uk politics just makes no sense to me no matter how many times i get it explained by teachers. i know that first past the post leads to disproportionate votes but have never understood the system of winning seats
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Two big impacts are seats only having one winner, and some parties having limited, targeted appeal.
Let’s briefly compare the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats. The SNP got just 3.88% of the votes, while the LDs got 11.55% of the votes. So you’d expect the LDs to have more seats, right? Well, no. The SNP got 7.4% of MPs, while the LDs got 1.7%. The SNP outperformed their votes, while the LDs *under*performed their votes.
In the SNP’s case, it comes down to being a *Scottish* party. They only fielded candidates in 59 seats (aka “all the Scottish ones). This limits their total votes, but *within* those 59 seats, they’re really popular! They get a lot of votes in those seats, and win a lot of them. This is just how (successful) regional parties go – all the zeroes in the rest of the country drag down the average percentage of votes, but the big wins in specific areas win plenty of seats.
In the LDs’ case, it’s the opposite issue. Where the SNP’s 3.88% was heavily concentrated in a particular area, the LDs’ support is spread across the entire country. Rather than a bunch of zeroes and some big wins, the LDs get a bunch of 10%s all over the country… Putting them decently behind Labour and the Conservatives. All those 10%s fail to get converted into seats but they still contribute to the average. Because of how the system works, all those 10%s in third mean that whoever wins needed less votes – and that’s what we saw this time, a decent bump for the Conservatives who won plenty of seats.
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