Background and Principles
The most unrepresentative election in the UK's history
As the dust began to settle on Friday the 5th of July, something became apparent very quickly: despite expectations of a Labour blowout victory on both seats and votes, only the seats side of things materialised. Their final lead over the Conservatives of 10% was about half of what had been expected during the campaign, with the final polling average on the BBC giving an 18% lead for Labour. In fact, their vote share barely changed compared to their crushing defeat in 2019.
This was the first and most obvious indicator of how utterly unrepresentative this election was: how can roughly the same share of votes be around 200 seats at one election, and 400 at the next? It simply makes no sense. The explanation is simply that under FPTP, where those votes are matters more than how many, and with the Conservatives plunging into second place overall they were naturally going to lose out. Simple as that is, we shouldn’t consider it acceptable.
Things get even worse when you consider that this was the most successful election in democratic history for parties outside the Big Three (Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem), with Reform UK and the Greens combined winning a bit more than 21% of the vote. Yet the over 6,000,000 – six million – voters that represents only have between them 9 (1.4%) seats in parliament, in very specific locations.
Combined, this makes this the most unrepresentative election the UK has ever had in its democratic history. In fact according to analysis over on Make Votes Matter, only one election in a Western democracy since WWII has had a more disproportionate result. This simply isn’t good enough, and whilst I am resigned to the reality that the voting system isn’t a sexy topic that motivates voters, we really shouldn’t stand for this. Our voices and our votes should matter, yet for most of us they don’t.
I take a very strong line on this: I simply don’t think the First Past the Post voting system is at all democratic. If you support it, you are not a democrat. Frankly, I think the UK as a whole is barely democratic. “Barely” is important, it is a democracy, but we’ve put in the bare minimum of effort. Whether it’s the voting system, the party funding system, how we handle ballot access, how we gather and public election information (no briefing for this one or the next), and of course the absolutely outrageous absurdity that is the House of Lords, the UK is a woefully antiquated country.
We need to fix all of those things, but the voting system is the most pressing. We need a system of Proportional Representation, and urgently. Whilst that alone won’t restore trust in politics – there’s a wider malaise across the democratic world at the moment – it will at least start to make elections and voting more meaningful. This piece thus takes a detailed look at what a proportional system might have returned based on the votes of this year’s election.
Principles do, actually, matter
Let’s get something out of the way immediately: no, this isn’t intended to benefit any one party, nor have I done it because of unhappiness at any one party’s result. I have been a strong supporter of PR since my first Westminster election in 2010, when I realised my vote counted for absolutely nothing. I did not vote for the same party in 2010 as I did two weeks ago.
I carried out exactly this same exercise after the 2019 election (that’s some very early BBS work, so the quality is… well, it is what it is) when the Scottish results were very different. I likewise discussed a range of alternative models after the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, which although it does use a proportional system I feel could be improved. I also have detailed “Reformed AMS” and “Scandinavian Style” models for Holyrood, and all of these various alternatives get an outing literally every time I write an analysis piece about a poll, as in this example right after 2021.
I appreciate it comes as a shock to a lot of people to discover some of us do actually believe in basic democratic principles for their own sake. We don’t pick and choose when to believe in them for our own benefit, nor do we pretend to support things out of principle that are blatantly transparent self-interest instead, as is the case with the vast majority of advocates for First Past the Post. You’re perfectly welcome to think millions of voter should be left voiceless because you don’t like the parties they voted for, but don’t dare try and dress that up as somehow democratic.
How this works
What distinguishes this from the flurry of “if this election was PR” seat totals circulating at the moment is the detail. Firstly, I’ve actually designed a proper system of PR rather than simply going “well X party got Y%, so they get Z seats”, so it has sensible rules such as % thresholds to be elected, common in most PR systems in Europe.
Secondly, I’m going down to a much more local level, having built example districts to elect MPs from. Rather than just give top-line seat numbers, I think it’s useful to have that little bit more detail, especially in a country where “but what about the local link?” is the common response to calls for electoral reform. In most cases, I’ve built districts simply from Lego-bricking existing constituencies together. In Scotland, where I’m more familiar with the administrative geography and have loads of data from other elections to facilitate doing so, I’ve split some constituencies where necessary for a more “natural” arrangement.
