I think now is as good a time as any start a new thread on the latest polls. here is a tidbit from today's globe about Liberal private polling that i think is pretty good news:
"Mr. Marzolini revealed his horserace numbers, showing the Tories at 35 per cent support compared to 28 per cent for the Liberals, 19 per cent for the NDP, 10 per cent for the Bloc Québécois and 8 per cent for the Green Party"
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/ignatieffs-...
Very close to the last election.
Of course the polling at the start of a campaign hardly ever looks like the final result.
Its actually not that close to the last election. In 2008 the Tories led the Liberals in the national popular vote 38% to 26%. a 12 point gap. This is a 7-point gap and if that happened in the election it would shift a lot of seats. Nice to see the NDP at 19% as well. Apparently the Liberals spent some vast sum on this poll and its said to have a huge sample size - but since its a private poll I don't expect we will ever get those regional breaks.
On the other hand, knowing how leaky the Liberal caucus is ...
Cons 35% last election 37.65 difference 2.65%
Liberals 28% last election 26.26 difference 1.74%
NDP 19% last election 18.18 difference 0.82%
BQ 10% last election 9.98 difference 0.02%
Green 8% last election 6.78 difference 1.22%
Not sure what the MOE is for this poll but whatever it is, they are in it compared to their last result. Biggest difference 2.65%; smallest 0.02.
How close do they have to be to say this is close? Even if you look at the difference both added together are 4.39-- And for all we know they could be closer to the 2008 result than this because these are rounded numbers-- (Cons could be 35.45 and the Liberals 27.55-- or a full point closer tahn they appear here.)
Very seldom is polling this close to the last result after so much time. So year, I'd say pretty close and with money on their side very. Then consider this: the weight of impact of an NDP campaign on the Liberals will be greater than the Cons since there are fewer Con-NDP switchers.
If anything the poll implies (in so far as it si true which we don't know) that the NDP has completely recovered; that the Cons are within easy range given their finances of matching the last result and the Liberals.
Now, let us look at the implications of being this close because within this range only the close seats are libel to change and with this tightness they can go any direction.
Local luck and bounces decide the close seats so drilling down in to the 80 close seats we can see the following:
The Cons won 28 and were close in 34 or won 45% of the ridings they were close in
The Liberals won 26 and were close in 35 or won 42% of the ridings they were close in
The NDP won 14 and were close in 12 or 53% of the ridings they were close in
The BQ won 11 and were close in 6 64% of the ridings they were close in
By this logic if you roll the dice with roughly the same odds (polling) as last time the Liberals are most likely to gain and the BQ most likely to lose seats. However, the Cons and Liberals have the most seats in play and with similar odds they may change a number of seats but net out where they were. That's the good news.
The bad news is that the Cons are generally up in the places where they have seats in play and the Liberals are down in those places. The NDP is up in Quebec where it has few close seats and down where it has many. This implies a slight advantage to the Cons that would be added to their financial advantages and incumbency.
Based on current vote distribution the NDP needs to be over 20% to make gains or even hold what it has as it is trading votes in held seats for those in Quebec where ti is too far behind right now. That said, there is little reason to assume that the NDP won't top 20% in the next election following a campaign. It was below its final result at the start of the last campaign and if it went up this time it could make up lost ground where it has seats and get a bump in Quebec at the same time by E-day.
Everyone who is pointing to volatile Ontario and BC (the HST provinces) is correct to do so 45 of the close races are there.
Now if we look at the opposition combined the picture is also interesting. The Cons were close in 62 races.
The NDP threatened them in 6 and provided opportunity in 9
The Liberals threatened them in 20 and provided opportunity in 22
The BQ threatened them in 2 and provided opportunity in 3
This means between the opposition and the government the Cons have a slight advantage mostly off the Liberals.
It also means there are only 10 close contests between the Liberals and the NDP.
Some interesting numbers to think about.
"there are fewer Con-NDP switchers"
Sean I am not trying to pick on you as I read lots of people on here making similar comments. I don't think there is any evidence to back this assumption up. It might be true in the GTA and some other urban ridings- but in large numbers of ridings there are lots of these people and lots more who may have voted Conservative before, not out of love, but that is who won their vote. Those people are just as easily in the NDP vote universe as anything else. I think people have to stop thinking like ideologues like we are and start thinking about the way the vast majority of Canadians do. The most telling statistic from that article is that only 15 % of Canadians are even paying attention to federal politics. You'd never guess that low of interest from a place like babble that ebbs and flows on daily activities in Ottawa.
