Why I'm in favour of Proportional Representation

[andrewducker]

According to the BBC, the current polls show Lib Dems on 33%, Conservatives on 32%, Labour on 26%.
Which would give a seat allocation of Conservatives: 246, Labour 241, Lib Dems: 134.
Or, in a more easily digestible table format:

Party	Percentage	Seats
Lib Dems	33%	134
Conservatives	32%	246
Labour	26%	241

It should be pretty fucking obvious that this is an electoral system that is fucked in the head.

Comments

[simont]

Devil's advocate: this argument is surely only convincing to people who already believe that percentage of the popular vote ought to match percentage of Parliament? In other words, this table shows that PR would be an obviously good thing if you already believe that the goal of PR is what you want.

So it might convince somebody who previously considered the goal of PR to be desirable but also thought the current system was producing results close enough to right that it didn't need mucking about with (though the latter would seem a particularly bizarre belief to me). But it would precisely not convince somebody who opposed PR on grounds of disagreeing with its goal, for instance if they thought some minority actually deserved to have a disproportionate influence.

(For example, it wouldn't surprise me to find there were people who believe that city dwellers shouldn't be able to outvote farmers merely on the basis of outnumbering them, on the grounds that they'd vote in policies that completely screwed farmers and then act all surprised when there didn't seem to be any food left. Such people would doubtless consider your table to be a misleading oversimplification.)

[andrewducker]

Of course it does rely on people thinking that the government ought to be representative.

I can see arguments that it shouldn't be entirely representative - that the wacky 1% on the fringe ought to be ignored. But a system where the party with the highest percentage of the vote gets the lowest number of seats? If people can't see that that's utterly wrong, then they aren't democratic at all.

[simont]

"We do not live in a democracy, Bernard. We live in a British democracy. There's all the difference in the world." :-)