My general feeling on the by election result

[andrewducker]

Reminder that any voting system where you can win a single seat without 50% of people thinking you're better than the alternatives is not fit for purpose.

Comments

[helen_keeble]

Under ranking voting systems, the million dollar question becomes how many Conservative voters would rank Labour over Reform.

I am… not optimistic.

(My assumption is that in most constituencies, Greens instantly get eliminated, followed by Lib Dems. Lib Dem and Green votes go to Labour because most of those people are Never Conservative, let alone Reform. Now you’ve either got the situation where Reform are knocked out, in which case it’s a straight up traditional left-vs-right competition between Labour and Conservative, or you have a bunch of Conservative voters playing kingmaker)

[helen_keeble]

In some ways I feel this weird four party political spectrum situation (again, ignoring Greens) is healthier than the three party situation we’ve had for many years, where the left wing vote was diluted between two parties and the right wing wasn’t.

Though it’s not reassuring that we seem to have ended up with far right, very right, moderately right, and somewhat left as our political options, with everyone but Lib Dems/Greens scrambling to court the Reform voters.

[andrewducker]

Agreed

[andrewducker]

We don't know enough about how people would vote if they didn't have to worry about the spoiler effect.

Evidence is actually that a fair bunch of Reform voters are disaffected Labour voters who won't vote Conservative. There are plenty of Conservatives who will go Lib Dem over Reform. People are complex.

And you absolutely can't say that LibDems get wiped out first considering how they just did in the council elections. And the Greens are doing better than ever.

I don't think it's as concrete as you think.