I’d like to thank everyone who filled in the survey of the Fruits and Votes readership. We got a total of eighty responses, which, given the amount of views this blog receives on a regular basis, seems like enough to draw inferences from.
The United States, with roughly 4-5% of world population, represents 33% of this blog’s viewership. Australia and New Zealand, with just 0.4% of world population, represent nearly 20% of readership. It’s Asia (60% of world population, 2.5% of responses), as well as Africa (no responses whatsoever) where Fruits and Votes is disproportionally less viewed.
For reasons that should be relatively obvious to fellow readers, those under 18 are under-represented, with those over 30 being over-represented (given the Western-centric tilt of the readership, this presumably makes some sense).
85% of you come here for the votes: the remaining 15% are here for fruits and votes, while no one wants fruit only.
The most popular region, with 54% of readers enjoying posts from it (this is approval voting), is Canada, Australia and New Zealand-only 24% of readers enjoy posts from South Asia. 99% of readers enjoy reading about electoral systems (a practically Soviet figure!), while executive formats and federalism secured the approval of 55% of readers.
We asked what sort of electoral system you most liked for a country with unicameral parliaments and parliaments. A third of you went for MMP, while about a quarter opted for STV: the most popular system overall was some form of list PR, which received the support of nearly 40% of you, although division over list types split the pro-list vote. No one opted for first-past-the-post, and only four readers opted for any form of non-PR system.
Interestingly enough, by far the most popular electoral system for an elected President is probably the rarest-a majority of you opted for preferential voting, used only in Ireland and (sort of) Sri Lanka. The more popular two-round system came in a strong second, while the other options (FPTP+variations of the two-round system) made little impact. Note that the one entry for “presidents should not be politically powerful” was written in before I closed that option.