Has Impact Of New Electoral Systems Made The Case For Reform Flashcards
1A: better representation of people and more voter choice
SV allows voters to choose candidates that best fit their ideals without risk of losing to worst party e.g. in 2024 people who tactically voted for libdem just to get rid of CON could vote for their ideal candidate as primary, if eliminated, Libdem SV prevents con. Further, in AMS, small parties can gain power without votes being wasted, in Scotland 2016, 0.6% of constituency votes were green but 6.6% of regional votes were Green
1B: FPTP provides a strong, single party govt
Although it is not exactly proportional, the party with the pluralist vote can deliver a clear set of policies given in their manifesto. This allows reforms to be implemented quickly and effectively; without being watered down due to the forced compromises in a proportional system. Without this, policies like HRA 1998 and NMW 1999 may not have been successful
2A: constituency representation has been maintained in other systems.
AMS still provides that a single MP of a party represents their constituency, and thet can still be held responsible by their close affiliation to these constituencies, with a risk of being thrown out in next election. SV is the exact same situation, in fact it increases the representation as they are more okelmt to have over 50% support.
2B: FPTP has a stable, clear, defined form of relationship between MP and constituency.
Due to MP’s representing their constituents, and not just the whole country, they can be held to account and their voting history etc easily monitored by their constituents.
For example, if an MP votes for a bill that is against the interest of their constituency, and this becomes common knowledge within the constituency they could be kicked out of next election. For example as of Aprile 2025, at least 80 Labour MP’s are at risk of losing next election due to welfare cuts
3A: smaller parties have greater representation
A system such as AMS would allow the 24% of 2019CON voters turned 2024Reform to vote CON in the pluralist elections as Reform were unlikely to win in them, preventing the split of conservative ideology vote and fragmentation, and allow Reform to be voted for the representative part of the vote. Therefore the 4million votes would avoid just winning 5 seats.
3B: this increases the risk of extremist parties
FPTFP means any extremist parties, at least as classified by media, do not have a concentrated enough suoooet to win enough seats for a majority. Also this encourages ‘Big Tent’ policies that represent a large amount of the pooulation, Reform are largely a single issue party on immigration, which may give them support in places like the Red wall amongst the working class, it does not apply to rest of country who doesn’t find immigration as concerning as other issues. Although it is debatable whether ‘extremists’ should be ignored it arguably keeps politics in the relative centre, allowing the most amount of people to be represented as possible, even though Labour voters may not support CON, they would likely prefer their policies compared to Reform.
