If we had Proportional Representation

[andrewducker]

I'd have expected the Labour party to splinter around the time of the Iraq war.

I'd expect the Tory party to splinter the moment someone said "Europe".

We have broad parties full of people that don't like the views of many of the people they're associated with.  Once it becomes possible to elect smaller parties I expect many of them to head for the hills.

Working out how many votes "The Conservatives" or "Labour" will get at in a proportional system is not likely to get you a very useful result.

(Been meaning to write this for a few days, and finally spurred to it when someone else posted about it, sadly flocked.)

Edit: fjm has unlocked their post. Worth reading - she's a better writer than me.

Comments

[usmu.livejournal.com]

But there are a lot of assumptions in your statement. The Dutch system does not have a threshold system. The number of votes needed to take a seat is the total number votes divided by the number of seats. Remaining seats are allocated to the parties with the highest remainder.

Very few individuals other than the very well known or very high up the list actually achieve this number, so whether or not there's a threshold doesn't really matter. There are several things to consider in that respect.

First: with RP comes a lot of parties. 17 parties took part in the last dutch elections and 7 of them won seats in parliament. We currently have a three party coalition. Given this amount of parties there's always a party that caters to most of your views. This makes party discipline far less of an issue as it is in the current British system.

Second: though voting is usually done along party lines, occasionally with really divisive subjects the whip is lifted and individual members can vote according to their own conscious.

Given the number of RP-countries and those facing the problem the risk of the Israeli nightmare is small. When there's a need for a third small party to make up the numbers this not necessarily an extremist party. And even if it is, their influence is usually relatively small. They need the big parties just as much as they need the small party.

THe thing to realize here is that coalitions are often not about we do this your way if you let us do that our way. It's usually a compromise that is a bit of both. So when a third party is needed it usually influences the policies in a certain direction, but not by that much. Though being in power might not mean you will be getting your way, the trade off is that your chances of getting into power are far greater. This makes that far more people at least get most of what they wanted, instead of nothing.