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Electoral Systems

I display here graphically the seat bonus parties get as a result of various voting systems. That is the percentage difference between a parties first preference vote across the country relative to the seats they attained in the Dáil/Parliament.

Ireland PR-STV

The 2011 election seen a sea change in irish politics, with the demise of the Fianna Fail vote, for the first time being overtaken by Fine Gael, as the largest party, but also been surpassed by Labour. The government were sucha toxic brand that the junior partner Green party lost all its seats, with neither party benefiting from transfers to get more td's elected.

The Irish PR system does give a relative reflection of votes to seats achieved by the parties, with the larger parties getting a bonus, the PD's seemed to switch between getting a seat bonus and being under represented through out their existence, while Sinn Féin has got seats in the Dáail they have been traditionally "transfer repellant" and had to rely on large 1st preference votes to get elected since they don't pick up transfers.

UK First Past the Post

The UK First past the post system tends not to give a reflection of seats to percentage of votes, it excludes smaller parties in favour of the big two, the Lib Dems get squeezed and are under represented in the parliament, indeed parties such as UKIP and BNP (No doubt a good thing) are unable to get one out of 650 odd seats, this influences the way people vote in general elections in the UK.
In recent times the Labour party has been favoured by the number of seats in urban areas where it is strong, and perhaps larger populations in rural seats being under represented by the Conservatives. Again the Liberals tend to be punished by the system and smaller parties tend not to have the critical mass to candidates elected e.g. the Referendum Party in 1997

UK FPTP/PR/List System

The UK euro election which has a form of PR is not dramatically any better at providing a true reflection of first preference votes to the percentage of seats allocated, ok for the Lib Dems, UKIP, Welsh and Scots Nationalists do well out of it, however while the Greens and unfortunately the BNP get seats they wouldn't get in a traditional First past the post, their return of seats for votes is not a true reflection.

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