[EM] Competitive Districting Rule

[Jan Kok]

On 7/14/06, James Gilmour <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Juho Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 10:22 PM
> > The Scottish situation sounds to me like a multi-party system
> > (that has emerged under different rules) has gotten trapped
> > in a two-party EM, and this kind of mixture is not a pretty
> > match (looks actually quite terrible).
>
> No, not at all.  For UK (Westminster) parliament elections the whole of the
> UK has used only FPTP (simple plurality) in single-member districts for many
> decades, in most case for more than 100 years.  We all also used the same
> voting system for local government elections (the only other public elections
> we had until comparatively recently).  In the elections after the 1939-45 war,
> the two main parties (Conservative and Labour) got around 90% of the total
> vote (96.8% in 1951). The third party was the Liberals (now Liberal Democrats)
> who, in elections after 1945, got around 9% of the vote, but only 1% of the
> seats.  Despite Duverger's "law", support for the Liberal Democrats has grown
> and in 2005 they had 25% of the vote and 9.6% of the seats.  Eight smaller
> parties also have seats in the UK Parliament.  So there has been a three-party
> system across the whole of the UK for some time.
>
> In Scotland the SNP (Scottish National Party - campaigning for independence)
> became a significant force in 1970, gaining 11% of the vote, again despite
> Duverger's "law".  In the October 1974 election the SNP peaked at 30.5% of
> the vote, and they now get around 20% of the vote (but far fewer seats).  So In
> Scotland we have had a four-party system for the past 30 years, all based on
> single-member districts and the simple plurality (FPTP) voting system.

This is quite surprising to me. American third parties would kill to
get a few percent of the votes and a couple seats in Congress. Why
have third parties been so much more successful in the UK?

Cheers,
- Jan