Not in England, you understand.
But if you take a close look at Friday’s results from elections in Wales and Scotland you can see that the Conservative party profited to a great extent from PR-type systems.
In Holyrood, The Tories picked up just 3 constituency seats – but 12 of the regional ones.
In Cardiff Bay, the Tories got 6 constituencies and no fewer than 8 regional seats.
This, of course, co-incided with their successful campaign to preserve first-past-the-post for general elections. Ironic.
(Of course, introducing AV or PR would damage the Tories in England, which is much larger. They benefit from the current mix of systems.)
The Lib Dems are in a similar situation now in both celtic parliaments: 2 constituencies and 3 regional seats in Scotland and 1 constituency and 4 regional seats in Wales.
Ed Miliband claims to be in favour of electoral reform but must be ruing the complex “d’Hondt formula” which means that in Wales Labour picked up 28 out of 40 constituencies but only 2 out of 20 “top-up” regional seats, leaving the party a whisker away from a majority.
Incidentally, the SNP victory in Scotland looks even stronger if you look at the constituencies alone; they won 53 out of 73 of them (but only 16 out of 56 of the regional ones).
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey