One year on: 9 things you need to know about the 2019 General Election

1. The Conservatives won a big majority… despite only increasing their vote share by 1.3% on 2017
2. Smaller parties got crushed – as usual. Nearly 900,000 votes for the Green Party across the UK equated to exactly one Green MP.

In contrast, it took just 25,000 or so votes to elect an SNP MP (thankfully, both parties back proportional representation!)
3. The ERS predicted with 100% accuracy the result in the majority (56%) of England’s seats – 300 of them – before polling day

For the 16 million-plus voters in these seats, it may have felt like there was barely an election happening at all
4. Around 14.5 million voters are unrepresented across the UK (they didn’t pick the one winner in each seat)

That’s a marked contrast to proportional representation, where we'd end one-party-takes-all results at last
5. Nearly one in three people (30%) are likely to have voted tactically, according to BMG polling for the ERS.

That means millions of people were forced to try and game the system. Often, the many tactical voting sites contradicted each other
6. Safe seat voters got left out. Voters in swing seats reported receiving far more leaflets than those in Britain’s hundreds of safe seats, according to research for the ERS

Frankly, it’s seen as not worthwhile for some parties to campaign in ultra-safe seats
7. The 2019 election result might look quite different if seats matched votes and everyone’s voice was heard.

The PR, the Conservatives would still have been the largest party – they got the most votes. But they would not have an undeserved majority of seats
8. One in six seats in the Commons are effectively ‘unearned’ under Westminster’s warped voting system

Last December’s election saw a return to deeply disproportionate results
Nearly 75,000 people signed our petition for proportional representation after the election https://t.co/CJ0zyQgDiS

More from Politics

Handy guide for Dominic Raab and other Brexiteers, and for anyone keen to replace our EU trade with trade with the rest of the world on WTO terms...


You can't magic away the vast distances involved. Clue: we fly in only 1/192th of our trade compared to the amount that arrives via sea


But even if you invented a teleporter tomorrow, WTO terms are so bad, so stacked against us, that a no-deal Brexit will be a total economic disaster


And while the Brexiteers fantasise, real jobs are being lost, investments are drying up, companies are moving assets to the EU27 or redomiciling. All already happened and happening right now, not in some mythical


Of course, there are many, many myths that Brexiteers perpetuate that are total fiction. You've seen a couple of them already. The thread below busts a whole lot
39.1% of Democrats think that it's wrong to negatively stereotype people based on their place of birth... AND that Southerners are more racist. https://t.co/yp1hviLuBB


65.2% of Republicans think that people shouldn't be so easily offended... AND that Black Lives Matter is offensive.
https://t.co/znmVhqIaL8


64.6% of Democrats think that a woman has the right to do what she wants with her body... AND that selling organs should be illegal.

48.5% of Democrats think that a woman has the right to do what she wants with her body... AND that prostitution should be illegal.


57.9% of Republicans think that people should be free to express their opinions in the workplace... AND that athletes should not be allowed to sit or kneel during the national anthem. https://t.co/ds2ig1NJFr


Democrats: Men and women are equal in their talents and abilities. Also, women are superior. https://t.co/bEFSmqQguo

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“We don’t negotiate salaries” is a negotiation tactic.

Always. No, your company is not an exception.

A tactic I don’t appreciate at all because of how unfairly it penalizes low-leverage, junior employees, and those loyal enough not to question it, but that’s negotiation for you after all. Weaponized information asymmetry.

Listen to Aditya


And by the way, you should never be worried that an offer would be withdrawn if you politely negotiate.

I have seen this happen *extremely* rarely, mostly to women, and anyway is a giant red flag. It suggests you probably didn’t want to work there.

You wish there was no negotiating so it would all be more fair? I feel you, but it’s not happening.

Instead, negotiate hard, use your privilege, and then go and share numbers with your underrepresented and underpaid colleagues. […]