[mjfl]

Isn't a parliamentary system effectively proportional representation? It's just prime minister that's first past the post, but from a proportional vote in parliament?

Labour is not going to save Britain. They are just going to redistribute money that is more and more and more "not there" anymore. The EU is not going to save Britain, they are having a crisis too. Nothing will save Britain, it is doomed for the next couple hundred years or so.

[wpietri]

> Isn't a parliamentary system effectively proportional representation?

Not necessarily. Imagine a country with four parties. In each constituency, they respectively get 40%, 30%, 20%, and 10% of the vote. Under FPTP, parliament is made up of all reps from the 40% party, shutting out other voters. Under PR, depending on variety you'd get results closer to the distribution of the votes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation

[mjfl]

But I don't think that's how it works? I think parliament works proportionally?

See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_the_United_Kingd...

It is not the case that the conservative party got all the seats.

[tragomaskhalos]

Imagine there were 100 constituencies, and in every one party A secured 51% of the vote and party B got 49%. Under our current system, party A would have all 100 seats, and party B would have no representation at all; whereas under PR, A and B would (simpisticly speaking)split seats 51-49.

[scatters]

Worse, imagine that in 51 constituencies A gets 51% of the vote, and in 49 it gets 0% of the vote. This gives A a majority in parliament even though voters as a whole prefer B nearly 3-to-1.

[Tycho]

Why do people criticise FPTP using these hypothetical scenarios that do not resemble the actual outcomes.

[scatters]

Because they do resemble the actual outcomes. The 2 major parties in the UK regularly get majorities in Parliament on far less than 50% of the vote. In the USA gerrymandering has been brought to a fine art. How can this not contribute to discontent, when the majority of people get a government they didn't vote for?

[phatfish]

First past the post means that everyone who didn't vote for the "winner" is ignored. No representation in their democracy.

As the other comment said, a party can in theory get 100% of the seats/power with 51% of the vote.

FPTP was more relevant when local politics mattered and local MPs actually made a difference to lives in their local area.

Post-war the only decision making that matters is at the national level which FPTP cannot represent fairly.

[dkjaudyeqooe]

OP is using the term loosely, but the issue is with FPTP a candidate can win with one vote over 1/n percent of the vote. So if there are 10 candidates the winner need only 10% of the vote plus 1 vote to win.

That's an impoverished version of democracy.

[Tycho]

Scaling effects matter. In practice there are many parties but most of the votes go to two of them.

[dkjaudyeqooe]

And so the big parties have a disproportionate advantage. That's why there's no push from either of them to change the system and why it ends up essentially being a scam for the big parties.

[Tycho]

The big parties continually moderate their positions so that about half the population wants to vote for them.