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Tom Monto

Proportional Analysis of 2019 Alberta Election

Updated: Feb 20, 2021

Proportional Analysis

The so-called United Conservative Party took 72 percent of the seats with only 55 percent of the vote. They were due only 48 seats based on their proportion of the vote but won 63.


The NDP took 28 percent of the seats although it was due 33 percent if we go by their vote totals. It won only 24 seats instead of the 29 its percentage of the vote should have given it.


The Alberta Party with 9 percent of the vote got no seats, although it was due 8 seats.


No seats were won by the multitude of lesser parties, none of which got more than one percent of the vote. This includes the Progressive Conservatives and the Wild Rose party, each of which ran one candidate to stay registered and keep their options open, in case Kenney drops the ball.


Many of the MLAs were elected without receiving a majority of the votes in their districts. This is a common problem under FPTP (see my blog on the last Ontario election).


In this election, 20 MLAs were elected without a majority of votes in their districts.

12 NDP MLAs were elected this way, one with only 40 percent of the vote.

8 UCP MLAs were elected this way, one with only 45 percent of the vote.


If Alternative Voting had been used, it is not at all certain that many of these MLAs would have been elected. So the results could have shifted to NDP getting 32 seats to the UCP's 55, or the NDP getting only 12 to the UCP's 75 seats out of the legislature's 87 seats. it seems unlikely that any other parties could have taken many seats even with transferable votes as only two non-UCP, non-NDP candidates were in top two slots in any race.


It is not likely (but technically possible) for a third-placing candidate to be elected under preferential voting. Under AV, the least-popular candidates are eliminated one by one, and their votes are transferred to other candidates. If enough votes went to the third-place candidate, he or she might have vaulted past the two front runners and taken the seat with a majority of the vote. However it is uphill battle - the front-runners have shorter distance to go to make a majority of the voters than the third-placing candidate.


And in the use of Alternative Voting for 30 years in Alberta and Manitoba, and in BC just for two elections) it never happened. In fact in most AV elections, the front runner even if he or she did not have a majority of the votes in the first count, usually took the seat in the end.


In 2019, in 13 races, the winner won by less than 2000 votes over his nearest competitor. In three races (Lethbridge-West, Calgary-Falconbridge and Calgary-Currie) the difference was less than 300. In the 13 races, if 6800 of the almost 2 million votes cast in the election (overall) had been given instead to the nearest competitor, the UCP may have slipped to 58 seats and the NDP rising to 29 seats, or conversely the NDP may have slipped to 16 with the UCP rising to 71 of the 87 seats of the Legislature. This shows the randomness of the FPTP system.


The power sometimes wielded by a few votes under FPTP is shown by the fact that the NDP lost only 8 percentage points of support, a fifth of its support, but lost half the seats it had won in 2015.


The UCP received only a slightly higher percentage of votes than the combined totals of the P-Cs and the Wild Rose in 2015 but increased its seat total from 30 seats in 2015 to 63 in 2019. Again this is demonstration of the way FPTP inflates slight changes sometimes (while it ignores even large changes at other times).


This (random) sensitivity makes any party that has seats to defend extremely defensive and timorous, unwilling to take risks, and sensitive to attacks that may shift a slight number of votes with dire results. (STV on the other hand because it rewards seats to solid voting blocks is much less sensitive to miniscule changes in voters sentiments, but STV is more sensitive to real changes that under FPTP may be drowned out in gerrymandered small contests and vote-splitting by small parties (see my other blogs on STV).


FPTP deepens regionalism

Looking at the seats won, you would think that 95 percent of Edmontonians supported the NDP, instead of the bare majority of 53 percent that did. You would have no idea that Kenney had 35 percent of the vote there.


Looking at the seats won in Calgary, you would think that 88 percent of Calgarians supported Kenney. But instead a bare majority did. You would have no idea that the NDP had 34 percent of the vote there.


Looking at the seats won outside the large cities, you would think that 95 percent of the votes supported Kenney, instead of the 64 percent that did. You would have no idea that the NDP had 23 percent of the vote there.


A superficial knowledge of the election or an uncritical acceptance of the election results would give you an idea that almost all Edmontonians voted for NDP, that almost all Calgarians and rural voters voted for Kenney. Thus it could easily lead to divisiveness and prejudiced stereotyping. Instead of finding similarities we all share as Albertans (the weather!) or class-based solidarity, it leads to regionalistic division.


Future

Some have suggested that this election has changed Alberta's political landscape to a two-party system. If so, it has decreased the flexibility of the electoral system and of politics in general, just at a time when we need as much open-ness and flexibility as we can get. Nihilism and random violence flourishes in an environment where open political discourse has no chance.


So let's hope that is not the case but instead that it leads us to go for a structural opening of the political system, to replace the deeply-flawed and almost random FPTP system with the scientific and time-proven Single Transferable Voting system (see my other blogs on this).


Thanks for reading.

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