Friday, October 17, 2008

What proportional voting would do for Canada

I was fairly sure I made mention of this before, but my good friend Jeff reminded me of its existence, so I figured I'd mention it again. The site is called Fair Vote Canada and it tries to promote the idea of voting system reform in this country. I took a look at a press release from the day after our election and it offers some very interesting statistics:
  • 940,000 voters supporting the Green Party sent no one to Parliament, setting a new record for the most votes cast for any party that gained no parliamentary representation. By comparison, 813,000 Conservative voters in Alberta alone were able to elect 27 MPs.
  • In the prairie provinces, Conservatives received roughly twice the vote of the Liberals and NDP, but took seven times as many seats.
  • Similar to the last election, a quarter-million Conservative voters in Toronto elected no one and neither did Conservative voters in Montreal.
  • The NDP attracted 1.1 million more votes than the Bloc, but the voting system gave the Bloc 50 seats, the NDP 37.
Had votes this election been cast under a proportional system, Fair Vote Canada projected the following changes:
Conservatives - 38% of the popular vote: 117 seats (not 143)
Liberals - 26% of the popular vote: 81 seats (not 76)
NDP - 18% of the popular vote: 57 seats (not 37)
Bloc - 10% of the popular vote: 28 seats (not 50)
Greens - 7% of the popular vote: 23 seats (not 0)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

At least you don't have the electoral college. Retro