Is anyone in favour of AV? Apart from people like me who want to put the Tory LAST (or lower if possible)? (And presumably a decent proportion of Tories that want to put the Labour candidate last ...) Labour use it for Leader/Deputy elections where it is great fun to be able to rank the candidates.
However, returning from my puerile amusement to issues of mere national importance, it's not proportional, is it? I don't know enough about it (must google) but I've heard some pro-PR people saying "It's WORSE than FPTP".
I have yet to hear anyone say it is the system they want. I have seem some (admittedly rather speculative) analysis in the Guardian that seems to suggest it would have had very little effect on the Lib-Dem number of seats in last week's election. The suggestion was that the only beneficiary would actually have been the Labour party, but obviously we can't put too much faith in analysis that attempts to predict how people would place their 2nd vote.
The Guardian item suggests that Labour would gain 4 seats (not a tremendous boost), the Conservatives would lose 25, and the Lib Dems would gain 22. The suggestion that a 39% increase in the number of seats counts as "very little effect" I believe evidently shows that the Garuniad's arithmetic skills are even more lacking than their spillchucker skills.
AV is certainly better than the existing system - perhaps not much better, but better nonetheless. Certainly, had it been in place in this election it would have made the past 5 days much more interesting, as the Lib Dems could then grant a majority to both the Conservatives and Labour, so the flurry of negotiations may well have been much more intense, with the Lib Dems holding a much stronger hand.
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andrewducker) wrote2010-05-11 09:04 am
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However, returning from my puerile amusement to issues of mere national importance, it's not proportional, is it? I don't know enough about it (must google) but I've heard some pro-PR people saying "It's WORSE than FPTP".
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AV is certainly better than the existing system - perhaps not much better, but better nonetheless. Certainly, had it been in place in this election it would have made the past 5 days much more interesting, as the Lib Dems could then grant a majority to both the Conservatives and Labour, so the flurry of negotiations may well have been much more intense, with the Lib Dems holding a much stronger hand.