Hypothetical First Past The Post Question

Martini1991

Martini1991

Martini1991

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Was in a debate yesterday with some friends while at their house.

Some of us are of the opinion that it's hypothetically possible for a party to have the most votes in the country, but not to have the majority of seats, ergo losing a general election (Assuming that the second highest did have a majority of seats)


TLDR :

Is it possible for say the Conservatives to get 190 seats, but less overall votes than labour?

Ignoring probability, just if it's theoretically possible.
 
Yes, because not all constituencies are the same size and it doesn't go on pure numbers.
 
Martini1991 said:
Ignoring probability, just if it's theoretically possible.
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Yes, it's possible, because constituency sizes vary. A lot. Na h-Eileanan an Iar is 21,769, Orkney and Shetland is 34,552, while Isle of Wight is 108,804.

Assume the SNP win the first two with a bare majority, that being 10,885 and 17,277 respectively. In total, 28,161 votes, which took two seats.

This outnumbers the IoW, which had all of the 108,804.

Therefore, 28000 votes got two seats, and 5 times that, at 108000 seats, got one.

Scale that up and you have every small seat won on a narrow majority with FPTP effectively discarding almost as many votes as matter that voted against, while in very large seats, every vote agreeing with the outcome above the 'post' is effectively wasted.

So yes, theoretically, it is possible.
 
happened with UKIP, 4million votes or so yet i don't think they got a single seat in the election. Yet SNP got 50 odd with less votes.
 
vincent1989 said:
UKIP got something like 12.5% of the vote and got 1 seat, SNP got something like 4% and got 50 seats. The current system is not fit for purpose.
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Thats exactly what you expect to happen when you have a group that contests only some of the seats. It would still happen under most PR systems where you have regions.

The problem with proportional representation is that, without significant safeguards, politicians choose the government rather than people.
 
vincent1989 said:
UKIP got something like 12.5% of the vote and got 1 seat, SNP got something like 4% and got 50 seats. The current system is not fit for purpose.
Click to expand...

Because SNPs won within their constituencies, national percentage is irrelevant. The only way to fix this "problem", would be to disregard the will of a region and force upon the constituency to be represented by a candidate that wasn't their first or even second choice, but the party had enough numbers nationwide. That wouldn't go down well at all.
 
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