the pre-election polls (which just count individual voters rather than using a first past the post emulaation) suggested that the conservatives would fail to create a majority... they didn't, they managed a pretty thundering majority overall.
there are two problems with pre-election polls, (and even exit polls where they are asking not how you
plan to vote (where you may change your mind) but what you
did vote less than five minutes ago.)
The first problem is "shy Torys" where it's not seen as fashionable to vote for the conservative party, so people just lie, say that they'll vote for someone else and then vote how they want to anyway.
And the other problem is, well it's just fun to mess with the political system so people invariably lie about who thy will vote for. many people believe that we have secret ballot for a reason.
12 is hardly a thundering majority.
Somebody (I think it might have been the Guardian) did a 'what if we had a properly representative voting system?' type pie-chart shortly afterwards. UKIP got just over 4 million votes in total, but only managed one seat in parliament because those 4 million votes only won them one constituency since they were so spread out. However the SNP won over 50 seats with just over a million overall votes, because they were all concentrated in Scotland. I'm a Labour voter myself, and I didn't expect us to do that well as a party since the leader at the time wasn't well-liked, but it was shown by this pie chart that if all the people who voted for Labour were actually counted individually, it would outweigh the total number of conversative votes by nearly a third.
Except who ever did that was wrong.
Conservative vote: 11,334,576
Labour vote: 9,347,304
around 2 million people would rather see "man who makes pig 'eat him'" as PM than "man who makes face whilst eating pig (based sandwich)"
there is a pie chart at the bottom of the wikipedia page on the 2015 election.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2015
I'm not a fan of the 1st past the post system either, but, as well as 64% of people not wanting Tory government, people also need to see and concede that labour only got 30% of the vote, (70% didn't want them)
not only that but UKIP got 12.7% of the vote. it's not shocking that conservatives won (because they got more votes) it's shocking that a mainstream party only managed to turn out a little over twice the votes of a far right party of xenophobic ...
(it's worked in both big parties favor before, I think it was one of the elections in 2000's that labour secured majority with something crazy like <1/3rd popular vote. (32%?)
Anyway, as you kind of allude to, when everyone thought that the conservatives had "stole" the election taking more parliament seats with less votes, everyone was livid!. down with FPTP...
on the other hand tell people that the results of the last election as a 1st past the post system would have essentially only changed to head further right...
e.g. a conservative UKIP coalition... suddenly people are much more keep on First past the post.
the entire point of first past the post IS to secure workable vaguely representative government, not entirely representative government...
What that means is if we have a genuine representative government where 50% of votes means 50% of seats, that carries a bunch of baggage, not least that you have to break constituency representation. and work with list MPs. (and this is bad as whilst people have representative government they are strangely less represented.)
but not only are people less represented, but with such a large share of votes, "small" single agenda parties (e.g. UKIP) have to be appeased else they can effectively block legislation.
the
only good thing that I'd see with a true proportional representation system is that people could (finally?) vote for who they want, not against who they don't want!
I want public services to be well funded also, but at the same time there is a lot of things wrong with the way that the NHS is being treated there is also a lot wrong with the NHS... on the other hand the conservative, (despite effectively being in power for almost 7 years now) have still privatized LESS of the NHS than labour did.
I am, (at heart) a socialist.
I may have said it on here before that the main trouble with socialism is that most people do not truly believe it. they don't invest themselves in it. they tell people that capitalists are bastards, and at the same time arrange their own affairs to maximize the outcome for themselves.
(I've probably gone on enough now)
