Not only do voters vote for candidates under STV but also, because there are multiple open seats, each party slate usually (or always) contains names of multiple candidates so voters have a decision to make as per first preference.
The choice of First Preference is not all-important though as it is under SMP. The back-up preferences are marked as well. They can go to another of same party if that is also the preference (or they can cross party lines). But again it is placed on a candidate, not party.
Single-member plurality (First Past The Post) in Canada produces minority government often so is no guarantee of majority government. And the majority government produced is usually a false majority - no one party received support of a majority of the voters.
A proportional system does ensure that to have majority government, a majority of voters elects a majority of the seats. A party or parties must receive support of a majority of the voters to take a majority of the seats.
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STV elections produce change when legitimately desired by voters; Single Member Plurality (First Past The Post) produces excessive change sometimes -- and sometimes little change at all.
Below I compare the limited and fair changes produced by a recent STV election in Australia to a recent SMP election in Alberta, where a party was kicked out of government although getting an increased number of votes.
But first in answer to the question
"Are there many successful coalition administrations elected using the STV?",
I answer:
STV is used for election of legislators only in these places in the world:
Malta
Ireland, both Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland
Australia.
Malta
despite PR-STV, Malta has a two-party system, with extra top-up to ensure that the most popular party has a majority of seats.
so there is no chance of finding a coalition government there.
Republic of Ireland
Dial has 160 members elected in 39 districts
Currently no party holds a majority (a majority is 81 seats)
The parties with most seats:
Fianna Fail 37 (a conservative party), Sinn Fail 37 (a socialist party), Fine Gael 34 (a liberal-conservative party)
use of coalitions in Ireland
from Wikipedia: Fine Gael remained out of government and at a low ebb for a prolonged period until the aftermath of the 1948 general election, which saw the party form a grand coalition with several other parties in order to oust Fianna Fáil and place Fine Gael member John A. Costello as Taoiseach [prime minster]. The coalition was short-lived but revived again between 1954 and 1957....
The arrangement between Fine Gael and Labour proved pleasing to both parties and the pact remained throughout the rest of the 1970s and into the 1980s, seeing the pair enter government a number of times together. ...Fine Gael formed the government between 1994 and 1997 thanks to coalition partners the Labour Party and the Democratic Left, [but received little voter support in 2002].
2011 "Fine Gael and Labour paired up to form a government, their tenure marked by the difficulty of trying to guide Ireland towards economic recovery."
"After the 2020 general election, Fine Gael entered into a coalition government with Fianna Fail (its traditional rival), as well as the Green Party ..."
in addition to right/left --government/free market issues that parties face in Canada, in Ireland there are the questions of Irish nationalism (and relations to UK), the power of the Catholic church (which makes laws on divorce, access to abortion, gay marriage problematic), and membership in the EU.
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Australia
Since 1948, STV on a state-by-state basis is the method for electing Senators to the Australian Senate.
The state by state term is important as Senate seats are allocated to parties based on vote within each state, and each state has six Senators irrespective of state population so Senators are elected proportionally within each state but not proportionally across the country.
STV used in election of state-level legislators
Single Transferable Vote introduced for the
- New South Wales Legislative Council in 1978,
- South Australia Legislative Council in 1982
- the Western Australian Legislative Council in 1987 and
- the Victorian Legislative Council in 2003.
The Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly adopted STV after a 1992 referendum.
New South Wales Legislative Council
42 members elected at-large
Current composition
Government 16 (Liberal 10 National 6)
Opposition 14 (Labour 14)
Cross bench
Greens 3
One Nation 2
[three other parties having five seats]
Independent 2
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so here's a case of a minority government. Seems successful passage of each bill is necessary for continuance of parliamentary government (as in Canada). But also seems politics there is different than Canadian practice in these respects:
set term of government (except for "exceptional circumstances") and
staggered terms -- As the result of a 1995 referendum, every four years half the seats in the Council come up for election on the fourth Saturday in March, barring exceptional circumstances. There are no "cross-bench" seats in Canada parliamentary practice, except to mean minor parties that are not government nor "Official Opposition" (a term that I don't see in Australian references) I read from the following that majority vote in the house is still required.
