The 5 Impossible Puzzles Bonus Season highlights different structural challenges with the way our electoral and political system is supposed to work.

The fourth puzzle is the Impossible Puzzle for Representative Governments.

This is about how our national governments very often receive less than 50% of the national vote. Which means that more than 50% of the people who voted, actually voted AGAINST the government, not for the government.

How can we claim to be living in a representative democracy, if about a third our representatives were elected with less than 50% of the votes in each of their constituencies, and then if our national government was elected with less than 50% of the national vote, with most people voting for other parties?

[N.B. ALL national governments in the UK have received less than 50% of the votes, since 1935.]

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