I might be proved wrong but I think we are not going to even be able to guess the outcome of this election. In a pox on all your damn houses mood- which is what I think we have in Canada right now- past elections don't tell us much.
It is a fact that there are fewer NDP-Cons switchers than there are NDP-Liberal switchers. All you have to do is look at the numbers when people are asked about their second choice - NDP supporters tend to have the Liberals as their second choice way more often than the tories and Tories tend to rank the Liberals as their second choice more often than they do the NDP.
The MSM tends to assume that NDP/Tory switchers do not exist at all - and we that is not true - but there are still fewer of them than other types of switchers (ie: Liberal/Tory, Liberal/NDP)
There are NDP-Con switcher voters but there are few of them compared to Liberal NDP switchers. As Stockholm has said the stats on second choices make that clear-- and some. Second choices is something less than a switcher since even a lifer could have a second choice but today with the depth of the polarization few have Cons as a second choice and most Cons choose to say nobody as their second choice.
I agree they should be in the same universe and many Con voters are actually voting outside their current interest.
Now to compound this issue you have the fact that the Cons are in power. Most people vote with or against the government first. When the Liberals are in power there are more NDP Con switchers than when the Cons are in power. That is because people who hate the government may be in the market for the best opposition but few have hating an opposition party as their most immediate consideration.I would say this is one of the advantages for incumbency-- as those who are basically satisfied look to you first. When in opposition people may be more fickle about who is providing the best opposition, who is most likely to unseat the person you want gone etc.
All this is to make the point that a strong NDP campaign is more likely to draw votes from Liberals and others and those not voting to the NDP than it is to directly bring Cons to the NDP. For voters to come from the Liberals that is a single step. From the government it is a two step process. 1) to get them to see the Cons are not good after all; and 2) to choose the NDP as the best alternative. A good NDP attack on the Cons may draw Liberals and it may also draw some Cons in to rethinking voting Con but that does not mean they will go to the NDP; they may but they could also go to the Liberals first.
I think there is loads of evidence for all this and this is long-known political/campaign knowledge.
The reality is like it or not-- a big part of the close races is for an opposition party to come out ahead and be seen as the one to beat the Con. None of these close ridings would be Conservative without FPTP. The NDP are trying to convince people that they are the best alternative to the Cons.
Now, of course the NDP has the added advantage of the fact that they, unlike the Liberals, tend to vote against the Cons in the House and actually oppose Con policy except when they get something particularly useful to the population in exchange. No doubt that will be a central theme in many NDP campaigns.
The NDP must make the fact that if you oppose this government's policies voting Liberal is very unrewarding. I think they should have a round of ads on this.
I still think this is a different dynamic in different parts of the country. Much of the parked Liberal vote of the past had to do with their position as government, not so sure that dynamic is still as relevant (not irrelevant, just less relevant than in the past). The electorate is far less connected to parties as in the past so Con-NDP movement- especially in ridings with populist candidates is not so 'scratch your head weird' as some seem to think.
Beyond that I agree 100 per cent with what you are saying Sean, especially the need to make voting Liberal feel unrewarding because the NDP has taken on the Conservatives strongly and directly.
I should make it clear that I think the lack of NDP-Con switchers is as much a function of the government being Conservative as anything else. Ten years ago there were a lot more and in many places the old PC vote went in part to the NDP as many hate the Liberals.
When the Liberals are in government there are many NDP-con switchers as they shop for an alternative to an unpopular government and it is right you should point that out. A year from now if the Liberals somehow (in an alternate reality) became government there would suddenly be a pool of anti-government NDP-Con switchers. It is also right to point out that this varies by region.
That said the hard right authoritarian tendencies of this particular government probably reduces that although there are likely a few Cons that supported Harper and are upset at his attacks on democracy and they might prefer the NDP to the Liberals, especially if they have good memories. But when it comes to statistics it is the opposition numbers that are more fluid I think. Likely Conservative numbers are either changing when they do because of huge realizations or polling methodologies as it is a major jump to go from Harper to any opposition party- even the Liberals I think (in spite of the Liberals being incompetent ass-kissers who will vote for anything rather than face the electorate on a point that matters to the people unless they can get more power as a result).
