Paul Davies of the Make Votes Count Campaign says the first past the post electoral system has had its day

NEVER before have so many people made so much noise and left such little impression. As we were constantly reminded during the build-up, the result of this election was settled by little more than 800,000 ‘swing voters’ in marginal constituencies.
They were at the centre of the most sophisticated campaign in history; one that exploited the inherent bias of the voting system like never before and brought to light the need for a serious think about electoral reform.
Living, as they do, in two safe seats, Camden voters just aren’t special enough to help decide the outcome of general elections.
Holborn and St Pancras experienced an extremely marked 11 per cent swing from Labour to the Lib Dems, yet ultimately it made no difference. Similarly, the 6.3 per cent swing from Labour to the Conservatives in Hampstead and Highgate lives on as nothing more than a statistic, its importance confined to a lonely page in a book that will simply gather dust on the bookshelves of political anoraks.
This is all thanks to the oddities of our electoral system, where the make-up of Parliament is defined as much by incumbency and geography as it is by the will of the electorate.
Much as many lifelong voters may be loathe to admit it, unless you live in an old people’s home in Dorset or have been otherwise blessed by the geographical gods, then around election time, the parties simply don’t care about you. And where the parties don’t care, the people are inclined to reciprocate the gesture.
In the hallowed marginal constituencies where people feel their votes can make a difference, turnout is on average 10 per cent higher than in safe seats such as Holborn and St Pancras and Hampstead and Highgate. Indeed, only 53 per cent of the Camden electorate could be bothered to go to the polls.
The problems don’t stop there. Thanks to the brutal nature of first-past-the-post, knowing who to vote for is a lot more complicated than simply picking your preferred candidate.
First-past-the-post reduces the vast majority of constituencies to two-party contests, therefore encouraging tactical voting. Tactical voting is an apposite companion for the disreputable business of negative campaigning – the staple food of the modern political party. In a two-horse race, rather than gamble on coming up with enticing policies of your own, it is much easier to smear your rival – after all, who else are the people going to vote for?
Alternatively, under a preferential system, people can vote positively for the candidate who most accurately reflects their views, safe in the knowledge they are not helping out a candidate they loath in the process.
In our multi-faceted political climate, being able to rank prospective candidates in order of preference is the best way to truly represent the will of the people.
It is no wonder the government is so often seen as unaccountable when 78 per cent of the registered electorate did not vote for it and yet it still manages to maintain a sizeable Commons majority.
This sordid situation was recently described by Make Votes Count chairman Lord Lipsey as a “travesty of democracy” and one that seriously questions the Labour Party’s mandate to govern.
This travesty is exacerbated by the puzzling manner in which constituency boundaries are drawn up – traditionally a decade out of date.
Combined with the undemocratic nature of first-past-the-post, this serves to make Parliament a grossly distorted version of what Britain’s voters chose on May 5.
Because of discrepancies in constituency sizes, Labour-held seats are, on average, less well populated than Conservative ones. This means that this time around it took an average of 27,000 votes to elect a Labour MP, 44,500 to elect a Conservative and a whopping 96,000 to elect a Lib Dem one. The gap between the smallest and largest constituencies is just as staggering: from 21,576 to 109,046.
These are fairly exceptional cases, but the majority of seats still sit within a wide range of 50,000 to 90,000 eligible voters.
Both Camden seats are home to an average of 68,000 voters each. This is fairly normal in terms of constituency size, so the forthcoming boundary changes will lead to little more than a slight enlargement and a small shifting of borders.
The redrawn boundaries will, however, be based on the 2001 census, so when the next general election comes around in about four years’ time, they will already have been subjected to eight years of population movement.
Either way, it will take more than geographical alterations to revive the country’s democratic process and re-engage the electorate. First-past-the-post has had its day. Every major democratic country save Britain and America uses some form of proportional representation (PR). Every new electoral system, like those for the Scottish and Welsh assemblies, uses proportional representation.
If it’s good enough for them, why isn’t it good enough for Westminster?
This is not to say it’s going to be easy. Turkeys never want to vote for Christmas, and the Conservatives are congenitally opposed to even thinking about ditching first-past-the-post.
Furthermore, no one really likes to talk about PR for fear of sending people to sleep. There is also a distinct lack of a prime-time TV show or people scaling buildings dressed as superheroes.
Nevertheless, by highlighting the problems in record-breaking manner, this election could prove to be the breaking point for many people – including the turkeys – meaning today’s cure for insomnia could become tomorrow’s cure for our failing democracy.

• Paul Davies is a researcher at Make My Vote Count. www.makemyvotecount.org.uk