The Chimera of Electoral Reform

One of the key factors in the SDP’s possible success rested in its ability to secure proportional representation. As David Owen best expressed it: ‘The hope of our alliance must lie with those millions of people who have no vested interest in the present system and sense it is failing them.’ 1 As the 1983 election results revealed, the electoral system unduly penalised third parties. Although the Alliance captured 25.4 per cent of the votes, it received only 3.5 per cent of the seats. Because of the even distribution of its support, the Alliance had to win a far greater percentage of the vote in order to secure a significant number of seats. A mere 2 percentage points could sometimes mean 100 more seats. As David Butler once put it, a ‘party’s fortune can move extraordinarily fast from famine to feast’. 2 This unfairness of the ‘first-past-the-post’ system stood as a major barrier against the Alliance achieving any substantial electoral success. The problem of electoral reform involved two questions: What kind of PR? What is the likelihood of getting it? The second question remained the most imponderable and difficult one to assess. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.