Now we have a new poll by Abacus - totally consistent with the Liberal internal poll:
Tories - 35%
Libs - 27%
NDP - 18%
BQ - 10%
Greens - 9%
Other - 1%
http://abacusdata.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Vote-Choice-January-2011...
Take a look at the table on peoples 2nd choices - 41% of Liberals have the NDP as their second choice with very low proportions mentioning the Tories or Greens. Greens tend to have the NDP as their second choice - which is good news since its a foregone conclusion that the Green vote will be more like 4 or 5% than 9 or 10% when the votes are counted. But check out the second choice of NDP voters - only 20% even have the Liberals as their second choice compared to 33% who say the Greens (in other words they have no second choice)!! This suggests to me that NDP supporters are pretty resistent to any Liberal appeals.
If many of those Greens do end up moving to the NDP, the NDP could move into over 20%.
Too bad we're not using the Alternative Vote. With all those 2nd preferences from other parties, the NDP would be well positioned to win a lot more seats then under our current FPTP.
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Yesterday's EKOS numbers continue to show basically similar numbers to the other recent polls. All those Conservative ads don't seem to have moved the numbers:
Con: 35.4
Lib: 27.9
NDP: 14.8
Grn: 9.8
BQ: 9.7
The Jurist has some interesting observations about the Abacus poll.
The significant bit:
. . . (P)erhaps the most striking bit of data is the far right column, showing the total number of people willing to move to each party. There, the NDP has moved from ranking roughly equally with the other parties in past polling, to a stunning nine-point lead over any other party. In fact, the NDP's share of potential support adding together the Abacus respondents' expressed first and second choices is 41% - ahead of the Libs (39%), and within striking distance of the Cons (45%).
Here is a link to a new Segma poll of seven ridings in the Quebec City Region:
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/le-soleil/actualites/politique/201101/25/01-43...
Overall the Cons are down from 38 to 29% and the Bloq up from 30 to 37 from the last election. The NDP and Liberals are essentially flat at 11 and 15% respectively.
While this is disappointing for the NDP (Leger and Crop both gave it about 20% in the region) it indicates significant Conservative losses. The pol lis broken down by riding and indicates Bloq gains in Beauport and Louis Hebert and close races in Levis, Lotbiniere and Charlesbourg. This may indicate a complete Con wipeout in the region.
Portneus was not polled but on these figures it is likely that the Bloq would gain it as well from the Con surrogate Andre Arthur.
The margin of error in the individual ridings is said to be 10%. The ovearll sample is 700 so that is only 100 per riding so obvious caution is called for.
The overall swing of 16% from Con to Bloq , however, would imperil all the Conservative sets. Their majorities over the Bloq last time were: Lotbiniere 23, Louis St Laurent 21, Levis 20, Charlesburg 12, Beauport 4 and Portneuf 2.
Too bad we're not using the Alternative Vote. With all those 2nd preferences from other parties, the NDP would be well positioned to win a lot more seats then under our current FPTP.
The Alternative Vote is not proportional and just as bad as what we have now. It does allow voters to rank their choces (1,2,3...) but it's arguably worse for electing women and minorities. It can distort electoral results worse than FPTP, that's why only one or two countries in the world use it anymore. It would, however, virtually guarantee Liberal governments from now until hell froze over.
No surprise then that Liberals and Liberal staking horses are starting to tout Instant Runoff Voting / Alternative Vote as the next great thing in electoral reform. They've already started to push it in Toronto, for example (eg. Ranked Ballot Initiative).
Alternative Vote would actually cost the NDP seats, potentially distorting results worse than they are now. For example, simulations have shown that if the last federal election were held under Alternative Vote, Don Davies in BC, and Olivia Chow, Paul Dewar, 4 other Ontario NDP MPs would not have been elected. In almost all cases a Liberal would have been elected instead. No wonder Liberals like it so much: it would turn our politics into even more of a 2-party race.
Please do not blather about advantages of the Alternative Vote, we will be hearing enough about it from the same old Liberals soon enough. What's needed is some type of proportional representation - not replacing our dysfunctional winner-take-all system with another dysfunctional winner-take-all system and selling that as electoral reform.