Overall, this is effectively a UK-wide adaptation of my “Scandinavian-style PR” model. That draws significantly from Norway, and effectively works on the basis of electing most MPs proportionally within each district, and then for parties crossing a 3% electoral threshold, “levelling seats” are allocated to give the correct total overall. These levelling seats are back-allocated to individual districts, so every MP represents a specific area. As the UK is a lot bigger than Norway, I’ve applied this model separately in each nation and region (of England). In summary:
- Districts each elect between 4-9 MPs (with three exceptions being smaller)
- All but one of those MPs is elected “directly” with local votes using the Sainte-Laguë method
- The votes for every District in each Nation/English Region are totalled up
- Remaining seat in each District is a “levelling seat” filled on the basis of the total vote for parties with more than 3% in that Nation/Region
- This is how, occasionally, you’ll see party come second in sets for a district they came first in. Just levelling seats doing their job
Independents are exempted from both the 3% rule and the levelling seat rule. Whilst the 3% generally wouldn’t be relevant anyway, the levelling seat one is more relevant. Effectively, if after all directly elected seats in a district are apportioned, an Independent would be due the next one (i.e. the one held back for levelling purposes), they automatically get it. This ensures that Independents with local support aren’t unfairly locked out of representation.
In this specific election, which was defined by a large number of Independents standing against Labour candidates in particular, I considered it possible to “merge” some Independent votes into one bloc. Basically, where there were strong Independents, I checked to see Independent candidates endorsed by the Muslim Vote campaign and if there were any elsewhere in the district added their totals together. Whilst Gaza absolutely wasn’t the only issue for such candidates, it was a defining one, so I’m using the shorthand “Gaza Independents” for such agglomerations. I’m still treating them as effectively one Independent rather than a party however, assuming under a genuine PR model they’d co-ordinate to pick a single candidate.
Note: Given I’ve input all this data manually, whilst I’ve checked and re-checked the data versus other sources, there may be slight errors in my vote tallying. That will have very minimal, if any, impact on the overall result, as I’ve checked and rechecked a few times against three sources (BBS, Sky News and Wikipedia) plus, where there are inconsistencies, directly checking declarations.
Overall Results
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
Obviously, having won an almost two-thirds majority on just a third of the vote, Labour are the party who a proportional system would take seats from. They ended up overrepresented by nearly a full couple of hundred seats, with half of those at Reform UK’s expense. Despite placing third in overall vote share, an evenly spread vote amounted to just a handful of seats, whereas the much more concentrated Lib Dem vote came out at nearly their proportional share anyway.
The Greens are the next biggest gainers in terms of total seats, due ten times again as many as they had won if the system was fair. Even the Conservatives benefit from some of the re-distribution, picking up a bit more than one-sixth of the total that Labour wouldn’t have. Amongst the various Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland-only parties, the net gain comes almost entirely from the SNP, with Plaid Cymru also picking up on extra seat.
Lastly, this system would have elected two additional Independents plus a Worker’s Party candidate. There isn’t enough data to extrapolate them a national share and see if they’d actually cross the 3% threshold in any regions, but they had enough localised strength to get a directly elected seat in one district. Overall, this gives an incredibly proportional result. Using the Gallagher Index, where the closer to 0 you are the more proportional, this comes out at roughly 1.8 versus the 23.8 FPTP gave.
You might be looking at this and wondering how to put a government together. The answer is pretty simple on that front: a traffic light coalition. The term originates in Germany, where the Social Democrats provide the Red, the Free Democrats (Liberals) the Yellow, and the Greens, you guessed it, the Green. The current Federal Government is such an arrangement, the first of its kind at that level in Germany. However, this sort of alignment between left, liberal and green parties of various flavours isn’t that uncommon, with countries including Luxembourg, Denmark and Finland also having comparable governments in the past.
That’d give a government with a combined total of 348 seats, or 53.5% of the total (though the Scottish Greens are separate from the Green Party of England and Wales, and may in such a scenario choose not to attach their 3 MPs to a government). Accounting for some abstentionist MPs, that’s a majority of around 50 seats. That’s a bit narrower than we might think “normal” in the UK given our tendency towards landslides, but again, that’s simply a reality of the voting system we currently have. This is just a different reality.
