AMS & Overcoming D'Hondt

[Borg Refinery]

d'Hondt is the way the devolved governments have a mix of constituency and regional seats, with te regional seats allocated on the basis of total votes cast divided by total persons from that party already elected to the organisation whether from constituency or region.
It is supposed to widen out the representation.
It fails miserably. Or it works if your goal is not to have true PR but to to elect at least one person whose party has over ten per cent of the popular vote

You are muddling up d'Hondt as used in AMS with d'Hondt used in EU elections. In the latter David Coburn (UKIP) was elected with 10.5% of votes cast.
In the former seats can be won with a 6% share e.g. Margo MacDonald won her Lothian seat in 2011 with 6.6%. In 2007 the Greens won 2 seats with 4% of the National vote. However, the National Vote does not come into the equation, it is the number of votes cast in each Region that counts. In Glasgow (2007) Patrick Harvie was elected with only a 5.2% share while the 2nd Green managed 7%.in Lothian.  In AMS, d'Hondt requires the votes for a party in a Region to be divided by the number of FPTP seats won plus one. In my own Highlands Region, the SNP gained 81,600 votes but took 6 constituencies. So their starting point was cut to 11,657. The Nationalists did win one seat, Maree Todd was the 6th person elected.
In  EU elections the parties start on a level playing field.

If we had a fully proportional (true PR) system with a party list for the whole of westminster, there would be an awful lot of greens, lib dems, socialist workers, trades unions against just about everything and - and this is why they will never do this - three BNP MP's

The real reason is that the 2 main parties do not want to dilute the power they have under FPTP.

I agree.

The mixed system is the only way to ensure vote fairness, in fact it's quite impressive compared to most countries'. No chance westminster implementing it then..

As for OP which no one addressed - I think I'd have to see a more detailed breakdown of what it would mean an their projected vote share; it could cause more problems thzn solutions potentially.

I heard the SNP supporters might help to try and start a new party south of the border to help us reform FPTP; campaigning on that single issue.

That would be welcome by many, I think.

[johnofgwent]

You are muddling up d'Hondt as used in AMS with d'Hondt used in EU elections.

I might well be.

My particular understanding of the system comes from how it was applied to the Welsh Assembly elections in 2007 and then particularly in 2011 when i was a candidate

The way the process is described in the notes to candidates is a masterpiece of obfuscation.

At the end of the day however, the utter pointlessness of the mechanism used in wales, with 40 constituency seats and four regional seats in five regions making up the other 20, was brought into sharp focus in 2011 when the electorate's primary concern was to exterminate Nick Clegg for his lies, hypocrisy and treachery. The massive swing AWAY from the lib dems left them the fourth largest party with if i recall correctly one of the forty seats and the regional ones went to tory, plaid and ukip.

[morayloon]

d'Hondt is the way the devolved governments have a mix of constituency and regional seats, with te regional seats allocated on the basis of total votes cast divided by total persons from that party already elected to the organisation whether from constituency or region.
It is supposed to widen out the representation.
It fails miserably. Or it works if your goal is not to have true PR but to to elect at least one person whose party has over ten per cent of the popular vote

You are muddling up d'Hondt as used in AMS with d'Hondt used in EU elections. In the latter David Coburn (UKIP) was elected with 10.5% of votes cast.
In the former seats can be won with a 6% share e.g. Margo MacDonald won her Lothian seat in 2011 with 6.6%. In 2007 the Greens won 2 seats with 4% of the National vote. However, the National Vote does not come into the equation, it is the number of votes cast in each Region that counts. In Glasgow (2007) Patrick Harvie was elected with only a 5.2% share while the 2nd Green managed 7%.in Lothian.  In AMS, d'Hondt requires the votes for a party in a Region to be divided by the number of FPTP seats won plus one. In my own Highlands Region, the SNP gained 81,600 votes but took 6 constituencies. So their starting point was cut to 11,657. The Nationalists did win one seat, Maree Todd was the 6th person elected.
In  EU elections the parties start on a level playing field.

If we had a fully proportional (true PR) system with a party list for the whole of westminster, there would be an awful lot of greens, lib dems, socialist workers, trades unions against just about everything and - and this is why they will never do this - three BNP MP's

The real reason is that the 2 main parties do not want to dilute the power they have under FPTP.

[johnofgwent]

We are on your side, although a translation into some sort of an approximation to the English language might make us even more so.