I thinkany electoral system that gives people MORE choice is ipso-facto better. Why should only have one choice - why not be able to cast a nuanced ballot and rank my choices? I would LOVE it if I could freely vote for anyone I wanted safe in the knowledge that as long as I always ranked the Tory candidate in my riding dead last - there would be no risk of vote splitting. What not to like?
Because preferential ballots can result in a parliament that doesn't represent the wishes of Canadians.
If 20% of the electorate rank the NDP as their first choice, under proportional represenation, the NDP gets 20% of the seats.
In a preferential ballot system, the NDP could easily end up with 5% of the seats, even though they are the first choice of 20% of the electorate.
I suspect that the Liberals like this system because it will likely lead to 40 years of majority Liberal rule. They are the second choice of many voters from across the spectrum. Add that to their already strong first choice support, and they will be near unbeatable.
Thnak you Sean for some interesting numbers to think about. Have you or anyone else done an analysis of how close ridings shifted given we have had three general elections in a relatively short period of time all under the same riding boundaries. Of particular interest, how many of the seats the Liberals narrowly won in 2004 went to the second place finisher in 2005/6 and how many seats the Liberals narrowly won in 2005/6 went to the second place finisher in 2008? Same sort of analysis for the Conservatives, Bloc and NDP would be nice. Do the three general elections confirm what many believe that when parties lose seats. its primarily those seats they narrowly won last time, and when they gain seats is it primarily those ridings they narrowly lost last election?
Too bad we're not using the Alternative Vote. With all those 2nd preferences from other parties, the NDP would be well positioned to win a lot more seats then under our current FPTP.
Alternative Vote would actually cost the NDP seats, potentially distorting results worse than they are now. For example, simulations have shown that if the last federal election were held under Alternative Vote, Don Davies in BC, and Olivia Chow, Paul Dewar, 4 other Ontario NDP MPs would not have been elected. In almost all cases a Liberal would have been elected instead. No wonder Liberals like it so much: it would turn our politics into even more of a 2-party race.
And there's no seats they would gain?
I'm not saying I prefer preferential voting (aka AV) to proportional representation. I'm saying I prefer it to the status quo pure FPTP where someone can get elected with as little as 24% of the vote in a riding.
I think the NDP would gain seats under that system since all polls indicate that the NDP is the party most likely to be named as people's second choice. I think that in Toronto ridings like Trinity-Spadina you would probably get the NDP winning the lion's share of second preferences from Green voters - while I think that die-hand Tories in Toronto tend to see both NDP and Liberals and being so equally distasteful that they they would either refuse to preference anyone at all or they would split their second prefernces between the Liberals and NDP with a lot of Tories giving the NDP their second preferences as a sort of "anyone but Liberal" vote.
The big losers from AV would be the Tories since they are almost no one's second choice. I think this would be a great way to make it impossible for the Conservatives to ever win an election.
Thnak you Sean for some interesting numbers to think about. Have you or anyone else done an analysis of how close ridings shifted given we have had three general elections in a relatively short period of time all under the same riding boundaries. Of particular interest, how many of the seats the Liberals narrowly won in 2004 went to the second place finisher in 2005/6 and how many seats the Liberals narrowly won in 2005/6 went to the second place finisher in 2008? Same sort of analysis for the Conservatives, Bloc and NDP would be nice. Do the three general elections confirm what many believe that when parties lose seats. its primarily those seats they narrowly won last time, and when they gain seats is it primarily those ridings they narrowly lost last election?
Interesting, No I have not done that but it is a good idea--
We should look at the last three elections close seats and see how many of them are the same ones and how many new close seats we have.And who won them.
Very good idea
I'm not sure why anyone in the UK makes the ridiculous argument that AV would produced more "hung parliaments". I don't see that at all. Australia uses AV and they have had exacty one hung parliament in the last 100 years and that is their current parliament - and is only because the major parties ended up with 74 seats each with 3 independents holding the balance of power. I think the main impact of AV in Canada would be to elect a few more Liberals in Tory/Liberal marginals through them getting NDP and Green "preferences", plus a few more NDPers in Tory/NDP marginals would win by taking Liberal and Green preferences. The most unpredictable thing is what would happen in Liberal/NDP marginals where Tory preferences could be key and also what would happen in Quebec (would all the so-called federalist parties preference each other ahead of the BQ or would there be an anyone but Tory movement?)
