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2:44pm on Tuesday, 11th May, 2010:

Moderately Better

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I spent the morning working out whether my change to the electoral system (let's call it FPTP+) would indeed have resulted in any fairer a make-up of parliament than regular first-past-the-post. I applied it to the 57 constituencies that make up the Eastern Region in which I live (actually there are 58, but Waveny got dropped because I needed a number divisible by three).

Here's the map, with groups of adjacent contituencies in the same colour:



For the main three parties, the way this went in the General Election was:

                Labour         Lib Dems   Conservatives
Vote            544779           686121         1336168
FPTP seats           2                4              51
FPTP+ seats         12               18              51

In percentage terms:

                Labour         Lib Dems   Conservatives
Vote               21%              27%             52%
FPTP                4%               7%             89%
FPTP+              15%              22%             63%

So FPTP+ gives the Conservatives 63% of the seats in the region on 52% of the votes. The other parties are still stiffed, but not by as much as in regular FPTP which gives the Conservatives 89% of the seats. It still allows for the possibility of a "strong government" if one party wins a landslide, but it won't be quite as unfair as the present system.

I think maybe I'll join the long list of cranks writing to the Electoral Reform Society with ideas; see what they say about it...

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Copyright © 2010 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).