PEI election April 3, 2023
The results of the 2023 PEI election are a disgrace:
the Gallagher Index is 21.34 - a very high degree of dis-proportionality.
PC took 22 seats 81 percent of seats with 56 percent of the vote
(they were due 15 seats)
Lib took 3 seats 11 percent seats with 17 percent of the vote
(they were due 5 seats)
Greens took 2 seats 7 percent of the seats with 22 percent of the vote
(they were due six seats)
NDP took 0 seats with 4 percent of the vote
(they were due one seat)
Island Party took 0 seats with 0.6 percent of the vote
Independents took 0 seats with 0.3 percent of the vote.
Alberta election scheduled for May 29, 2023
if Alberta's first past the post election this year is true to the pattern established in last three or more elections, the leading party will take about 20 percent more of the seats than its vote share.
The second-place party may take its seat share or perhaps ten or 15 percent lower,
and all other parties - even if the party involved takes more than ten percent of the vote - will be shut out of the seats.
Prior to 1959, after 1924 Alberta used PR in the cities and each party in the cities received its due share of the seats - or at least the three or four largest parties in the cities did so -- very fair.
But since the change to FPTP in 1959, often one party has swept a whole city's seats with no proportionality.
And with hardly any proportionality in the cities, the overall seat composition of the Legislature is also dis-proportional.
Small change in voting behaviour may lead to wide change in seat allocatoin, and that leads to policy lurch.
when actually the share of vote that the NDP took in 2012, 2015, 2019 did not change as much as its seat count:
NDP vote share seat count
2012 10 4
2015 41 52
2019 33 24.
In 2015 the NDP took almost all the Edmonton seats, more than half the Calgary seats and almost half of the rural seats.
But its vote share did not cause this -- it was an accident of FPTP.
In 2019 the UCP took almost all the Calgary seats, almost all the rural seats and just one Edmonton seat.
But its success -- outside Edmonton anyway -- was far in excess of its popularity.
I expect the same lobsided results in this year's election -- and in elections into the future until our FPTP system is replaced by PR, like we once had.
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