Please do not blather about advantages of the Alternative Vote, we will be hearing enough about it from the same old Liberals soon enough. What's needed is some type of proportional representation - not replacing our dysfunctional winner-take-all system with another dysfunctional winner-take-all system and selling that as electoral reform.
Proportional representation is far better then the Alternative Vote. PR or "Fair Voting" is the only system Canada deserves, anything less, be it FPTP or AV, would be undemocratic.
That being said, AV is more democratic then FPTP. That's why all the political parties in Canada use AV type systems to elect their own politicians. Would any of the parties ever use FPTP to elect their own candidates? Of course not. Electing politicians who represent much less then half the voters leads to illegitimate results that split parties apart. Using FPTP in multi-member elections leads to illegitimately elected politicians who represent a minority of voters. FPTP only works in one case, in single elections electing one single candidate out of only two contenders (eg a presidential election with only two candidates). Once elections involve more than two candidates, FPTP becomes illegitimate and undemocratic.
There is no evidence that AV is less proportional then FPTP. In fact the anti-AV side in the upcoming referendum in the UK is saying that one of AV's majour flaws is that it is more proportional then FPTP and will lead to more hung parliaments. AV and FPTP are both unproportional. Both can give more or less proportionality but that is always produced accidentily. In some cases FPTP can be more proportional then AV while in others AV is more proportional. In either case the level of proportionality is just a coincidence of systems designed to produce two-party systems.
If I had to choose between AV and FPTP, I would take AV in a second. AV and FPTP are equal in most respects except in one majour area. Under AV, no longer would we be plagued with the spectre of strategic voting. Unlike FPTP, AV allows voters to vote with their concience for their favorite party without the fear of helping elect their least favorite party. FPTP forces 3rd parties into merging with bigger parties. It also forces all the parties to be middle of the road parties. Any way you cut it FPTP makes all the parties resemble the middle of the road. In Canada's case all major parties end up resembling the Liberals. Alternative parties are crushed by FPTP as very few people are willing to throw away their vote in order to vote for one of them.
But I'll repeat once again, eventhough AV is better then FPTP, it is far inferior to fair voting/proportional representation. Proportional representation is akin to a nutritious meal while AV is akin to gruel and old moldy bread while FPTP is akin to just muddy water. Given the choice between gruel and moldy bread or just muddy water, I'd choose the gruel, but I would not be happy with that choice. Hopefully Canada will soon be able to have a nice meal of delicious fair voting after 144 years of a steady diet of muddy FPTP water.
That being said, PR is far better then AV. We could etablish a fair voting system in Canada that incorporates AV in single-member ridings with additional open-list members added for proportionality. The BC Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform was looking seriously at such a system before they chose STV.
The fear of hung parliaments in the UK comes from Conservative supporters who know that in elections where they are in the lead there is a good chance that they will not be able to form majority governments as easily as they have in the past as Labour would pick up a lot of seats as they would likely benefit more form secondary votes then the Conservatives.
Australia hasn't had many hung parliaments because they have historically had only two strong parties. Now that the Greens are stronger in Australia, hung parliaments are more likely as we saw in the last election there. Under FPTP the Liberal/National Coalition would have won a fake majority. As it is, Green voters 2nd choices went mostly to Labour and produced a hung parliament. And now Australia is led by a Labour led government that includes support from the Greens and independents. SO Australia has a government that represents the majority. If they had used FPTP they would have a government that represents the minority like we have in Canada. If we had used AV in Canada we would also now have a coalition government representing the majority.
Ultimately elections should be as fair as possible. Using FPTP in multi-member elections should be off the board as they are inherently unfair and undemocratic.
I'm not saying I prefer preferential voting (aka AV) to proportional representation. I'm saying I prefer it to the status quo pure FPTP where someone can get elected with as little as 24% of the vote in a riding.
I think the NDP would gain seats under that system since all polls indicate that the NDP is the party most likely to be named as people's second choice.
[...]
The big losers from AV would be the Tories since they are almost no one's second choice. I think this would be a great way to make it impossible for the Conservatives to ever win an election.
