UK Election Tech Handbook

Re:UK Election Tech Handbook by n4r9 on Wednesday October 30, 2019 @12:19PM (#21399366)

Counterpoint: the Tories are the largest benefactors of an unfair fptp-based gerrymandered voting system. In 2017 they received 5% more votes than Labour but 20% more MPs. They're the most obvious target for someone interested in tactical voting, regardless of their political persuasion (they're very unlikely to be a Tory voter).

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Re:UK Election Tech Handbook by marksweston on Wednesday October 30, 2019 @01:05PM (#21399959)

This is simply not true.

FFTP is biased in favour of the party with the largest share of the vote, or perhaps another way of putting is that the relationship between vote share and number of MPs is not linear.

And beyond this, the British electoral system has consistently favoured Labour for decades (as Boundary Commission changes fall behind demographic change and population movement)

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boundaries-review-bias-...

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Re:UK Election Tech Handbook by n4r9 on Thursday October 31, 2019 @04:14AM (#21406654)

Thanks for the link. I've read the Independent article, clicked through and read the author's Facebook "footnote", and also read the paper referenced in that.

I can't see anything that disputes the claim "The Tories are the clearest benefactors" of the UK's electoral system.

The author makes a repeated assertion that boundaries are currently biased "15 seats" against the Tories, but I cannot tell where this number is coming from.

The fact remains that the Tories have won the last few elections by receiving a disproportionate number of MPs relative to their vote share. Moreover, polling suggests that they will continue to have the highest vote share.

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Re:UK Election Tech Handbook by marksweston on Thursday October 31, 2019 @09:34AM (#21408525)

it is utterly bizarre that you're treating the fact that the party that got the most votes won the most seats as evidence that the electoral system is biased towards them.

Have you considered adding elections when the Conservatives didn't win the most votes to your data set?

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Re:UK Election Tech Handbook by n4r9 on Thursday October 31, 2019 @01:33PM (#21411404)

That's a disappointing misrepresentation of my premise, which is that the system is biased so that high vote shares confer disproportionately many seats.

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Re:UK Election Tech Handbook by n4r9 on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @11:05AM (#21463866)

I know this conversation has gone slightly stale but I've reread that John Rentoul piece a couple of times, and it's very wishy washy but as far as I can make out his argument is this:

1. The Conservative party has proposed some new boundaries.

2. The new boundaries would have given the Conservatives 15 extra seats, according to the 2017 vote share.

3. The current boundaries are very out of date.

4. The new boundaries follow stricter rules about constituency size variation.

5. The new boundaries lead to a reduced number of MPs.

6. 3-5 imply that the new boundaries are fairer than current boundaries.

7. 2 and 6 imply that the current boundaries are biased 15 seats towards Labour.

The hole is in statement 6; points 3 and 5 are irrelevant to the question of fairness and point 4 is weak as there are plenty of ways to gerrymander the boundaries whilst equalising constituency size. What's "utterly bizarre" is that Rentoul expects many people to swallow such a flawed argument.

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