Britain votes First past the Post. No absolute majority needed. Labour got 412 seats with ~9 Mio votes that´s about 23.000 votes per seat. Reform UK got 5 seats with ~4 Mio votes that´s nearly 1.000.000 votes per seat.
First past the Post works with two parties being able to get the majority.
The election result that Keir Starmer achieved yesterday with his Labour bunch is such a fluke, such a stroke of luck, such an undeserved boon: because Keir Starmer achieved a significantly worse result than Jeremy Corbyn in both the 2015 and 2017 House of Commons elections and still won a "landslide victory".
In numbers: Starmer, with 24.6% fewer votes than Labour won under Corbyn in 2015, won 57.3% more seats than Corbyn did in 2015. Under Corbyn, Labour achieved 12,877,918 votes (2015) and 262 seats; under Starmer, Labour achieved 9,712,011 votes and 412 seats (2024, based on 648 out of 650 constituencies counted. The missing 100,000 or so votes do not change the result).
How can that be? A slump in voter turnout can be ruled out as a reason, even though only 59.9% of eligible Britons were able to drag themselves to the polling station, 7.4% less than in 2019, but only 7.4% less, too few less to explain the result.
So how can it be explained?
Well, Starmer and Labour have exploited a flaw in the first-past-the-post electoral system, an electoral system that works well when two clearly identifiable party oligopolies are competing against each other. When a third party joins the fray, a first-past-the-post electoral system only partially guarantees the representation of voters that is so important in democracies; when a strong third party joins the fray, the first-past-the-post electoral system is dysfunctional.
We have prepared four illustrations that reveal this flaw in the first-past-the-post system.
The first figure shows the development of the number of votes that the individual parties have been able to unite in the elections since 2015. As can be seen, the number of Conservative AND Labor voters in 2024 is significantly lower than in previous years.
....
The UK electoral system is a first-past-the-post electoral system, where the candidate who can attract the most votes is elected in constituencies that are all supposed to be roughly the same size. This can sometimes lead to dramatic results, such as this election in the Basildon and Billericay constituency, which Tory leader Richard Holden won with a majority of 20 seats, TWENTY SEATS (Conservatives:: 12,905 votes; Labour: 12,885 votes; Reform: 11,354 votes).
In recent years, constituencies in the UK have been redrawn to reflect the increase in population and to ensure that roughly the same number of eligible voters in a constituency elect a Member of Parliament. As a result, each constituency contains between 69,712 and 77,062 eligible voters, and 650 constituencies are intended to equally represent around 47.5 million eligible voters. And this also works when two clearly defined major parties are competing with each other. But as soon as a third party comes along that can achieve a relevant number of votes, representation is in tatters, as we will now show.
....
If you compare the two figures, you will see that under Starmer, Labour has been able to transfer the smallest number of votes into the largest number of seats in the House of Commons since 2015. This is the fluke in the majority system we are talking about, a fluke that destroys any form of representativeness, as can easily be shown by calculating the ratio of votes achieved to seats achieved for each party.
In the figure below we have done just that.
One seat for Labor represents an average of 23,573 voters. An average constituency has 73,393 voters after constituency reform. So Labour's outstanding electoral success, which gave the party 63.4% of seats, is based on representing 32.1% of the electorate. This is a fluke, a flaw in the electoral system.
The other extreme is Reform UK. The party has achieved a share of the vote from a standing start that corresponds to the share of the vote that the SPD currently receives in opinion polls in Germany. Despite this, only 4 seats are up for grabs. One seat represents 1,022,887 Reform UK voters. On average, therefore, Labour needs 23,573 voters to win one seat, while Reform UK needs 1,022,887 voters to win one seat. The constituency boundaries so laboriously recalculated on the basis of the Periodic Review of Parliamentary Constituencies in the United Kingdom (regulated in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, amended by the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act of 2011 and the Parliamentary Constituencies Act of 2020), which were intended to ensure a rudimentary equal representation of the electorate in Westminster, were therefore a waste of time!
That is my question. How can this be possible? They are screwed.
