Dune, as I posted on the Electoral Reform thread, the extreme end of FPTP could give us the following;
In half the seats Party1 get 51% of the vote and Party3 get 49%. In the other half of the seats, Party2 get 51% of the vote and Party3 get 49%. The result of this is that Party1 and Party2 will have half of the seats each, yet will have polled only 25.5% of the total vote, leaving Party3 with 49% of the vote and no seats.
Is this acceptable ?
If not, why is acceptable to extrapolate it to, for instance, @33% each for the 3 main parties, yet LD get only 10% of the seats. That is hardly in the spirit of democracy. It seems clear that the majority of the public want reform, yet the 'big 2' resist it because the national demographic, with the LD being the only party with a truly national appeal, works in their favour due to the local concentrations of red and blue supporters.