How Different Electoral Systems Would Have Impacted Canada’s Election
One of Justin Trudeau’s broken promises from the 2015 election is that this past Monday’s election would not be using the First Past The Post system. So, as ever after an election, here’s a look at some other common electoral systems and how the results would have differed.
Alternative Vote
This is a ranked-ballot system, where a candidate needs more than 50% of the vote to get a seat. If no candidate gets more than 50%, then the last-place candidate is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to the highest-remaining preference on the ballot paper.
Using second-preference polling data from Ekos, we see that the Liberals would still have been in a minority government situation under Alternative Vote. For both the NDP and the Greens, their second preferences were divided roughly into thirds between each other, the Liberals, and no second choice at all.
Because of the split preferences on the left, only ten seats would have produced a different result under Alternative Vote. Sherbrooke would go from Liberal to NDP, as the NDP have slightly higher second preference shares of both Bloc and Green voters. Apart from that, the Conservatives would lose nine of their seats, with seven going to the Liberals, and one each to the Bloc and the NDP. Overall, though, it would still leave the Liberals seven seats short of a majority.
Proportional Representation by Province
Using the d’Hondt method for allocating seats proportionally within each province, we see that the Conservatives would finish with the most seats, as they won the most votes. The Conservatives would be virtually unchanged from their First Past The Post result, while the Liberals would be down by 43 seats. The NDP would more than double their seats, the Green Party would finish on 20 seats, and the People’s Party would get itself a couple of seats. It is worth noting that, while the Conservatives are in first place in this scenario, the Liberals and the NDP would have a majority of seats between them.
It’s not uncommon to require a minimum vote threshold, generally not over 5%, to get any seats in a proportional parliament. In Canada’s House of Commons, only four provinces (Québec, Ontario, Alberta and BC) would have enough seats for such a threshold to be relevant. The People’s Party would lose both of their seats in Ontario in Québec, as they’re nowhere near 5% in any province. Meanwhile, the Green Party would lose their one seat in Alberta, and their three seats in Québec (where they only achieved 4.5%).
Single Transferable Vote
Single Transferable Vote is a ranked ballot system used for multi-seat constituencies, and is used for most elections on the island of Ireland. For this scenario, I devised 92 constituencies, each containing either three, four or five seats, with a candidate’s goal to surpass either 1/4, 1/5 or 1/6 of the vote (respectively) to get elected, with any excess votes going to the next preference on the ballot paper. The aim is that the seats would be split proportionally within each constituency.
Despite the system being roughly proportional, parties that have vote concentrations still do slightly better than those parties whose votes are spread out. The Liberals would lose around 27 seats, mostly to the NDP, with a few pickups for the Greens. The Conservatives and the Bloc would stay largely flat.
The Liberals did not repeat their mistake of promising electoral reform in this campaign, but the NDP, whose support Trudeau may need to stay in government, has made it a priority for themselves for decades, and again after the results became clear on Monday night. The question is whether the NDP can force it on a reluctant minority government.
