AV is a specific system. Instead of casting a single vote, voters rank the candidates in preference order. If nobody gets over 50% of the first preferences, then the bottom candidate is dropped and their second preferences allocated.
This achieves a kind of rough consensus for the individual seat. Thus, if in one seat, a Conservative gets 40% of the vote, LD 35% and Labour 25%, under the current system the Conservative wins. But if most of the Labour voters preferred the LD to the Conservative, LD has consensus over the Conservative, and under AV the LD would win.
In practice in Britain this would increase the number of LD seats, especially because there are a lot of Conservative seats in southern England which are pretty much like that case (some of which go LD now because of tactical voting, LD campaigners persuading Labour voters to go LD to get the Tory out), but it's not PR because it still has nothing to do with the overall spread of party preference in the region or nationwide.
What the Jenkins Commission proposed was creating a separate set of regional MPs whose party allocation would address voting imbalance. Whatever party got the fewest constituency MPs in comparison to its total vote would get the greatest share of regional MPs. Something rather like this actually operates in the Scottish Parliament.
A fixed parliamentary term is a big change because the current five-year term is a maximum only. The PM is free to call the election a year or even more earlier to maximize on a favorable political wind (though it's always amusing when the favorable wind never arrives and the election is forced by the term running out, as happened to Labour this year and in 1979, and to the Conservatives in 1964, 1992, and 1997). It's also possible to call a snap election earlier still, to capitalize on particular political circumstances, and that too has happened often.
Few parliamentary countries operate on fixed terms. New Zealand does.
no subject
This achieves a kind of rough consensus for the individual seat. Thus, if in one seat, a Conservative gets 40% of the vote, LD 35% and Labour 25%, under the current system the Conservative wins. But if most of the Labour voters preferred the LD to the Conservative, LD has consensus over the Conservative, and under AV the LD would win.
In practice in Britain this would increase the number of LD seats, especially because there are a lot of Conservative seats in southern England which are pretty much like that case (some of which go LD now because of tactical voting, LD campaigners persuading Labour voters to go LD to get the Tory out), but it's not PR because it still has nothing to do with the overall spread of party preference in the region or nationwide.
What the Jenkins Commission proposed was creating a separate set of regional MPs whose party allocation would address voting imbalance. Whatever party got the fewest constituency MPs in comparison to its total vote would get the greatest share of regional MPs. Something rather like this actually operates in the Scottish Parliament.
A fixed parliamentary term is a big change because the current five-year term is a maximum only. The PM is free to call the election a year or even more earlier to maximize on a favorable political wind (though it's always amusing when the favorable wind never arrives and the election is forced by the term running out, as happened to Labour this year and in 1979, and to the Conservatives in 1964, 1992, and 1997). It's also possible to call a snap election earlier still, to capitalize on particular political circumstances, and that too has happened often.
Few parliamentary countries operate on fixed terms. New Zealand does.