Small shift in votes may make large difference in parties' seat totals

RE: Alberta provincial election May 29, 2023

finally a reporter verged from on-going discussion based on seats won or lost.

The discussion mostly has been is all about how about Calgary is the only battleground (not being safe seats for one or the other of the main parties as rural seats and Edmonton seats are.) 

She mentioned that the NDP will not take rural seats as it took "only 23" percent of the vote there in the last election.

She did not mention that the NDP got two seats when it was due 8 (23 percent of 41 rural seats).

But at least she mentioned votes cast, unlike the coverage which has been just about seats to be won or lost.

nowhere do reporters mention that the NDP in last two elections got far more than its due in Edmonton, while the United Conservative got far more than its due share in both Calgary and the rural districts in the last election.

one professor was quoted on TV as saying that a very small number of votes in this election may make a large difference, pointing out problem with our FPTP system and how under it votes are valued unequally.

He cited historical parallel with Trump's win in the electoral college in 2016 due to only a few tens of thousands of votes in a few key states.

That is true but he could have also have pointed to just about any recent election in Canada as well.

a small number of votes make ups the lead of the winner in many districts and when these seats go to the winning party they give it its lead in the chamber.

a small shift in votes cast makes huge difference in seats won or lost  - sometimes and sometimes makes no difference at all.

blog on last Alberta election

https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/2019-alberta-election-vast-shifts-in-seats-caused-by-small-15-percent-shift-in-votes

federally I worked it out that in 2019 federal election a shift of only 17,000 votes could have denied the Liberal government its lead in the HofC, giving Conservative enough seats to have the lead.

 and then we would have had (even if only for a short time) a minority Conservative government, not a minority Liberal government. 

17,000 out of 18M votes cast would have made that diff, so less than one tenth of 1 percent could have shifted who was in power.

see

https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/small-change-big-diff-in-2019-election

for details

Ontario 2022 provincial election  124 seats in total

looking at info on Wikipedia:

Conservative won majority  (won 83 seats) with 41 percent of the vote (Conservatives were due 52 seats)

NDP got 24 percent of the votes and 31 seats

Liberals got 24 percent of the votes and 8 seats

NDP and Liberal together had 46 percent of the vote and got 39 seats

ten seats where winner won with less than 3 percent lead over second-place candidate

if MMP used,  have to add 40 seats to bring Conservative down to minority, 

if MMP used have to add 70 top-up (all to NDP and Liberals and possibly others) to bring Conservative seats down to about its due share (82 out of 194)

with single-winner FPTP results so skewed it would take mighty a mighty MMP system to get fair results.

(obviously FPTP contests are the problem.)

did just a few votes make a difference? 

about 69 of the 83 elected Conservatives won with less than half the votes in their district.

I don't know what margin was but certainly a system where non-Conservative voters could have worked together to elect non-Conservative candidates would have shown more proportional results (STV or AV), and/or if seats had been allocated more party-proportionally at the district level (multi-member districts)  or overall, results would have been more proportional.

Amazing that voters put up with that kind of dis-proportionality

I don't mean to pick on Ontario --

we'll see in Alberta if that same kind of dis-proportionality is produced next Monday - 

although the two-party FPTP straitjacket will likely mean not as much vote splitting on the left as in Ontario and the balance of opposing dis-proportionality in Calgary versus Edmonton the overall party proportionality may not be too far off.

even though massive number of votes will be ignored in both cities.

with rural seats being wild cards 

- despite NDP's 23 percent rural support in the last election, NDP did take almost half the rural seats in 2015, so they can still take important number of rural seats (perhaps even their due share) if their vote count is up in the 30 percentiles.

in fact with NDP winning 19 seats in Edmonton as  in 2019

and 18 seats in rural area (less than half) same as in 2015,

they only need about 7  Calgary seats to have majority,

so Calgary may not be as important as pundits say.

But of course all these result are based on phony successes

NDP are not due 19 seats out of 20 Edmonton seats 

UCP are not due 19 out of 26 seats in Calgary, not to mention the 24 out of 26 seats they currently hold.

likely many winners in cities and rural districts will not have majority of votes in their districts

Here's hoping for more fair electoral system and soon.

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