Britain votes First past the Post. No absolute majority needed. Labour got 412 seats with ~9 Mio votes that´s about 23.000 votes per seat. Reform UK got 5 seats with ~4 Mio votes that´s nearly 1.000.000 votes per seat.
First past the Post works with two parties being able to get the majority.
https://sciencefiles.org/2024/07/05/fluke-election-warum-keir-starmer-kein-strahlender-sieger-ist/
"Do you know what a fluke is? No? That's a fluke:
A lucky shot. An undeserved, unwanted boon.
The election result that Keir Starmer achieved yesterday with his Labour bunch is such a fluke, such a stroke of luck, such an undeserved boon: because Keir Starmer achieved a significantly worse result than Jeremy Corbyn in both the 2015 and 2017 House of Commons elections and still won a "landslide victory".
In numbers: Starmer, with 24.6% fewer votes than Labour won under Corbyn in 2015, won 57.3% more seats than Corbyn did in 2015. Under Corbyn, Labour achieved 12,877,918 votes (2015) and 262 seats; under Starmer, Labour achieved 9,712,011 votes and 412 seats (2024, based on 648 out of 650 constituencies counted. The missing 100,000 or so votes do not change the result).
How can that be? A slump in voter turnout can be ruled out as a reason, even though only 59.9% of eligible Britons were able to drag themselves to the polling station, 7.4% less than in 2019, but only 7.4% less, too few less to explain the result.
So how can it be explained?
Well, Starmer and Labour have exploited a flaw in the first-past-the-post electoral system, an electoral system that works well when two clearly identifiable party oligopolies are competing against each other. When a third party joins the fray, a first-past-the-post electoral system only partially guarantees the representation of voters that is so important in democracies; when a strong third party joins the fray, the first-past-the-post electoral system is dysfunctional.
We have prepared four illustrations that reveal this flaw in the first-past-the-post system.
The first figure shows the development of the number of votes that the individual parties have been able to unite in the elections since 2015. As can be seen, the number of Conservative AND Labor voters in 2024 is significantly lower than in previous years.
....
The UK electoral system is a first-past-the-post electoral system, where the candidate who can attract the most votes is elected in constituencies that are all supposed to be roughly the same size. This can sometimes lead to dramatic results, such as this election in the Basildon and Billericay constituency, which Tory leader Richard Holden won with a majority of 20 seats, TWENTY SEATS (Conservatives:: 12,905 votes; Labour: 12,885 votes; Reform: 11,354 votes).
In recent years, constituencies in the UK have been redrawn to reflect the increase in population and to ensure that roughly the same number of eligible voters in a constituency elect a Member of Parliament. As a result, each constituency contains between 69,712 and 77,062 eligible voters, and 650 constituencies are intended to equally represent around 47.5 million eligible voters. And this also works when two clearly defined major parties are competing with each other. But as soon as a third party comes along that can achieve a relevant number of votes, representation is in tatters, as we will now show.
....
If you compare the two figures, you will see that under Starmer, Labour has been able to transfer the smallest number of votes into the largest number of seats in the House of Commons since 2015. This is the fluke in the majority system we are talking about, a fluke that destroys any form of representativeness, as can easily be shown by calculating the ratio of votes achieved to seats achieved for each party.
In the figure below we have done just that.
One seat for Labor represents an average of 23,573 voters. An average constituency has 73,393 voters after constituency reform. So Labour's outstanding electoral success, which gave the party 63.4% of seats, is based on representing 32.1% of the electorate. This is a fluke, a flaw in the electoral system.
The other extreme is Reform UK. The party has achieved a share of the vote from a standing start that corresponds to the share of the vote that the SPD currently receives in opinion polls in Germany. Despite this, only 4 seats are up for grabs. One seat represents 1,022,887 Reform UK voters. On average, therefore, Labour needs 23,573 voters to win one seat, while Reform UK needs 1,022,887 voters to win one seat. The constituency boundaries so laboriously recalculated on the basis of the Periodic Review of Parliamentary Constituencies in the United Kingdom (regulated in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, amended by the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act of 2011 and the Parliamentary Constituencies Act of 2020), which were intended to ensure a rudimentary equal representation of the electorate in Westminster, were therefore a waste of time!
..."
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)