A Proportional Analysis of the 2019 Federal Election
The Liberals and Conservatives took many more seats than they were due at the expense of the NDP, the Greens and the People's Party. -- more on this below.
The election also saw no party take a majority of the seats although a working majority is required to pass laws.
The Liberals took more seats than the Conservatives despite receiving less votes (being less popular in first preferences). If it had come to a run-off ballot between Liberals and Conservatives it seems the Liberals would have won a majority -- more on that below.
More voters voted for the Conservatives than voted for the Liberals, but 29 percent of the Conservative voters were in Alberta and Saskatchewan, a small part of Canada. (AB/Sask holds only 14 percent of the seats in Canada.) Voters in AB/Sask voted Conservative at a rate of two to one to the frequency of Conservative vote outside those two provinces. This regional base gave the Conservatives almost all the seats in AB/Sask where actually about a quarter of the seats in AB/Sask should have gone to other parties (the Liberals and the NDP).
The Conservatives are over-represented in AB/Sask, holding 98 percent of the seats in those two provinces with less than 68 percent of the vote there.
While the Conservative party was over-represented in those two provinces, it was under-represented outside the two provinces, where the Liberal party, the leading party, benefitted from First Past The Post .
The Conservatives' strong showing in Alberta and Saskatchewan (69 percent of the vote in the two provinces) left only a bit more than 70 percent of the country-wide Conservative vote spread over the remaining 86 percent of seats in Canada. Outside of Alberta and Saskatchewan Conservatives took only 74 seats.
Under the First Past The Post system many votes are wasted. It took 59,000 Conservatives outside Alberta /Sask to win a seat, while in AB/Sask it took only 38,000. The Conservatives with about 34 percent of the vote took only 26 percent of the seats outside AB//Sask.
Outside AB/Sask, the Liberals received a million more votes than the Conservatives so it could be said they deserve to govern. There were 5.6M Liberal votes and only 4.4M Conservative votes outside of AB/Sask.
Outside AB/Sask, the Liberal party reaped the reward that the FPTP system awards the leading party. It reaped more seats than it deserved just as the Conservatives did within AB/Sask.
With the Liberal party being more popular than the Conservatives outside AB/Sask, if a Conservative government was installed in the House of Commons, it would be the rest of the country, 86 percent of the country, that would be upset -- although it is doubtful they would be so defensive as to threaten to leave Canada.
Saskatchewan different from Alberta and visa versa, but NDP and Liberals suffer in both
Due to their somewhat accidental almost-total Conservative sweep in Alberta and Saskatchewan, the two provinces are being lumped together. But the political complexion in the two provinces is quite different.
In Saskatchewan the NDP was the second-most popular party, taking almost twice the votes of the Liberals.
Unlike in Saskatchewan, in Alberta the Liberal party was the second most popular party. This is disguised by the NDP winning a seat in Alberta but none in Saskatchewan. The NDP with a micro-regional base of Strathcona took that district with almost a majority of the district vote, while the other NDP-ers - ten percent of the AB votes - went without a seat although due 3. NDP voters in Alberta deserve to be represented by four MPs. The undemocratic FPTP voting system has thrown their votes in the trash.
Saskatchewan NDP-ers, casting 20 percent of the vote, got no seats at although they were due three seats. The undemocratic FPTP voting system has thrown their votes in the trash.
The Liberals in Alberta with 14 percent of the vote deserved 5 seats but got none. The undemocratic FPTP voting system has thrown their votes in the trash.
NDP mis-fortune
Country-wide, the NDP did not have a regional base. Spread out across the country, it suffered under FPTP within AB/Sask and outside that area as well. It was due six seats in AB/Sask and got just one. It deserved 49 seats outside AB Sask seats but won only 23. Proportionally it should have 55 seats but only won 24.
Bloc Quebecois benefitted under FPTP
The Bloc Quebecois took 41 percent of that province's seats (32 seats) with less than 35 percent of the province's votes. Its narrow regional base - in fact it ran candidates only in Quebec - gave it concentrated strength and it won 32 seats (about a tenth of the country's seats) with only 8 percent of the vote country-wide, which should have given it only 27 seats.
Thus the FPTP system benefitted a narrow provincial party without a national agenda while hurting broad parties with pan-Canadian messages.
The Big Two are over-represented
Overall the Liberals and the Conservatives received more seats than they were due, while the NDP and the Greens suffered under-representation.
The Liberals should have won only 112 seats but won 157.
The Conservatives should have won 116 but won 121 seats.
