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ferrel_hadley t1_j4ufun6 wrote

Labour and the Conservative parties (as well as the Lib Dems) are defacto coalition blocs. They are parties that caucus under one umbrella, its even in their names, the Conservative and Unionist Party is at the almagamation of the old Scottish Unionist party and the English Conservative Party, the Lib Dems from the Liberal and Social Democratic parties while Labour still have numerous Labour Coop members who sit in parliament including former Prime Minister Brown who was not technically Labour.

Change the voting system and you will have 4 or 5 new parties.

Though you will have the same electorate.

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11160704 t1_j4uhw70 wrote

I think the biggest problem with a first past the post system is that votes outside of the "swing constituencies" matter very little.

If you're a Conservative voter in Liverpool or a Labour supporter in rural southern England your vote is pretty much meaningless.

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ferrel_hadley t1_j4uif4e wrote

If you are a CDU or SDP voter in Germany (for example) you can only guess at how much manifesto you get implemented and what gets negotiated away in coalition. Some countries (hello Belgium), forming a government is a major issue.

It think the political culture of the voting public is far more important than the voting system. I think the increasing intransigence and unrealistic nonsense is more to do with where modern politics is in the US and UK than the voting system.

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11160704 t1_j4uinuz wrote

Well yes you can only guess how much gets implemented. But who says that exactly one manifesto of a random party is the optimal thing to implement?

In the end there is no objective right or wrong voting system.

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