Not as terrible as most people here believe it to be, and it has some understated advantages. See this Jonathan Bernstein post:
The post emphasizes the "stability" FPTP system provides, as opposed the "random results" yielded by PR. It's not a very original argument. That FPTP is more stable and avoids "randomness" in election results is questionable; the surprise factor exists in those countries where the system remains in force. Do I need to mention examples? For me, the main advantage of FPTP is that a MP is responsive to the citizens of the constituency he or she represents. In the other cases, I only see disadvantages (mainly lack of pluralism and adequate representativeness). On the other hand, there are different types of PR (which the man doesn't mention) and not all of them are necessarily "proportional". I think the "randomness" in results attributed to PR is more correctly attributable to other factors, such as the different political cultures, the mood of public opinion, exceptional circumstances that can provoke wild swings, etc. There are several European countries using PR that have a tradition of coalition governments and are pretty stable; in other countries like Israel public opinion tends to be volatile. Also, there are intermediate solutions like the MMP system used in Germany and adopted in NZ. I don't think such countries use to provide random electoral results nor their electorates tend to volatility. Of course, it's necessary to be cautious when approaching serious issues like electoral reform. However, I suspect that "caution" is often a synonym of "reluctance to change".
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