FPTP - A “Broken” Electoral System

A new report from the IPPR claims that the UK’s FPTP electoral system is fundamentally broken and “is likely to produce increasingly undemocratic results in the future”. The IPPR analysis shows that the May 2010 general election was decided in just 111 constituencies by fewer than 460,000 voters – or 1.6 per cent of the electorate.

Lots of fascinating detail in the report.

The IPPR claims their analysis shows a long-term trend of UK voters rejecting traditional two-party politics, with more than one-third of voters (34.9 per cent) opting for parties other than the Conservatives or Labour at the 2010 general election. The vote share for the two main parties was the lowest ever at the last election (65.1 per cent) and has been steadily falling since its peak in the 1950s.

Parties other than the ‘big two’ have also become more successful at winning seats in the House of Commons and now regularly win around 85 seats collectively. A winning party therefore needs at least 86 more seats than its rival in order to win an overall majority, something that has happened in just seven of the 18 general elections since the war.

Moreover, for one party to secure a workable majority of 20 seats it needs to win at least 100 seats more than its rival, something that has happened in only four of 18 post-war elections. Even a collapse in support for the Liberal Democrats at the next election would leave Labour and the Conservatives needing more than 50 seats more than their rival to form a majority government. The report argues we can therefore expect more hung parliaments in the future – or at the very least governments elected with small and unstable majorities.