Alberta has never had a minority government, where no party received a majority of the seats. But many times an Alberta party has taken less than a majority of the votes and was still elected to a majority of the seats in the legislature.
Majority Alberta governments with less than half the votes was a common occurrence in Alberta's history. This is based on First Choice votes.
Under FPTP the leading parties received a majority of the seats in each case, leaving the majority of voters out in the cold. During the use of STV and AV, this minority rule was tempered by proportionality and majoritarian safeguards brought to bear in subsequent counts conducted as part of the election process.
Alberta's false majority governments
FPTP/Block Voting
1913 Liberal
FPTP (11 automatic re-elections, two MLAs elected overseas)
1917 Liberal
STV/AV
(where only first count votes are used to measure popularity of the government)
1926 UFA
1930 UFA
These false majority governments were due to UFA winning more than their proportional share of the single-member AV rural districts. The falseness of the majority is muted by the fact that each MLA in those districts did have the support of the majority of voters in each district.
Under the dual system of STV/Alternative Voting used from 1924 to 1956, no MLA could be elected outside Edmonton and Calgary without the support of the majority of the voters in the district. They proved themselves the most generally acceptable to the voters, by eventually getting a majority of the votes through vote transfers in order to be elected.
In fact, in-depth analysis shows that the UFA did have a majority of votes in a majority of districts in 1930.
If you look at the 42 AV district battles where UFA ran a candidate, the UFA took 86 percent of the seats there with 54 percent of the vote in those districts, taking 71,000 out of 131,000 votes cast in those districts.
38 of the 42 seats - 90 percent of the contested seats - with 54 percent of first-preference votes. A few UFA candidates received some additional votes through vote transfers in the handful of districts where no candidate received a majority of votes on the first count.
Those 38 seats made up a majority of the seats in the legislature.
Thus there was actually nothing false about the UFA majority in 1930.
(The appearance of false majority is due to UFA not running candidates for every seat. The UFA did not run any candidates in six-seat Calgary and only one in six-seat Edmonton, and ran only 42 candidates in the province's 49 contested rural districts. Four districts did not hold elections as the sole candidate won by acclamation.
The UFA concentrated their energy outside the cities and outside the few places where Labour had a chance - the coal mining centres of Rocky Mountain, Edson, Drumheller, and Lethbridge - and the industrial/railway centre of Medicine Hat.)
But where the UFA did run candidates they did extremely well.
If FPTP had been used, we would say that FPTP artificially created this city versus country regionalism, that there was submerged Liberal or Conservative support in the rural districts. But due to AV we know that each UFA candidate elected in the rural districts had support of majority of voters in the district, were preferred over the other candidates if or when it came to a choice for voters to make.
STV/AV
(where first count votes only are used to measure popularity of the government)
1940 SC
1955 SC
These false majority governments were due to the SC party winning more than its proportional share of the single-member AV rural districts. The falseness of the majority is muted by the fact that each MLA in those districts did have the support of the majority of voters in each district.
(In-depth analysis such as done on the 1930 election above may reveal that in fact the SC deserved to win these majority governments.)
FPTP
1967 SC
1971 P-C
1989 P-C
1993 P-C
2004 P-C
2012 P-C
2015 NDP
The 1921 election
The 1921 election is sometimes described as a false majority government - the charge made that the Liberals received more votes than the UFA, which took a majority of the seats in the legislature.
It is true that the Liberals did receive more votes than the UFA.
But that election is not listed here on purpose because the Block Voting system gave more votes to each city voter than it gave to rural residents and the UFA mostly did not run in the Block Voting city districts.
So the true amount of parties' support has never been calculated -- and without reference to the actual ballots cannot be calculated.
We don`t know how many of the Edmonton residents gave at least one vote to the five Liberal candidates. We do know though that the Edmonton Liberal candidates altogether received thousands more votes than the total number of Edmontonians who voted. The multiple votes cast in Calgary for the non-UFA parties also worked to create the UFAs apparent weakness. In Calgary, 17,000 voters cast about 76,000 votes. None of this went to the UFA who did not run candidates in Calgary. So the multiple-voting there helped give the false impression that the Liberals had more support than the UFA
A combination of Block Voting and FPTP was used in 1913. But in 1913, the same parties (Liberals and Conservatives) ran in both the FPTP districts and the Block Voting districts so the ability of some voters to cast more votes than others did not affect proportions between the parties.
In 1921 the UFA ran only one candidate in the cities and did not receive many votes in the cities so its vote tally did not benefit by Block Voting, while the Liberal and Conservative and Labour vote tallies did.
(source: Dennis Pilon research 2019)
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What is STV?
From a 1902 reform magazine: "Thinking it well to have in every number something by way of a brief explanation of proportional voting, I repeat in this number the following. Proportional representation means the use of a reasonable and scientific system of voting instead of the present stupid, unfair and inefficient procedure. Methods: There are several systems by which the principle of proportional representation may be given effect to. Large electoral districts, each electing several members, are a necessary feature. The "quota" plan is usually employed. It means that a quota of the votes elects one representative. To arrive at the quota, the number of valid votes cast is divided by the number of seats to be filled. For instance in a seven-member district any one-seventh of the voters could elect one representative and the other six-sevenths could not interfere with their choice. The three principal systems of proportional representation are the Free List as used in Switzerland and Belgium [party-list pro-rep], the Hare system as used in Tasmania [STV], and the Gove System as advocated in Massachusetts. The Preferential Vote [Alternative Voting/Instant Run-off Voting] -- This is used in the election of single officers such as a mayor. It is not strictly a form of pro-rep but is akin thereto, and uses part of the same voting methods. The object of preferential voting is to encourage the free nomination of candidates and to obtain always a clear majority at one balloting, no matter how many candidates are nominated." (From the Proportional Representation Review Dec. 1902, p. 77) (Hathi Trust online resource, page 81/180) Thanks for reading. Check out my blog "list of Montopedia blogs concerning electoral reform" to find other blogs on this important subject. ----------------------------------- This year: *Alberta is celebrating 150 years in Confederation 1870-2020 *100th Anniversary of STV first being used to elect legislators in Canada Winnipeg MLAs first elected through STV in 1920 ==============================================================
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