Interactive Map
Scotland
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
After three elections in which they massively benefitted from it, the FPTP tide turned against the SNP in this election. Their share was just 5.3% behind Labour’s, but they ended up with just a quarter of the seats. At the same time, best-ever vote shares for Reform UK (versus UKIP) and the Greens went unrewarded. No surprises then that all of the difference under PR would be at Labour’s expense, flowing primarily to those three parties. The Conservatives also pick up a couple of extra seats, whereas the Lib Dems got their tally bang on anyway.
A couple of standout little bits here are that Highland is one of just two mainland GB districts where Labour don’t win any seats all. That’s partly because of the “mainland” aspect of things; had I integrated the islands into a unified Highlands and Islands region a la Holyrood, they’d have had one of those, given their success in Na h-Eileanan an Iar. The reason I resisted doing so is that given each mainland constituency is bigger than the two Islands seats combined, there would be a risk that no islanders would be elected from a unified district with just 5 seats up for grabs.
Wales
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
Welsh Labour made Scottish Labour’s successes in this election look positively feeble by comparison. With only 1.5% more of the vote, their command of seats is even more complete with a staggering 84% of Wales’ MPs to their name. Also unlike Scotland, Wales replicated its 1997 wipeout of the Conservatives, whilst coming close to being overtaken by the Conservatives. That meant the next best performing party in seat terms, Plaid Cymru, were fourth in votes!
Under this PR system then Labour end up losing more than half of their seats, four-fifths of which split evenly between the Conservatives and Reform UK. Everyone else gains by just one seat, which makes this the weakest part of Britain for the Greens, although their vote share very marginally pips Scotland’s estimated total tally. They would have got the 33rd seat if one existed though, showing how much the exact vote distribution between other parties can matter too.
Northern Ireland
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
Northern Ireland is the one place where the system gets slightly broken. Proportionally speaking, the UUP are only due 2 MPs, but they’ve got their vote spread just right to get 3 via direct election. That’s specifically to the detriment of Sinn Féin, who would otherwise be on 5 seats. They could have made that back up at the expense of Independent MP Alex Easton were it not for the fact he’s the very Independent that prompted me to introduce the “Independents automatically get the levelling seat in a district if they were due the last seat” rule to the system.
When you consider that the Alliance party also end up with a (properly earned) tally of 3 seats too, this effectively pulls the balance of representation in Northern Ireland a little bit back towards the “softer” options. It’s still the case that the parties on the harder end of the spectrum win half of seats overall though.
England
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
Although England is chunked up into regions given its size and I don’t have a single map for it, I thought it was nonetheless useful to give a nationwide overview for it as well. No surprises that just like Scotland and Wales, Labour are vastly over-represented at everyone else’s expense. In absolute terms though this is where the failings of First Past the Post prove most stark, costing both Reform UK and the Greens dozens of seats relative to what they would have won with a fairer system in place.
One thing worth noting, that will become apparent as we go through the regions, is that England still had a clear North-South divide in this election. Of the four southernmost regions the only one that doesn’t have a vote lead for the Conservatives is, obviously, London. The Lib Dems were also strongest in those regions, reaching double figures in them all but not doing so in any northwards region. Finally, despite what might be assumed, the Midlands and the North of England tended to be more supportive of Reform UK than the South. The Greens meanwhile buck the trend by being broadly comparable in both North and South, with the Midlands being slightly worse for them.
To give you the best feel for those differences, I’m going through the English regions largely from north to south rather than alphabetically.
North East England
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
Back in 2019, the North East was where Labour suffered some of their worst losses. Although they retained a lead overall, this formed part of the “Red Wall” that the Conservatives made stunning gains across. This time around they were nearly wiped out, coming less than 5% in Stockton West from not winning any seats and handing Labour a clean sweep. That means there’s a huge flow of seats away from Labour to the other parties here.
The biggest beneficiary here isn’t the Conservatives however, it’s Reform UK, this being both their strongest region and the only one they came second. That really drives home that point about the North-South divide being complex. In the same vein, this is one of just two regions where the Greens came ahead of the Lib Dems in votes, and as the weakest for both the only part of England where neither win any of the directly elected seats, relying on the levellers to get their share. If those didn’t exist, the Greens would still have got into Sunderland, but that’d have been it for either party. It’s also one of two regions where the Lib Dems didn’t elect an MPs this year.