This lack of familiarity with AV is what Liberals will be counting on to make sure AV dominates any electoral reform debate in the future. Or they will lob it like a grenade into the ranks of those wanting to reform the voting system, causing division and internal deadlock, resulting in no consensus on reforms - resulting in keeping FPTP, also a victory for them.
Whichever, AV is a red herring. It tends to force a nation's politics into 2 strong parties, to the detriment of other voices. It distorts results. Under AV, a candidate that recieved almost half of the votes could be beaten by a candidate that got only a third of the vote, after preferences were taken into account. In 4-way races a candidate that got only 20% of the vote could win. That's worse than your FPTP candidate winning on 24% of the vote in the same riding. And for the same complexity as a truly proportional ranked-voting system, it's proven to be just as bad - or worse - at electing women, Aboriginals, and minorities. Don't fall into the trap set by larger parties to waste time on it.
Despite what you think, the analysis of the last election showed that taking second preferneces into account, the NDP would have net lost seats under AV. True, seond prefernces go up & down over time. But I know that your principles like equality, fairness, and democracy aren't going to become 'flexible' just because there's a temporary change in second-preference polling, right?
You are free to drink the Liberal cool-aid if you want, but the big losers in AV over the long term would be anyone but the two largest parties (NOT the Tories - even they have caught on to what it would do, and Tom Flanagan has started to promote AV.)
Now why would Tom Flanagan be peddling AV if it "makes it impossible for the Conservatives to ever win an election"? Answer: it doesn't. (you likely already know that Tom Flanagan, as a rule, pushes things that are in the Conservatives' best interest, not the NDPs).
Under AV, a candidate that recieved almost half of the votes could be beaten by a candidate that got only a third of the vote, after preferences were taken into account. In 4-way races a candidate that got only 20% of the vote could win. That's worse than your FPTP candidate winning on 24% of the vote in the same riding.
Why would that be worse? Under AV the winning candidate has to get over 50%, not just 20%. AV requires that winning candidates get the support of a majority of the voters. Only in FPTP can a candidate with very few votes, like 24% or 19% as happened in the UK last year, gain election.
If AV is worse then FPTP, why do all the political parties in Canada use AV, not FPTP, to select their candidates?
Here in BC we're electing new party leaders. Both the BC NDP and BC Liberals are using AV to elect their new leaders. Does anyone seriously think these parties would be better off using FPTP?
What happens if the initial results in the BC NDP leadership contest end up:
Farnworth 20%
Dix 19%
Horgan 19%
Lali 14%
Larsen 14%
Simons 14%
Under FPTP, Farnworth would be leader with only 1 in 5 supporting him. 80% of the party would just have to live with the most right-wing candidate "winning" with a small minority of the votes. 80% of the parties member votes would not count.
Luckily the BC NDP is using AV to prevent such an absurdity. Under AV, the new leader will need to gain 50%+1 of the votes.
If the BC NDP was using FPTP, many of the candidates currently in the race would have to drop out of the race before the vote ever happens to prevent vote splitting. And if the BC NDP was using FPTP, strategic voting would once again be rearing its ugly head.
I find those who dislike "hung parliaments" tend to misunderstand democracy. A hung parliament in a fair proportionate election is a reality of a hung population. It means quite rightly that both sides need to compromise to get things done as it should be.
this is the same rationale for why separatist parties ought to be represented in Houses of parliament rather than kept out. That aspiration if truly felt by the population must be at the table in a democracy and addressed.
There is this idea that people want clean democracy without the inconvenience of representing a real disagreement that exists in the population. Of course when you paper those over, then they do not get resolved.
Now there are many things you can do in parliament to better represent splits in the population and manage them more effectively. We need to work on how a split parliament can best work rather than pretending that we gain anything at all by avoiding one when the people's will is split.
Frankly AV when used across a legislature is a way of overcoming splits and trying to be fair about producing lopsided results. In other words AV is all about "fairly" producing an unfair result. About proportionally producing a disproportionate result. It's stated aim and mechanism is contradicted by its final result. It does not seek to produce a legislature proportionate to the population.