The Greens should have won 22 but won only 3.
The NDP should have won 55 but won only 24 seats.
The People's Party proportionally should have won six but won none.
An Independent - a sitting MP formerly of the Liberal party - won as well. She and the Bloc Quebecois's 32 brings the total number of MPs elected to 338.
General proportionality woes
Proportional Representation, measured at the national level, may in fact create more questions than it answers.
As stated above, under general proportional representation, the Conservative should have more seats than any other party. This would be displease the majority of voters, it seems.
The Conservative lead was only created in two provinces.
And if voters cast transferable votes for the government they want, so that a formed consensus could be produced, it seems clear that the Liberals, or the NDP or even the Greens would be more preferred by a majority of voters than a Conservative Government.
Under preferential voting such as under STV it would be the small parties that would be eliminated and their votes transferred to back-up preferences. Thus the Greens and NDP would be dropped and their votes transferred almost certainly mostly to the Liberals, giving them majority government status.
Now after the election has created a minority government the same is likely to emerge in party-to-party negotiation. STV could move the process to the election itself where voters make the decision.
(Of course, the People's Party and all the other smallest parties would also be eliminated under STV. The people's Party's 300,000 votes and the votes of some other small parties would probably have mostly gone to the Conservatives but would have not been enough to give them a majority, and their impact would be drowned by the movement of most of 2.8M NDP votes and 1.1M Green votes to the Liberals.
Exact proportional representation would also give 6 seats to the People's Party, an extremist party that was reprehensible to a vast majority of Canadians.
FPTP-fostered Regionalism
In addition to the Conservatives' over-representation in AB/Sask, regionalism was also seen in other ways.
Regionalism is accentuated under FPTP as is evident from the seat counts in this election.
The Conservatives won 20 percent of the vote east of Ontario but won only 14 seats, instead of the 20 they were due.
The Liberals garnered 20 percent of the vote west of Ontario and won only 15 seats, instead of the 21 they were due.
This kind of inflated regionalism under FPTP is not new. In 1900 Liberal candidates got a majority of the votes outside Toronto but won many less seats there than the Conservatives (as reported in the Nov. 30, 1900 Edmonton Bulletin.)
Minority governments
As well as inflating regionalism, FPTP also does not deliver on its promise to deliver a majority government. In the past it often delivered on this by awarding a majority of the seats to a party that garnered less than a majority of the votes - a so-called false majority. But now with the vote splintered among four or more major parties even this undemocratic measure does not deliver majority governments.
This is the fourth time in the last six elections that a minority government was elected. This is likely to be a recurring phenomena due to the splintered party system, with four or more major parties contesting seats under a system, trying to operate under a system designed to cope with only two parties in competition.
True Proportionality would create problem
At one point an argument against adopting proportional representation was that it would give equal effectiveness to each vote whether in Toronto or in the sparely-inhabited west lands. An argument against adoption of pro-rep a hundred years ago was that under pro-rep Toronto would have more seats than all of Saskatchewan. (This argument was made in the Feb. 19, 1921 Edmonton Bulletin.)
Well, with new equality brought to FPTP, this argument has gone by the way - Toronto now has 25 seats while Saskatchewan only has 14. So that is no longer a reason to defend FPTP.
However, if a system of true equal representation was adopted the comparison would become even more equal. Right now, under FPTP, one riding in Saskatchewan, Desneth, had only 26,000 votes cast while the average riding in Toronto had 50,000 votes cast. This anomaly, which helps western representation, would be thrown out the window under a system that produces equally-effective votes. It is a good question whether concentrating more seats and power in Toronto would be good for the country.
Under STV, unequal district sizes could be preserved, spreading out political power. Say assuming a turn-out of two-thirds, a western city with less than 150,000 voters could have two seats while a section of Toronto with 450,000 voters could have only 5 seats. This kind of help to the rural areas is not possible to the same extent under a general proportional representation system or a Mixed Member Proportional system.
The Dollar method
To show how the seats should be distributed at the provincial level proportionally, we can represent all the votes cast in the election with a dollar*.
If all the votes cast in the election were a dollar, Conservatives would have 34 cents, ten of which would be in AB/Sask, with 24 cents spread across the rest of the country.
The Liberals would have 33 cents, two cents in AB/Sask.
The NDP would have 16 cents, two in AB/Sask.
The Greens would have seven cents.
The People's Party 2 cents.
(*Each cent would equal 3.4 seats and about 179,000 votes.)
Comments