I count 306 seats where Labour are 1st and the Conservatives 2nd, or Conservatives 1st and Labour 2nd.
In the other 326 seats, either the Lib Dems, Reform, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru or independents are a top two party. Where most voters live, the traditional Labour vs Conservative debate is no longer the relevant one.
On Merseyside the Greens are second in the majority of constituencies, the Tories are often fifth. It’s been like that for a while I think.
The 99 seats where the Lib Dems are top-two are the really interesting ones here because a) most of these seats are now ones they actually hold rather than ones where they’re runners up, and b) their main challenger in these (typically middle-class Southern) seats is almost always the Tories. The Lib Dems winning 72 seats this time is an enormous part of why the Tories had a record-breaking bad night as opposed to just a regular bad one, and their ability to sustain this next time will be key to keeping the Tories out of government in future.
For the other parties (e.g. Greens are top-two in 43, mostly in big cities; Reform in 103, mostly white working-class Brexit areas), they’re almost always the runner-up party (usually by quite a big margin) behind Labour.
I think this election proves we need two major changes:
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PR so everyone is equally represented whether we like them or not.
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Australian style mandatory voting. My betting is that a lot of people who would have voted labour this election stayed home because of how much the media showed it was on the bag for labour.
This combination can lead to donkey voting.
Two easy fixes, random orders on the ballots. Or the top option is always “None of the below”.
Surely this can be solved by randomizing the order they appear on the ballot for each person? Then the impact would be negligable
Hahah, that is… well, terrifying.
While I don’t believe in disenfranchising people, how do you deal with the voters who are literally too dumb to understand the process…?
I had to deal with a lady at work a few days back who couldn’t understand how a very basic loyalty scheme worked and accused our company of being misleading. I so wanted to tell her that she was literally the only customer I’ve ever spoken to who couldn’t grasp such a simple concept.
Some people really are dumb. It’s a miracle that they’ve made it so far in life without accidentally killing themselves or something.
I think it really depends on which loyalty scheme you’re referring to. I was in Tesco today and the club card pricing is highly visible, in comparison to the actual pricing. It felt pretty misleading when I got to the checkout
That’s not a PR thing. I vote PR with a single vote. So no donkey voting possible.
It might be possible with STV. Like in Ireland. It depends on the ballot form I guess.
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