Had Scotland used winner-take-all

by Jack Santucci // Published May 9, 2007
Amidst the administration gaffes of Scotland's parliamentary elections last week was a significant plus for MMP. Ken Richie, FairVote board member and director of the British Electoral Reform Society, in a letter to the Guardian:

If the Scottish parliament had not been elected with a broadly proportional system, Labour would have won a majority with less than a third of the votes. Similarly in Wales, without a proportional system, Labour would have had a clear lead in seats with no more than a third of the votes.

This would have been far worse than a wrong-winner election (a.k.a. plurality reversal). Those happen frequently enough in our own country and others with winner-take-all like New Brunswick, Canada last year.

Read it again. A majority of seats with fewer than a third of votes.

Comments currently closed for Had Scotland used winner-take-all

  • Actually Scotland's result would have been a wrong-winner under FPTP: The SNP got more votes than Labour. Perhaps more importantly, the Scottish scene shows how necessary a proportional voting system was for Scotland. With an imposed two-party system they would have been forced to vote for independence unless they wanted a perpetual Labour government.

    Posted by Wilf Day, 2007-05-10 22:07:03 (6 years ago)

  • That's just as bad as the UK's last General Election results ??? under our First Past the Post electoral system, taking very low voter turnout into account, the Labour Party won a 67-seat majority with the support of 22% of voters. (http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article224768.ece) What I hate most about our Scottish system, though, is its inability to make up its mind. Either it should go fully proportional, or actually justify why it's not. Sitting on the fence at the moment doesn't help anything.

    Posted by Liz Davies, 2007-05-10 11:21:03 (6 years ago)