STV can operate in large multiple-member districts.
An example is the 2019 New South Wales election where 21 members were elected and 4.9M votes were cast.
Quota was 202,000, only 4.5 percent of the valid votes.
Any candidate receiving this quota was elected, as well as others if they were popular enough to survive to the end when the number of candidate was thinned to the number of seats, and won with partial quota.
A candidate of the Animal Justice party won a seat although that party received just 86,000 votes in the 1st Count, so won by surviving to the end (the 343rd Count) when she and three others were elected with partial quotas.
The 343 counts sound overwhelming but all the counts from 18 to 342 were done by simple reference to the next back-up preference(s) marked on the votes of the eliminated candidates. No math was required.- other than addition when adding the transferred votes to the other candidates' running totals.
Five candidates were elected on the 1st Count. According to the official website* all the votes belonging to these candidates were distributed with quota remaining with the winning candidate.
The next 12 were elected in Count 6 to Count 17. Only the surplus received by these candidate was distributed. This could have been done as easily and simply as jumping over the preference marked for the elected candidate and re-routing the transfer to the next preference.
Then on the 343rd count there were either:
only five candidates and four remaining open seats, or
four candidate declared elected because all other candidates had so few votes that they could not impact the order of the leading four and those would be certainly elected to fill the four remaining seats.
This may be too much of "how the sausage is made" for many.
But the point is :
3.9M voters gave their first preference to a candidate of a party that had at least one candidate elected in the end - or marked their approval for a party as a whole that had at least one candidate elected in the end.
Thus, 87 percent of the voters would be happy with the final result. a far cry from FPTP elections where as much as 83 percent of voters do not see a candidate of the party of their choice elected.
in the end under STV in NSW, candidates of six different parties were elected, with the most popular candidate of each party being elected or the one(s) highest placed on the respective party list.
(Unfortunately and unfairly in the Labor Slate, Julie Sibraa, Tri Vo and three others received many votes as individual candidates but did not take quota and were not listed high on the party slate so did not win a seat although male Labour Party candidates named Mark, Peter and Daniel were elected due to their placement on the party slate although receiving fewer votes as individual candidates.).
The same sort of thing happened in the Liberal/National slate where four more-individually-popular candidates were overlooked.
In the case of the other four parties the most-individually-popular candidates were elected in every case.
Voters being able to vote "above the line" (for party slate(s) not for individual candidates) is shortcut put in due to the burden put on voters who have to rnark all the candidates or all their preferred candidates. But it opens the door to candidates relatively less popular with voters being elected over others who are more popular. Above-the-line voting does allow voters to easily have their vote used to elect someone of a party they like, even if not of their first-preference party.
Each voter in NSW has a direct (voter to representative) relationship with each elected NSW Legislative Council member, But the voter had choice of whom to turn to among the elected members for constituency matters or representation, unlike in single- member districts where there is no choice and the one member legally has responsibility to represent all his or her constituents - as if.
So the NSW Legislative Council election of 2019 shows that STV can work well in a multi-seat district with as many as 21 seats, producing mixed representation that reflects a high proportion of the votes cast.
*The official site says this:
"Some candidates will obtain the quota from the first preference votes alone. In these cases, all of the elected candidates' ballot papers are distributed according to their preferences. However, certain ballot papers are returned to the elected candidate to remain as the quota.
Other candidates will be elected only when they obtain a quota as a result of the distribution of preferences. In these cases, only the surplus ballot papers received (ie: ballot papers in excess of the quota) will be distributed to other candidates.
Candidates can also be elected without receiving a quota if the remaining number of candidates in the count equals the number of vacant positions still available."
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