North West England
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
Although the North West isn’t quite as heavily Labour as its eastern neighbour, it’s was still pretty stonking this year, with nearly 90% of MPs elected coming from Labour’s ranks. About half of those go flooding out to other parties under this proportional model, mostly to the Conservatives and Reform UK. The Lib Dem share of seats would be twice as high, and the Greens would actually be able to turn decent bases of support in Liverpool and Manchester especially into seats if given a fair shake at it.
There are also three “Other” MPs here, two of which are in Lancashire East and go to the Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, Independent Adnan Hussain (the MP for Blackburn). The third is, sorry, that George Galloway gets back in for the Worker’s Party based on how strong the party’s vote share was in the Bury, Oldham and Rochdale seat. That kind of highly localised support is a route in for parties under many systems of PR just as it is under FPTP, and is where you need to take the rough with the smooth if you believe in the principle of fair votes.
Yorkshire and the Humber
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
Yorkshire has typically had the most potential for the Conservatives of the three northern regions, given its substantial rural components. The Conservatives did so rottenly this year though that even in the North Yorkshire district they come narrowly behind Labour, though it does nibble a bit on West Yorkshire due to the underlying constituency boundaries. Overall though it was the weakest of the three for Labour in both votes and seats, but at nearly 80% of the latter that’s hardly saying anything.
The largest portion of the excess under PR would go to Reform UK, seeing as the Conservatives still had a chunk of the seats here, the rest then splitting nearly equally between Conservatives, Greens and Lib Dems. For the Greens this is the only other region they beat the Lib Dems in, it’s their second strongest by vote share anywhere in the country, and they win all of their seats here directly rather than through the levelling mechanism. Indeed, without that, they’d exceed their fair share with a fifth in North Yorkshire. I’d be watching both Sheffield Central and Huddersfield closely at the next UK election if I were you.
One little quirk here: the Independent elected under my PR system isn’t the same was was elected under FPTP. In this system, Muhammed Islam who came up about 700 votes short in Bradford West benefits from my grouping together of “Gaza Independents” to take a seat. By contrast, actual MP for Dewsbury and Batley Iqbal Mohammed doesn’t have enough votes from others to see him over the line. Independents are where this very simple model falls down the most though as we don’t know how other voters (and candidates) would have aligned had this actually been in place.
East Midlands
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
As we enter the Midlands, we start to get back into territory where the Conservatives managed to hold their ground comparably well this year. It’s the first region we’ve come to where they actually exceed their PR share, even if by a single seat. This is also the first hint of blue on the map so far, and forms part of what I’m unseriously dubbing the “blue moat”, as it separates a contiguous block of Labour-led districts from Birmingham to London from the rest of their strongholds.
It’s the second strongest region for Reform UK, where they won two of their new MPs, and so as you’d expect they end up adding significantly to that tally here. On the other hand, it’s the second weakest part of England for both the Lib Dems and Greens. It’s one of only two where the Lib Dems didn’t win any MPs under FPTP, and even with this PR system only one of the direct seats goes to either party, though the Greens would be due 2 of them if every seat was direct. As with the actual result, Leicester South Independent MP Shockat Adam would have been elected, here for Leicester and Loughborough, albeit lifted by votes from another Gaza Independent.
West Midlands
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
The other side of the Midlands almost perfectly balances things as far as the Conservatives are concerned. Again, they do better here than in the North, but end up one seat short of their ideal PR tally. Labour’s chunky total number of seats here is rooted in the confusingly named West Midlands conurbation around Birmingham. You guessed it though, that can’t possibly survive contact with a PR system, and they are the party that’d wave goodbye to nearly half of their MPs if it did exist.
Reform UK as is typical experience the greatest benefit from that, having fewer areas of concentrated support on this side of the Midlands. The Lib Dems and Greens split the remainder between them, which in the Greens’ case brings us for the first time to a region where they did actually elect an MP and thus their first truly “additional” MPs rather than “only” MPs. As in the East, the victorious Independent here maps to reality, with Birmingham Perry Barr MP Ayoub Khan making it into Birmingham North in this version.
South West England
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
You’d never know it looking at a map of the actual result, but with the South West we’ve gotten to our first region that had a Conservative vote lead. They were completely eviscerated by the Labour-Lib Dem tandem here, forced into a distant third in seats despite a relatively small advantage in votes. This is the only region that had Labour in third, with the Lib Dems in second in easily their best region. The seat totals fall in completely the opposite order however, with Labour at the top.
