The better example would have been UKIP 12.7% of the total votes, and 0.2%(1) of the total MPs, compared to SNP 4.7% of the total votes and 8.6%(56) of the total MPs.

It's just a shame that the Lib Dems wasted the chance for a more proportional voting system on a referendum for an unliked semi-proportional system (AV) that would have favoured them.

"you end up in a situation where there's little point voting the way you want, because it won't be effective."

How much of that situation is due precisely to that mindset?

It seems like circular logic to me.

    10 Why not vote for the guy you want to win?
    20 Because he won't get enough votes
    30 Why won't he get enough votes?
    40 Because not enough people will vote for him.
    50 So why don't more people vote for him?
    60 goto 20

FPTP is arguably broken, but people engaging in "tactical voting" isn't helping matters. You're supposed to vote for who you want to win, period.

FPTP is unequivocally broken.

Voting for "who you want to win, period" doesn't help in FPTP. Then you just get vote splitting - the majority of the population would prefer either of parties A and B to party C, but they have different favourites, so A and B each get 30% of the vote, while C gets 40%. So the party most of the population hates wins.

Tactical voting is IMO preferable to this outcome.

Really? I'm in an area where one of the seats was hotly contested. I, like thousands of others swapped votes on a website where we pledged to vote on behalf of other people.

My local candidate narrowly won (the one I voted for, not the one I chose) – had a number of us not swapped votes, maybe that wouldn't have happened. For me that's a bit of a win of tactical voting - at least people were able to have some influence.

Another thing to note is that party voting and candidate voting are all rolled together. I actually wanted my local guy to win, but I didn't want to vote for him because I wanted to vote for a different party.

That's all very suboptimal.

Out of curiosity - usually party candidates deeply reflect their party platform. Under what circumstances would you want to vote for a party but not their representative candidate?

The leadership of the Greens are/were most closely aligned with my values – certainly at the time when the Blairites were still heading up the Labour party. So I wanted to vote Green as the party.

My local Labour representative, however, is a pretty good person to have looking out for the area. He was born and raised in the estates opposite my house - to a working class immigrant family, no less. In his time representing the area he's done a lot of good and he has a lot of experience. For me, that's all good - but his party values of continued austerity and benefit cuts don't sit well with me.

You see my conundrum? :)

Heh, failure of imagination on my part. Thanks for the clarification :)

your conundrum is that you have a distinctly minority opinion, but you would like to influence the outcome "more than your share"? so, instead of advocating unequal income distribution, you favor unequal outcome?

Erm, no, not in the slightest – well, I think not in the slightest – I'm going to be totally honest, I don't really understand all of your comment.

But I don't want to influence the outcome "more than my share". I'd like everyone to have an equal share of influence. More than anything I'd like the political process to be one that everyone is engaged in and ultimately moves the country in a direction that is good for everyone.

Not necessarily. This is a bit of an issue now in Canada because with have 3 (or more) left-wing parties, and 1 right wing party

This has led to a lot of ABC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anything_But_Conservative) voting.

Beyond strategic reasons mentioned elsewhere, the main ones are (a) local candidate of desired party is unqualified/unpopular/etc and (b) local candidate of less desired party is more qualified/more popular/etc. (Seeing as "popularity" is, for better or worse, a pretty important quality in a political candidate; this includes "I went to the same high school as candidate X, they seem like a good person.")

This happens easily in more-than-two party systems like Canada or the U.K. Since each party overlaps with another a bit on certain issues, and many voters only seem to feel strongly about a few issues, those voters are ideologically okay with more than one party. Even if they have a "favourite" party, they will consider the candidates of those other parties as well.

It could also have the effect of making the main parties vulnerable to an "insurgency" from activist elements through the leadership elections and candidate selection.

We already have systems like Condorcet voting that make tactical voting unnecessary. As usual, the hard part is getting them implemented; I'm not optimistic.

If you want a real 'travesty' why are you focusing on The Greens rather than UKIP? UKIP got 3.5 times the votes that the Greens got, but got just as many seats as the Greens did. And the same argument about the votes likely being even higher if people weren't afraid of throwing their vote away could also be made.

Yet you don't hear too many people complaining about that outcome.

Yup. I think that's wrong too. I'm no fan of UKIP, but with so little influence after being the preferred party of 12.7% of the voters something surely isn't right.