(from Wikipedia "cross-benchers") : "The last few federal elections have seen an increase in the size and power of the crossbench in both houses of Parliament. The Australian Parliament as elected at the 2010 election was the first hung parliament in the House of Representatives since the election of 1940, with the Australian Labor Party and the Coalition winning 72 seats each of 150 total. Six crossbenchers held the balance of power: Greens MP Adam Bandt and Independent MP Andrew Wilkie, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor declared their support for Labor on confidence and supply, Independent MP Bob Katter and National Party of Western Australia MP Tony Crook declared their support for the Coalition on confidence and supply. The resulting 76–74 margin entitled Labor to form a minority government. The Australian Senate, which uses STV to elect its 76-seat chamber, frequently has enough Senators on the crossbench that the governing party has to negotiate with it to get legislation passed." so it looks like working arrangements, not coalitions, are mostly used to pass bills and to preserve government.
Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly ACT contains Australian capital city of Canberra and some townships.
In past Canadian STV usage, STV was used in city-wide multiple-member districts.
But in Australia, in the ACT, STV is not based on a city-wide multiple-member district covering all of the capital city Canberra, but instead it is based on districts that cover a portion of Canberra.
Canberra holds the overwhelming majority of the ACT's population.
ACT also contains Canberra suburbs, in outlying townships such as Williamsdale, Naas, Uriarra, Tharwa and Hall. The ACT also includes the Namadgi National Park which comprises almost half the land area of the territory, 46 percent of the land area which oddly is described as "the majority of land area of the territory."
This is another case of the term "majority" meaning different things to different people. In 1992, ACT Legislative Assembly reps were elected at-large, using party-list Proportional Representation (the D'Hondt method). But voters were asked if they wanted a change.
1992 referendum
Voters were asked to choose between the Alterntive Voting (Instant Runoff Voting) in seventeen single-member districts, and STV in three multi-member electorates: two electing five members, and one electing seven.
65 percent of voters chose STV.
Reasons for this vote in favour of PR-STV
The reasons for the ACT votes to endorse a change to STV could be: - ease of drawing three multi-member districts instead of 17 equal-sized districts - STV had advantage of fewer districts. District Magnitude could vary - the three districts could have different number of seats - so finding three equal-sized districts was not required. - familiarity with STV ACT voters having gotten used to STV for election of Senators since 1948. 1995 three districts : Brindabella five member Ginninderra five member Molonglo seven members. Change in 2016 to five five-member districts
This change was done by: dismantling Molonglo and adding:
Kurrajong created in 2016 five member Murrumbidgee created in 2016 five member; and Yerrabi created in 2016 five member. Each district each election elects mixed crop of reps.
Brindabella --- candidates of two or three parties elected. candidates of three parties elected in 2020 -- Labour, Liberal and Green no party taking more than three seats (Labour in 2004, Liberal in 2012) Molonglo seven seats 1995-2012 candidates of three or four parties elected (Independent is counting as a party in this factoid) no party taking more than three seats
Ginninderra five seats candidates of two or three parties elected (Independent counting as a party) no party taking more than three seats Kurrajong 2016-present five members candidates of three parties elected no party taking more than two seats Murrumbidgee 2016-present five members candidates of three parties elected no party taking more than two seats Yerrabi 2016-present five members
candidates of two or three parties elected no party taking more than three seats Thus each district elected mixed crops of reps, less regionalism than compared to Canada's SMP elections regionalism not artificially created and inflamed as under Canada's SMP elections this is product of more-fair more proportional representation in each district. Canberra's estimated population was 431,000 so 25 reps for that number Sample Canadian ratios: PEI 156,000 pop. 27 MLAs Alberta 4.4M 87 MLAs Ontario 15M (2.7M in Toronto) 124 MLAs Current composition of ACT Legislative Assembly Labour 10 38 percent of vote 40 percent of seats Liberal 9 34 percent of vote 36 percent of seats Green 6 14 percent of vote 24 percent of seats Each of these three parties received about the same number of preferences from the other parties and Independent candidates. Each went up five or six percent (in "three-party" vote comparisons) compared to First Count vote tallies. Green went up enough to get at least quota (16.7 percent ) in each district, and even did well enough to get two seats in one district. Minority government. In Ginninderra every party ran multiple candidates so voters had choice between parties and between candidates of same party. three parties ran full slates (five candidates). Green ran three candidates although STV was safeguard against perils of vote splitting First time MLA Tara Cheyne was re-elected (perhaps due to a popular blog she writes), as did Yvette Berry, a second-generation ACT MLA , MLA since 2012 and Deputy Chief Minister. Fellow Labour MLA (a first time MLA), attorney general Ramsey, running in the same district, did not get the nod for re-election.
