Another outrageous result courtesy of the First Past the Post electoral system.

Graphics below show the grim details.

Richard Seymour wrote a fine electoral post-mortem. He pointed out that the Tories did much better in terms of winning seats than in 2010 despite barely winning any more votes. Labour’s share of the vote was also almost exactly the same as in the 2010 election but it, unlike the Tories, won far fewer seats in this election.

Overall, the Tory vote has barely shifted from 36.1% to (on present counts) 36.8%.  That is, the Tories have a bit more than a third of the vote, and fractionally more than the total with which they failed to win a parliamentary majority in 2010. This is not, chiefly, a Tory surge. In previous elections, historically, a vote share of this scale would have left the Tories on the opposition benches.

But Labour’s vote also flatlined, currently about 30.6%, compared to 29% in 2010

What percentage of the UK public understands that this is how their electoral system works? We should not be too surprised if not very many know.

When the UK public has been polled to test its knowledge of crucial issues it has been shown to be incredibly misinformed (see here and here) and  – just as importantly – misinformed in precisely the way that facilitates war and attacks on the poor.  This points to many serious problems with democracy in the UK that are even worse than its electoral system – in particular the stranglehold that elites have over public debate. Jonathan Cook spelled these out very eloquently in his reaction to this UK election (though I disagree with his insinuation that government funding cannot be part of media reform).

If the UK had proportional representation – where the number of seats won by a party matches their share of the vote – then the graphic below would show the seat distribution in parliament:

The Greens and the SNP are the only two left of center parties shown in the graphics above.  Labour is right wing. It is solidly pro-war, pro-austerity and even dabbles in immigrant bashing though it supports none of these things with as much gusto as the Tories and the UKIP.

Does that mean that about 90% of the UK public voted for right wing parties and therefore embrace a right wing agenda? There are a few problems (thankfully) with that depressing conclusion. One is that only 66% turned out to vote.  To the extent people are aware of the vote splitting nature of the electoral system (going back to my question about how many even know that much) it would obviously discourage turnout. People would be tempted to vote “lesser evil” or simply disengage completely knowing that small parties whose platform they like will struggle to get any seats.

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