I don't hate AV, however, anymore than I hate a screwdriver when I need a wrench. It is the wrong tool to produce a body of legislators, PR is the right tool for that. It is the absolute best tool to produce a single elected person like a president. In Canada we do not elect such positions publicly or even somewhat similar positions like Prime Ministers. If we ever moved to an elected GG that would be the mechanism we should choose. It is also the right one for managing leadership where in the end only one candidate can go forward as JKR points out. It is also the one I would recommend over more cumbersome run-offs to countries who do elect a single person to a unique position. There is no reason to use it when you have a legislative body that can and should represent the diversity of wills of the population proportionate to how people actually voted.
So in sum, these tools are not either/or-- they are for different purposes. It is critical that people understand the difference between the election mechanisms required to fairly produce a single candidate and that needed to produce an elected body and when they do understand this, they will see the obvious uses and benefits of both tools and why they are inappropriate for the other purpose.
If AV is worse then FPTP, why do all the political parties in Canada use AV, not FPTP, to select their candidates?
That's a different situation. In the case of leading a party, only one person can fill that spot (unless that party is Quebec Solidiare but that's beside the point). There's no "percentage," you can't elect a fraction of a person to that post. In the case of electing a legislative chamber, you are electing parties, and the parties will have a proportion of support among the population. This has implications that are larger than any one particular constituency that elects its legislative member. It may make sense in determining the constituency's representative, but taken over a whole context, it really distorts the voice of the people. In the case of the Australian Parliament, the Greens elected far fewer people to their lower chamber than their popular vote suggested, so you are effectively silencing the voices of that segment of the population. And I agree that it is worse than FPTP, especially for smaller parties. At least in FPTP, a more marginal party can win in a particular riding if the vote splits a certain way with a large number of strong candidates. Do you think Thomas Mulcair would have been elected in 2007 under an AV system?
If AV is worse then FPTP, why do all the political parties in Canada use AV, not FPTP, to select their candidates?Do you think Thomas Mulcair would have been elected in 2007 under an AV system?
Yes, EASILY. He won almost 50% of the vote to begin with and on top of that BQ and Green 2nd preferences would have skewed heavily to Mulcair over the Liberal candidate. The small Tory vote in Outremont would be a bit of a wild card - but there would be too few of them to inflouence the outcome and I think that a susprising number of them would vote "anyone but Liberal".
Hey Stockholm, I would like to thank you for quoting my post in such a way as to distort my response and how it was intended.
How did you intend it?? I assumed you meant that Mulcair could not have won the 2007 byelection of the we had AV. I think he would have won it by an even bigger margin if that were the case.
You cherry-picked the part of my post that speculated about Mulcair's chances in the 2007 by-election, as if that was the central thesis of my post. It wasn't.
Who cares when it comes to an electoral system. An electoral system should be reflecting the will of the people as accurately as possible not just getting your guy in.
We can on the one hand be advocates for a fair election system and on the other be advocates for the party we want to have win and have these as separate questions that do not need to distort the truth of the other.
If there are seats we would lose in a fair voting system then so be it-- I would rather have a fair voting system than for us to win elections every time improperly.
Now the reality is that almost always it is our guy losing due to the screwed up system but let's not confuse the two issues. There are provincial majorities we have had that we would not have had in a better voting system. I can accept that. Most of them should have been minorities-- but that is also true of the governments that defeated us.
Electoral reform should not be about choosing the electoral system that favors your party over the short term. Electoral reform should be all about establishing the fairest system. In order to do this, people should have a clear idea of what criteria would make up a fair electoral system.
In order of importance, this is what I think a fair electoral system should provide:
1 - proportionality. Percentage of seats won by the parties should be close to the percentage of the votes gained by the parties.
2 - voter choice. There should be many candidates and parties to choose from. People should also be able to vote specifically for the party of their choice.
3 - honest voting. People should be able to vote for their true preferences without regard to strategic voting.
4 - local representation. People should be represented by a local politician who represents the interests of their local area.
5 - few wasted votes.
6 - demographic representation - women and minorities should be fairly represented.
7 - simple transparent system.
All in all I think open-list MMP or its close cousin AV plus best fulfills the criteria for a fair voting system.
JKR I am with you until the last line -- MMP is proportional representation but the second is not. Close perhaps but not.
-- from your own link:
"Unlike AMS, with 20% or fewer of legislators elected from party lists, AV+ would not achieve full proportionality, but would correct some of the disparity caused by single-member-district elections."
