I  totally agree Loro....it makes a mockery of  voters wishes.

Too many voters are disenfranchised by our present voting system.....I agree that PR seems to be the answer, although not the watered down version that the Labour Party are advocating

I have long been a supporter of PR.
Some politicians are scared of it, though. I think it is easy to guess who they are and why.
They hate the idea of losing power, and they seem unable to contemplate concensus politics. Their arguments against PR usually fail to acknowledge increased fairness and increased representation.
I hope one day we will have some form of Proportional Representation.

Bring it on - if they were forced to work together, they wouldn't waste so much energy backstabbing each other, instead of just getting on with the job.

I'm sorry to say that the press are incorrect in the interpretation of the poll.
People vote within constituencies and not nationally. Because of a complex set of mechanisms and demography thats how it comes out. First past the post! The only reason that the pisspoor parties are interested in PR is because they stand a better chance of a seat.

do people really want thier proportions represented..............can this be
considered as some form of abuse under the human rights act, or is it a
sort of a sizeist issue................we should be told.....................

 Well if it is, then I should get two votes

As I choose not to read newspapers, I can't say how the press are responding to the polls. My opening post was taken from the BBC's election pages. The BBC has the details of every single result by constituency from the last election on its database. Therefore I have to assume that the figures I included are an accurate assessment as to what would happen this time around. I have to assume that the polls percentages which are from around the country apply evenly, so that for instance if a party showed an average 5% drop in its share, that would decrease the number of votes cast for that party in each constituency also by 5%. This is reasonable, but of course there will be variations in reality, particularly in marginal seats.

However, my key point in that both the Conservatives and to a greater extent the Liberal Democrats seem to be at an unfair disadvantage compared to Labour. There seems to be a serious problem with the way in how the constituency boundaries are set up if the Liberal Democrats get 30% of the vote but only 100 seats, compared to Labour with 28% and 276 seats.

Well put it this way...........
My constituency MP has an excellent record with her constituents. She sits on an important national security committee, and has kept her nose clean throughout. Imagine that we re-elect her.
However, because more people in the (Fred) West country have voted Lib Dem they decide to replace her with a pisspoor MP. Is that what you want? Or do you intend to have even more MPs with no particular seat?

Still seems unfair. If 30% of the country support a party, but that party ends up being represented by only 15% of the seats..... hmmmm no, doesn't seem fair at all.

Mind you, I'm not up on politics, so perhaps I shouldn't get involved in this!

The voting system doesn't work like that though.

**still waiting for an explanation of how we retain a realtionship with our MP under PR**
**taps foot etc.**

I don't have a real relationship with my MP now, GJ..

GJ, I'm glad you have got a good MP. No, I don't want to see good MPs being debarred from being elected because of quota numbers. I thought the idea under PR was that the elected candidates being debarred were based on those with the lowest majority.So that a good MP should be secure because they would be likely to have bigger majorities.

There are weaknesses with all voting systems including PR. Yes, there is a risk that the elected MP will be further away from your town than under the present system. But MPs are based at Westminster much of the time, and we have access to our MPs via the internet. Under the present system there can be similar situations. I live in a town with its own MP. Howver, because of ward boundary changes, my MP is now based in a different town which I have no connection with.

Sorry I didn't get back to you earlier but I've been out.

I'm sorry  I wasn't referring to you in particular.