That means its both Labour and the Lib Dems that PR cuts down to size here, handing out seats to the three remaining parties. The small size of the vote gap between the top three is emphasised by the fact there’s only one seat between each of them after that redistribution, with the Conservatives obviously pulling ahead. Reform get most of what’s available, and the Greens also add to the seat they won in Bristol Central for their Co-Leader Carla Denyer. The Bristol and Avon district here also ends up the only one anywhere in the UK where they get two directly elected MPs in this system.
East England
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
It speaks to just how badly the Conservatives did this election that even in the East of England their seat advantage over PR is a mere handful. We can also once again see Labour’s vote efficiency at play, having elected twice as many MPs as the Conservatives in reality despite being narrowly behind in votes. That means they are the party losing out the most in a fairer system.
Most of the difference goes to Reform, this having been where they elected most of their MPs the other week, including Nigel Farage. Despite that, as noted earlier, this isn’t actually their strongest area in terms of overall votes, albeit it is in the top half of the table and their strongest region in the South. This is another one of the regions where the Greens did actually elect an MP (their co-leader Adrian Ramsay) and therefore PR adds to their haul rather than being their sole route to representation.
South East England
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
Even in this, the deepest, bluest of regions, the Conservatives did very poorly indeed at this election. It’s also the region with the most seats up for grabs in total, meaning that another efficient voting spread for Labour and the Lib Dems really counted for a lot here. That also puts this region in the unique position of all three of the historic Westminster parties being over-represented for their vote share under PR, though as usual it’s Labour most of all.
That means all of the difference goes to Reform UK (primarily) and the Greens (about a quarter). As this region is home to the Brighton Pavilion constituency the Greens have held since 2010, it’s the only bit of the UK that had any history of Green representation at Westminster until this year. Aside from the seats, it’s perhaps interesting to note where Labour had their two vote leads and the Greens their two top results in this region: the two closest to France.
London
Votes and Seats
Seat Difference (PR vs FPTP)
Commentary
As the capital, London obviously stands in very stark contrast to the rest of the South. Labour won a sweeping victory here the other week, and even under PR they are pretty dominant across most of the city. Let it never be said that PR doesn’t have the potential for drama as that sole blue splotch on the map comes down to, I kid you not, just one vote. Across the 5 constituencies in Hillingdon and Harrow, the Conservatives won 84409 votes to Labour’s 84408. The other thing preventing a completely red map is unsurprising, which is the Lib Dem’s pocket in the southwest.
Of the seats that wouldn’t have gone Labour under a more representative system, the Greens, Conservatives and Reform UK pick up roughly the same number. The Greens are notable here as this is the only region where they (barely) scrape into double digit vote share and where they beat Reform UK. Naturally, that makes this their best region overall, and the one where their absence under FPTP is starkest.
The Lib Dems make more modest gains, and there are also two additional Independents to join Jeremy Corbyn. Leanne Mohammed, who was about 500 votes from unseating new Health Secretary Wes Streeting in Ilford North, wins in the jumbo district that starts with Barking, and Ajmal Masoor, about 1,500 short in Bethnal Green and Stepney, gets a seat in Newham and Tower Hamlets. In both cases these are rooted in the votes for other Gaza Independents in those districts, including Faiza Shaheen.
Questions/Comments/Complaints You May Have
But we don't HAVE a PR system so this was a waste of time!
I don’t know about you, but I spend most of my leisure time engaging with things that aren’t “real”, including films, television, books and video games. This is just another fun thing I enjoyed doing and it doesn’t really matter to me it’s not real. In addition, it is in purpose of making the point that something like this should be real.
But people will vote differently under PR!
Well, obviously, but we don’t have PR so they didn’t vote differently. The whole point being made here is that the system is unrepresentative, and the most obvious way to demonstrate that is with the votes as cast. The fact it also distorts the shape of those votes is relevant, but it’s a second order problem you get to once you’ve made the point the seats are distorted.
Given the evidence of the Scotland-only Survation poll I had run during the election and YouGov polling pre-election, the biggest difference would be that a lot more voters would opt for the Greens rather than Labour. Both of these estimates suggest a doubling of the Green vote. I cannot emphasise to you enough how much my life would not be worth living if I had come up with a model where I doubled the Green vote and seat share accordingly. I get enough shrieking about being a biased Green for pointing out extremely well evidenced facts as it is without giving people more reason to get furious with me about them.