Another issue is the mechanism. In some places they use best near winner but that is hard to do in Canada because of the huge difference in the number of voters from one riding to another (best near winner by percent could be in PEI with few voters, by voters would exclude PEI in favour of a more populous riding.
Still I like your list and it is a fair basis.
JKR I am with you until the last line -- MMP is proportional representation but the second is not. Close perhaps but not.
-- from your own link:
"Unlike AMS, with 20% or fewer of legislators elected from party lists, AV+ would not achieve full proportionality, but would correct some of the disparity caused by single-member-district elections."
Another issue is the mechanism. In some places they use best near winner but that is hard to do in Canada because of the huge difference in the number of voters from one riding to another (best near winner by percent could be in PEI with few voters, by voters would exclude PEI in favour of a more populous riding.
Still I like your list and it is a fair basis.
JKR I am with you until the last line -- MMP is proportional representation but the second is not. Close perhaps but not.
-- from your own link:
"Unlike AMS, with 20% or fewer of legislators elected from party lists, AV+ would not achieve full proportionality, but would correct some of the disparity caused by single-member-district elections."
AV+ can be made proportional as long as it has more then 20% legislators elected from open lists. There's no reason AV+ could not have 25% or 33% legislators from party open lists. The BC Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform came up with a mixed member proportional model that used AV instead of FPTP.
As far as proportionality is concerned, it doesn't matter if a MMP system uses AV or FPTP.
The only barrier would be figuring out a way to work with the existing constitutional seat guarantees for the historic partners in Confederation, but although I can't cite chapter and verse, I believe the Law Reform Commission proposal must have dealt with that wrinkle.
The only barrier would be figuring out a way to work with the existing constitutional seat guarantees for the historic partners in Confederation, but although I can't cite chapter and verse, I believe the Law Reform Commission proposal must have dealt with that wrinkle.
Fellow Babbler traveler Wilf Day has constructed an excellent model that works within Canada's constitutional structure:
What would a proportional House of Commons look like?
If people want to support fair voting, they can take a look at fairvote.ca
MMP Open list or bust
"Mr. Marzolini revealed his horserace numbers, showing the Tories at 35 per cent support compared to 28 per cent for the Liberals, 19 per cent for the NDP, 10 per cent for the Bloc Québécois and 8 per cent for the Green Party"
A 7-point lead is not a horserace, Mr. Marzolini.
The Cons still have a big lead on the Libs.
A 7-point lead is not a horserace, Mr. Marzolini.
The Cons still have a big lead on the Libs.
"Horserace" is a term for any poll showing standings of candidates or parties
Actually, the definition as I know it is a close competition -- ie it is turning into a horserace
Yeah, that's my understanding too - a horse race in politics is when the standings are very close and difficult to predict the outcome.
That is the general usage meaning of 'horserace'.
But 'horserace numbers' referrs to the fact we are just looking at where the race stands right now... and which parties have moved forward or backward just at the moment.
So the reference to 'horserace numbers' is made even if it is not a close race or has got less close at the moment.
Granted, it came into usage in the last several years where things dont change very much. But even at moments where some of the parties have got further apart... there is still that implicit caveat: 'mind you, we are just talking the latest horse race numbers, which will change by next week'.
I have always used the term "horserace numbers" as a commonly-accepted colloquialism for "results on the voter intention question". Sometimes people also call them the "topline numbers" or "the ballot question".
In Germany where election day is always a Sunday (now why didn't we think of that??) - they refer to it as the "sonntagsfrage" or "Sunday question"
I don't recall hearing the expression 'horserace numbers' before today - that's new to me. I grew up hearing 'horse race' only when the electoral outcome was too close to call.
I've always heard it referred to as "the horserace" numbers and I have also heard it in the context of pundits saying "let's stop always writing about the horserace numbers and talk more about real issues" etc... The election is a horserace - whether its close or a landslide for one party or another. There will be win, place and show and the NDP is a longshot to win (ask a bookie for odds)
I think the point of "horse race" language is that it reduces politics to who wins the nominal race. Horse race analysis ignores questions of policy, philosophy &c, and focusses only "x on the backstretch, y on the inside."
In other words, it treats it as a sports competition rather than a choice about governance.