Quite, I can't even understand the thread header, it might as well be in Mayan Pictograms.

d'Hondt is the way the devolved governments have a mix of constituency and regional seats, with te regional seats allocated on the basis of total votes cast divided by total persons from that party already elected to the organisation whether from constituency or region.

It is supposed to widen out the representation.

It fails miserably. Or it works if your goal is not to have true PR but to to elect at least one person whose party has over ten per cent of the popular vote.

If we had a fully proportional (true PR) system with a party list for the whole of westminster, there would be an awful lot of greens, lib dems, socialist workers, trades unions against just about everything and - and this is why they will never do this - three BNP MP's.

Although those who make a proper assessment know that in reality what would happen is we would NOT have three BNP MPs but the tories would skew their policies JUST enough to capture the right wing BNP voters and Labour and the lib Dems would restructure  their manifestoes so as to recapture the BNP voters who like the BNP's left wing economy measures. And any on here who think that tosh never read themanifesto and merely spout the bollox Antifa want you to believe.

And those who think the parties would NOT make those adjustments need to research how Phil Woolas the then Labour Immigration Minsiter changed his tune after the 2009 election of two BNP MEP's

[Streetwalker]

Go for it !   

Good luck

[morayloon]

Ladies, Ladies. All will be revealed
AMS is the voting system used in the Scottish General Election. (Additional Member System)
There are 2 parts to it: FPTP with 73 constituencies.
Part 2 sees the country divided into 8 regions each with 7 seats available.
Part 2 is a corrective to FPTP. e.g. the SNP won 59 constituencies (80.5%) out of 73. Only 4 were added in the list. An overall total of 63 (48.8%) of the seats, quite a bit fairer given the 46.5% share of the vote achieved in the FPTP vote.
Hope that helps a little

[Borchester]

We are on your side, although a translation into some sort of an approximation to the English language might make us even more so.

Quite, I can't even understand the thread header, it might as well be in Mayan Pictograms.

I blame Wee Krankie. The Scottish pubs won't open for another 16 days and the Scots' brains have dehydrated.

[papasmurf]

We are on your side, although a translation into some sort of an approximation to the English language might make us even more so.

Quite, I can't even understand the thread header, it might as well be in Mayan Pictograms.

[Borchester]

I started a thread on this topic in another Forum.
The YES movement are talking about how to win more seats from the AMS, corrective, 2nd part of the SGE. The SNP won 59 of the 73 constituency seats in 2016 but despite, or to be more precise because of, winning over 900,000 votes on the Regional section, the party only managed to gain 4 list seats.
The idea is to set up a new Independence supporting party which would only stand  in the list, gain support from SNP supporters who realise their party is not likely to win many seats (the D'hondt method meant only S Scotland [3] and Highlands & Islands [1] gained list seats for the Nationalists)
This is a highly contentious move. It was widely talked about in 2016 but RISE, the party which was supposed to  benefit from vote switching, i.e. voting for them rather than the SNP, in the end only managed 0.5% of the vote. Even the Greens had only a slight rise, up 2.2%.
This time, though, the talk is about enticing Alex Salmond to head the Independence party. That could be the catalyst to forming a massive Indy bloc in Holyrood.

Thoughts?

We are on your side, although a translation into some sort of an approximation to the English language might make us even more so.

I assume that an AMS is the Scottish version of an ATM and D'hondt is Houdini's Scottish  cousin, but then I got a bit lost.

[morayloon]

I started a thread on this topic in another Forum.
The YES movement are talking about how to win more seats from the AMS, corrective, 2nd part of the SGE. The SNP won 59 of the 73 constituency seats in 2016 but despite, or to be more precise because of, winning over 900,000 votes on the Regional section, the party only managed to gain 4 list seats.
The idea is to set up a new Independence supporting party which would only stand  in the list, gain support from SNP supporters who realise their party is not likely to win many seats (the D'hondt method meant only S Scotland [3] and Highlands & Islands [1] gained list seats for the Nationalists)
This is a highly contentious move. It was widely talked about in 2016 but RISE, the party which was supposed to  benefit from vote switching, i.e. voting for them rather than the SNP, in the end only managed 0.5% of the vote. Even the Greens had only a slight rise, up 2.2%.
This time, though, the talk is about enticing Alex Salmond to head the Independence party. That could be the catalyst to forming a massive Indy bloc in Holyrood.

Thoughts?