STV does not produce the almost-random change of seats that is produced by Canada's SMP system.
In the 2020 ACT election, four seats changed party hands
Six changed members.
Ginninderra Change was Labour's loss of one seat to Greens.
Brindabella Change was Liberal's loss of one seat to Greens.
Kurrajong no change
Murrumbridgeee no change by party. one Labour MLA running for re-election was not elected. A new candidate took a seat for Labour.
Yerrabi Labour's loss of one seat to Greens. one Liberal MLA running for re-election, Milligan, was not elected. A new candidate took a seat for Liberal. Liberal Coe was re-elected. Liberal party leader Coe (36-year-old) resigned as leader and as MLA in March 2021. Countback meant that Milligan was elected after all, to fill the opening.
Countback means that usually a party retains the seat. At least in all casual vacancies I have seen, that happened.
Many more seats change hands in Canadian elections In Canadian elections many more seats can change hands than 25 percent.
Alberta the last two elections saw two government changes in a row, a record for the province. Usually we go 20, 30 tor 40 years between changes, 14 years at the very least. So we expect to see change but the amount of change is staggering.
If we look at the 2019 election we see massive changes. 46 MLAs were elected for the first time in this election. These were new faces in half the seats in the Legislature. The United Conservatives lost five seats (or so) and went up by 43 seats, to take 63 in total. (The uncertainty is due to MLAs running for re-election in different districts, sometimes under different labels, and boundaries of districts themselves being re-drawn or being re-named.) These changes were made with just a change of a couple percentage points compared to the Wild Rose and Progressive-Conservative percentages of 2015 election. The NDP elected 24 MLAs in 2019, a drop of 30 seats compared to its 2015 high, with a drop in percentage points of only a fifth of its 2015 total.
And in fact the NDP lost government status even though it in fact received more votes in 2019 than 2015.
This is due to overall more votes being cast in 2019 than 2015. This is likely a sign of increased party competition and partly-separately-produced revived sense of importance of voting. Many NDP voters, prior to 2015 had been pessimistic after decades of being ignored, and had stopped voting. But with NDP's belated success in 2015 they had begun to think that voting was possibly actually worth it.
400,000 more votes were cast in 2019 compared to 2015. (1.9M votes were cast in 2019 compared to 1.5M in 2015.)
The right-wing vote, now under the UCP label, had been split among two parties in 2015. This vote splitting in many districts allowed NDP to take many district seats with only a minority of the votes in the district
Only in 24 districts did a candidate receive a majority of the votes.
So in 63 districts, in more than two thirds of the districts, the MLA was elected with less than a majority of the votes in the district.
But vote splitting among the right wing alone does not account for NDP successes. In 21 Edmonton and area districts, NDP candidates received a majority of the votes in each of the districts.
Vote splitting also was responsible for some of the changes that occurred in the 2019 election.
In the 2019 election, 20 MLAs were elected without a majority of votes in their districts. This time two thirds of the districts did see a majority winner.
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. Most of the districts that elected a UCP MLA gave a majority of votes to the UCP.
These 20 districts where a minority winner was elected, could easily be considered to be swing districts. A swing district is one where a shift of a few percentage points could easily shift possession of the seat in the legislature. Perhaps even a slighter lower or higher turn out could also change the party affiliation of the district MLA!
So altogether the changes in this election, although not typical for Alberta history, show the vast almost-random shifts in party seat tallies that are seen in most FPTP elections elsewhere. They are typical for single-member plurality contest elections anywhere.
These vast shifts affecting more than half of Alberta 's seats, and caused by a change of just perhaps 15 percentage points of support, shows up in stark contrast to the 25 percent of seats that changed hands in the 2020 ACT election, held using the more balanced and scientific STV system.
Thanks for reading.
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