Duverger's Law Is Undefeated

 The Labour victory yesterday in Britain is absolutely astounding. Not that they won, but that they seemed to have blown by even the most optimistic predictions. 

Now, there's a weird quirk in the British electoral system. There are a TON of districts (650) for a country that size. The person with the most votes wins. In most districts, there are a ton of candidates running so it's unlikely that there are a lot of candidates who get over 50% of the vote.

In fact, Labour have won at least 412 seats out of 650 with only 33.7% of the vote.

That's only an increase of 1.6% in the popular vote overall (as of this morning).

So what the hell happened? 

The Conservatives lost about 20% of their share of the popular vote. Why? Reform UK - the anti-European party - increased their vote share by 12.3%. 

In other words, Duverger's Law came for the Tories. With an even farther Right party drawing away from some of their voters in one direction, Labour and the Lib Dems were able to win seats without really increasing their support substantially.

It was the fracturing of the Right into Conservatives and Reform that helped Labour regain their seats in the the Midlands, the North of England and Scotland. Meanwhile the Lib Dems cleaned up in the south and west of England.

There was a repudiation of the Conservatives in every direction. There was only a slight move to Labour and Lib Dems, but the strength of Reform UK in swing districts made all the difference.

The reason this matters to America is that we could have a similar dynamic this fall. Neither Biden (nor Harris) nor Trump is popular. This opens the door for a third party candidate, with Brain Worms being the leading candidate at the moment.

Whomever Brain Worms draws more from will decide the election. It would seem almost impossible for either candidate to get over 50% in this landscape, so keeping an eye on Kennedy's support will be critical.