The problem with that referendum was that unless you can confidently and clearly explain why a change is better than the status quo then people tend to stick with what they know.
The offer in that vote didn’t clearly show an improvement to FPTP. The question wasn’t “should we enact proportional representation or not?”. The question wasn’t “Of these five voting systems which would you prefer?”
The question was “At present, the UK uses the “first past the post” system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the “alternative vote” system be used instead?”
The alternative vote system doesn’t really have any obviously huge advantages over FPTP. It doesn’t offer proportional representation.
Obviously, any improvement is better than no improvement but people tend not to like change so you have to very clearly state what they will gain from changing. And that didn’t happen.
This playlist has a few videos explaining voting systems if you’d like to learn more:
The problem with that referendum was that unless you can confidently and clearly explain why a change is better than the status quo then people tend to stick with what they know.
The offer in that vote didn’t clearly show an improvement to FPTP. The question wasn’t “should we enact proportional representation or not?”. The question wasn’t “Of these five voting systems which would you prefer?”
The question was “At present, the UK uses the “first past the post” system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the “alternative vote” system be used instead?”
The alternative vote system doesn’t really have any obviously huge advantages over FPTP. It doesn’t offer proportional representation.
This short video explains it well:
https://youtu.be/3Y3jE3B8HsE
Obviously, any improvement is better than no improvement but people tend not to like change so you have to very clearly state what they will gain from changing. And that didn’t happen.
This playlist has a few videos explaining voting systems if you’d like to learn more:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqs5ohhass_RN57KWlJKLOc5xdD9_ktRg
That and it was the Brexit pre-cursor.
Turns out, you’ll have neither.
Thanks for the additional info. I am generally not super knowledgeable on politics so I will go check out your links :)