So, here are some numbers to think about regarding the election that happened in Britain this week. The number of seats in Parliament will be as follows, this is using the "first-past-the post system" that was heavily criticized in recent news:
Conservative - 306
Labour - 258
New Democrats - 57
While I don't think that an election system should be purely proportionally representative, here are the seats when the total number of seats is scaled by the fraction of votes for each party:
Conservative - 235
Labour - 189
New Democrats - 150
Now, something definitely went wrong here.
Saturday, 8 May 2010
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Hey, it works just fine when you have two parties, with the odd independent thrown in for lone ridings. Once you have three parties, the whole system goes to rot. And once you have upwards of five, as in Canada... but you know all about that.
ReplyDeleteAny thoughts on how the German system compares to the British?
yes, I actually quite like the German system in principle. It is true that nobody has absolute power like they would like to have in Britain (and lost). This in effect means a lot more squabble between politicians, but when they finally do emerge with something solid (not very often) it is generally an acceptable "middle-of-the-road" compromise.
ReplyDeleteAfter having lived in three countries, I think that the German solution might be the best after all.