most (if not all) choices are made AFTER the
vote by horse-trading between the parties. With decades of experience with
proportional systems in Italy, I warmly advise against it.

~~~
danieltillett
This is why AV (preferential voting) is so much better. You vote for the
candidates in the order you like and the candidate the majority prefer wins.
You get to vote for minor parties without ending up with chaos.

~~~
jsnell
That argument makes little sense to me.

You dislike PR since it'd allow small parties to actually get representation
and thus "cause chaos". If you think AV doesn't have this problem, it must be
because you think AV would keep the small parties out just like FPTP. But if
that's case, why bother switching to a system that changes nothing?

~~~
danieltillett
Because it stops you having to tactically vote. With AV you can vote for a
minor party you support without this vote helping the candidate you hate most.
You don't need to vote for some candidate you don't like just because you hate
another candidate more who might win. You just number tha candidates from 1 to
x in your personal preference.

The end result is the consensus candidate is elected while allowing everyone
to vote for who they want. It is simple and it works well in practice.

~~~
jsnell
Tactical voting is still a thing in AV. If I think A > B > C, I might still
want to vote A > C > B in an effort to drop B out first (hopefully giving A an
easy win in a showdown with C).

~~~
danieltillett
This is not the way AV voting works. The second votes of the last candidate
are distributed to the remaining candidates and the process repeated until
their is a winner. There is no need to vote tactically because your vote never
passes to your last placed candidate. Even in the worst case scenario where
all the candidates other than your two least favourites remain then your votes
goes to your second least favourite candidate without ever benefiting your
most disliked candidate.

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seanalltogether
In PR, how does the electorate vote out an individual candidate that you don't
like? It seems weird that support for a party implies support for all
candidates fielded by that party.

~~~
ealexhudson
Right now, in the UK, we have no say in candidates other than our local
constituency. I can't vote out Ed Balls. I don't get a say in the Prime
Minister. I can't vote for Julian Huppert. So I don't really see how this is
much of an difference in practice.

~~~
vixen99
Can't vote out Ed Balls? You just did!!

[http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/08/defeat-ed-
ba...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/08/defeat-ed-balls-tories-
portillo-moment-shadow-chancellor-loses-seat-labour)

~~~
leapius
No he means personally vote him out. Only the residents of Morley had the
power to vote him out, which they did of course (thankfully!)

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higherpurpose
Much better in the second case, even if the two biggest winners are the same,
but 1) they have less power and 2) it gives the others a chance to keep
growing at the next election and replace the 2 biggest ones in 1 or 2 terms.
And 3) the power is more distributed among 5 or 6 bigger parties - much better
than just having only 2 or 3 parties.

That said, approval voting would've worked even better:

[http://www.electology.org/#!approval-
voting/cc04](http://www.electology.org/#!approval-voting/cc04)

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nextweek2
The point is moot, we had a vote on PR just after the last election. The vast
majority did not vote for it.

~~~
IanCal
We did not have a vote on PR. We had a vote on an alternative voting system.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum,_2011)

~~~
danieltillett
I can't believe you poms voted this down. Why wasn't it called preferential
voting (like here in Australia) on the referendum?

I love preferential voting. You get to vote for a minor party or candidate
while also ensuring the candidate you hate most does not benefit from you
doing this. There is basically no need to vote strategically and back
candidates you don't like purely because you hate them less than someone else.
You just list all the candidates in your personal preference from 1 to x.

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Brakenshire
The Yes campaign was somewhat naive and the No campaign played dirty. The new
system was apparently going to cost £50m more per election, so they put up
loads of posters showing children in incubators and soldiers wearing body
armour, saying effectively 'these people will die if AV is introduced':

[http://nicktyrone.com/sick-baby-billboard/](http://nicktyrone.com/sick-baby-
billboard/)

~~~
danieltillett
I am surprised that the Yes campaign didn't suggest saving 10x as much by
getting rid of all elections and asking the Queen to come back as an absolute
monarch.

I guess we Australian can't be too smug as we voted no in a referendum in 1988
asking if we wanted freedom of religion. Apparently the FUD then was over
funding for religious schools.

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SeanLuke
A proportional system, I suspect, would be extraordinarily damaging to the UK.
It's true that the current system is unfair, but it does have one critical
redeeming quality: it tends to reduce the race to a two-party system. Two-
party systems are stable and generally moderate, as the winning party will be
the one which successfully captures the center. Much of the historical success
of the US government can be attributed to the stability afforded by its two-
party system. On the other hand, consider the proportional system parliaments
in other countries which are outright disasters, unable to form stable
coalitions and thus unable to govern successfully for any significant length
of time. Italy is the canonical example.

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rwmj
Naming 3 countries doesn't count as evidence.

~~~
SeanLuke
Actually, I don't think I'm saying anything that isn't common wisdom in
political science. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-
party_system#Advantages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-
party_system#Advantages)

