[EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

[James Gilmour]

Kristofer Munsterhjelm  > Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2008 9:45 AM
> The UK is also parliamentary, so I suppose there would be few places 
> where you could actually have a runoff.

Given that all members of the UK Parliament are elected from single-member districts (UK "constituencies") and that all districts
were contested by at least three candidates (max 15 in 2005), it would be theoretically possible to have run-off elections in all
645 districts.  In the 2005 general election, 425 of the districts were "won" with a plurality of the votes not a majority, so that
could have been 425 run-offs.  Quite a thought!


> Scotland doesn't have runoffs 
> either, yet multiple parties grew there after its change from FPTP/SMD 
> to MMP. I'm not sure about Scottish politics, but I think there are 
> three or four main parties now.

The change in Scotland from two parties to three parties and then from three parties to four parties all took place long before the
Scottish Parliament was reinstituted and MMP introduced.  Those changes, like the change in the UK Parliament from two parties to
three parties, occurred when all the elections were by FPTP from single-member districts.

James



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