If you're EVER going to buy a house, you'd better do it before April - here's why.

ukcarper

Generali wrote: »

If the SNP fails to get projected seats the seats will likely go to Labour. As the SNP has basically said they will support Labour in return for some nice juicy pork to take back to Scotland whether the seats in Scotland go to the SNP or Labour is immaterial. What matters really is the English vote. As England is 80%+ of the UK that's kinda understandable. Even if the SNP manage half the vote in Scotland they will not get 3% of the UK-wide vote.

I suppose that's the problem with first past the post if we are going to regularly have no party with a clear majority now might be the time for PR.

N1AK

ukcarper wrote: »

I'm not sure I'd give bookmakers any more credit than the polls and swings can vary by constituency.

I wouldn't give them more credit than meta-analysis of polls. I would however give them considerably more credit than individual polls. Bookmakers odds will be almost entirely determined by analysis of polls. They have no motive to offer a biased opinion, in fact they have a considerable motive for avoiding it.

Obviously swings can vary by constituency, but as the point of this thread isn't to repeat points that everyone is already well aware of your stating the obvious isn't adding anything.

N1AK

ukcarper wrote: »

I suppose that's the problem with first past the post if we are going to regularly have no party with a clear majority now might be the time for PR.

It's not an issue with FPP as such. FPP is more likely to return a majority government than PR, so if we need a coalition under FPP we would certainly have needed one under PR.

The issue with FPP was exactly the issue the people who pushed for a AV referendum this parliament highlighted; that our system punishes parties for having widely distributed voters. Just look at 2010:
> The Liberal democrats go 23% of the vote, only 6% lower than Labour but got nearly 80% fewer MPs.
> UKIP got nearly a million votes but no MPs, the DUP got 160k votes and got 8 MPs.

The SNP are going to become the third largest party in UK politics, while the Liberals, who will get as many votes as their are people in Scotland, will become a distant 4th!

ukcarper

N1AK wrote: »

It's not an issue with FPP as such. FPP is more likely to return a majority government than PR, so if we need a coalition under FPP we would certainly have needed one under PR.

The issue with FPP was exactly the issue the people who pushed for a AV referendum this parliament highlighted; that our system punishes parties for having widely distributed voters. Just look at 2010:
> The Liberal democrats go 23% of the vote, only 6% lower than Labour but got nearly 80% fewer MPs.
> UKIP got nearly a million votes but no MPs, the DUP got 160k votes and got 8 MPs.

The SNP are going to become the third largest party in UK politics, while the Liberals, who will get as many votes as their are people in Scotland, will become a distant 4th!

Isn't the main advantage of FPP that it is less likely to give a hung parliment and the point I was trying to make is that if the make up of parties makes that less likely you might as well have PR as it would avoid parties with a low percentage of overall votes getting a large number of seats.

N1AK

ukcarper wrote: »

Isn't the main advantage of FPP that it is less likely to give a hung parliment and the point I was trying to make is that if the make up of parties makes that less likely you might as well have PR as it would avoid parties with a low percentage of overall votes getting a large number of seats.

I'd agree with that analysis. Although it does lead to the issue of not having local MPs, which is the only real benefit imo of FPP.

If I could wave a magic wand we'd have:
1/ MPs elected by AV.
2/ An elected second house with 400 members. Where members are elected for 20 years, but can never hold another public office. Each election the longest sitting 100 would leave, and another 100 picked based on the percentage of the vote received by parties would be brought in.

That way the Lords would be comparatively less partisan, be less heavily skewed by each individual election (and actually be democratic).