I support PR, but this goes a bit too far / we need to be realistic!
Sure, but I’m not running this as a referendum question, I’m doing it partly out of interest and partly to make a point. In the UK, a lot of people who advocate for PR rightly make the point that FPTP simply doesn’t represent how people voted, and yet many of them default to supporting STV as the obviously replacement. Yet STV isn’t actually particularly proportional, as I demonstrated after the 2022 local elections in Scotland, and I think that explains why literally only Ireland and Malta use it as their primary, default voting system.
If you want a properly proportional system, it has to be list based, and it also has to have an element of counting the vote more widely than just within subdivisions. That’s what this system does. All of that said, if it was FPTP vs STV, I’d gladly take STV. If it was FPTP vs AMS, I’d take AMS. Hell, if it was FPTP vs Parallel Voting (think AMS but the list seats are only proportional to the list vote rather than accounting for constituency seats), I’d take that. I just happen to think if this kind of system is good enough for some of our near neighbours, it’s good enough for us.
This is really complicated!
It’s more complicated than First Past the Post, sure, but I don’t understand the obsession some people seem to have with the idea that voters need to know the mathematical ins and outs of the voting system. They don’t. “This party got 10% of the vote, there were 650 seats up for grabs, and it got 68 of those, which is about 10%” is perfectly sufficient. In fact, that’s rather more easy to understand than things like “this party got 10% of the vote, but only got 3 seats out of 650”.
I guarantee you voters in the majority of democracies that use forms of PR also can’t reel off the exact maths. In all cases, it’s much less complicated than the mathematics responsible for holding up your home, not blowing your boiler to smithereens every time you run a hot water tap, or even properly digesting your dinner. If you can trust the maths of all of that stuff and more that’s essential to your daily life, you can trust the maths of the voting system without needing to be able to recite it perfectly on command.
My District looks a bit weird...
It probably does! Firstly, bear in mind I’m just one person, not a whole Boundary Commission. I don’t know all the local nuances. Secondly, remember that outside of Scotland these are just Lego-bricked together from existing constituencies. Even the actual Boundary Commission was constrained by the rules of the most recent review. These were a lot tighter than previews reviews, meaning there are a lot more constituencies that break county or borough lines. That made London especially a bit wonk this time around. A real implementation of a system like this wouldn’t need to cross those lines to the same degree.
But we need a local MP for [insert smaller area here]!
No you don’t. You think you do, but you don’t. You think you do, because you’ve (probably) spent your whole life steeped in the UK’s political culture, which obsesses over the “local link”. Most other democracies don’t have such an obsession, and they recognise local issues are for local government. National issues are for national government. We need to stop mixing the two.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the UK has the largest local government areas in Europe by population and is also the most obsessed with single-member constituency representation. Denmark, with the same population as Scotland, has the largest local council areas in Europe outside these islands. It has 98 local councils, versus Scotland’s 32. You don’t need a local MP, you need a local council. We should fix that too (this project is getting refreshed later this year as well).
How come [party] are shown as the largest party in [area] when they hardly won any seats?
Short answer: they won the most votes. Long answer: one of the defining features of this election was the “efficiency” of the Labour and Lib Dem votes. In most of the seats Labour won, the Lib Dems were absolutely nowhere to be seen, and vice versa. What this means is that there are plenty of places – like Berkshire for example – where although the map of the actual election result has barely any blue, the district is nonetheless that colour on my maps. Effectively, coming a strong and consistent second doesn’t win you seats, but it does give you the most votes.
Honestly, I think it's a bit weird some areas end up with a [party] MP because somewhere else voted them in?
Well, that’s how the current system works. All this system does is make the effect more explicit. If you take the former Ochil and South Perthshire seat in Scotland for example, I guarantee you that when Labour won it in 2010, they didn’t win the South Perthshire side of it, and yet those people got a Labour MP. Likewise, when the Conservatives won it in 2017, you bet the Ochil (Clackmannanshire) side had still voted SNP. If you can live with circumstances like that, you can live with people in the Tees Valley getting a Lib Dem MP because the voters of the North East as a whole elected two Lib Dems.
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