BC: Sticking with FPTP

I thought it would at least be close. It was not.

61.3% of voters in British Columbia voted to keep the FPTP system.

In the (now moot) second ballot question, MMP was favored over the other options, on 41.2%, with DMP a (surprising?) second on 29.5% and RUP on 29.3%. A total of 831,760 votes were cast in the second question, versus 1,380,753 in the main question. So fully 40% of voters did not answer the “what if” question.

The second question permitted a ranking of choices on the three alternatives. In the redistribution of preferences, MMP won with 63.05% (of 779,698 votes).

In 2009, I wrote a post entitled “BC: FPTP forever?” And then the question of change came up again a mere nine years later. But this is a pretty decisive defeat. I know forever is a long time. But it seems unlikely for proportional representation to get another chance anytime soon.

Is rural-urban PR gaining on MMP?

In the British Columbia mail-in referendum, the most likely option to win, should change from FPTP be endorsed, has seemed to be Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP). However, a poll from Mainstream BC, released on Nov. 8, suggests that one of the other options could be gaining.

The one that looks close, at least in this poll, is Rural-Urban PR (RUP). I reviewed all of the proposals before, and so will only briefly describe the RUP system here: It would be Single Transferable Vote (STV) for most of the province, but MMP in rural areas. The proposal is meant to address concerns that rural districts (ridings) would have to be too large if STV were used in the entire province, while still giving the rural interior a reasonable degree of proportionality.

This poll shows that on the critical first question, whether to keep FPTP or move to PR, the BC Interior prefers the status quo, 53.3% to 46.7%. Metro Vancouver voters only narrowly favor PR (50.1%), while Vancouver Island favors PR by a slightly wider margin (52.7%). The regional samples are small, so should be treated with caution. Nonetheless, they are suggestive of skepticism of PR in rural areas, exactly what the RUP proposal is meant to address. Overall, it is way too close to call: 50.5% for keeping FPTP, 49.9% for PR.

It is on preference over PR systems that we see the most interesting divide. According to this poll, MMP leads by a wide margin in Metro Vancouver: 50.4% to 32.2% for RUP and 17.4% for the third option, Dual-Member PR (DMP). On Vancouver Island, it is similar, but tighter: 40.4%, 38.3%, 21.3% (this is just 86 respondents). In BC Interior, however, the poll gets RUP on 49.5%, then MMP 37%, and DMP just 13.5%.

Overall, this still puts MMP in front, given the greater population of Vancouver: 44.8%, 38.2%, 17.0%.

It could be that RUP is gaining, as earlier polls had it and DMP both far behind MMP. There is an on-line presence for a specifically pro-RUP effort (“YUP for RUP”). There is some expressed support for RUP, for instance by Andrew Coyne in the National Post. He says he favors it “mostly for the STV part.”

It would be very interesting if RUP ended up winning, but on the strength of rural voters who, were it chosen, would vote by MMP, while Vancouver voters (who would vote by STV) had majority-preferred MMP but would get STV. OK, that was convoluted, but that is the point. It is not a likely outcome, but it is at least possible, provided it is really close in Vancouver and there is a decisive turn towards RUP in rural areas. And would be interesting!

The choice of PR model, if PR defeats FPTP in the first question, will be determined by province-wide alternative vote (the second question is a ranked ballot). So, it would be good to know what DMP supporters’ second choice tends to be. I would guess MMP, but that is just that–a guess. It probably depends on which feature of DMP that minority likes best–all members elected in local districts (for which STV would seem to beat MMP) or province-wide proportionality (for which MMP is clearly better than RUP).

A final note from the poll: It has 963 total respondents, but only 440 for the second question. So lots of voters may be planning to skip the question on choice of models. It is unclear whether that is because those who want FPTP are not weighing in at all, or because of pro-PR canvassers saying things like “if you are confused about the second part, you can skip it” (which I heard in my brief observation of campaigning).

Correction on BC’s MMP proposal

I realized only today that I had misread the proposal for the Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP) system in the British Columbia Attorney General’s report on the options. [Or maybe not, after all: See Wilf’s comment.]

I had thought the compensation would play out only in regions, as is the case in Scotland. I based this on the phrase in the report that says, “the List PR seats are allocated on a regional basis rather than a province-wide basis.” However, somehow I missed the clear statement in the preceding paragraph of the report, where it says, “The overall share of seats each party holds in the Legislative Assembly is determined by the party’s share of the province-wide vote it receives.”

In other words, the regions would affect only which specific candidates are seated from the compensatory (“top-up”) lists, and thus the regional balance of each party’s caucus. They would not affect the number of such seats a party wins overall.

The provision also makes workable the possible open list, which is given as an option to be worked out post-referendum, but which the Premier has said he will ensure is chosen rather than a closed list. If the lists were province-wide, open lists would make for more cumbersome ballots and arguably excess choice (as well as failing to ensure regional balance in the assembly).

The details of how one balances province-wide proportionality with open regional lists are complex. It is the system in Bavaria, however, so it is not unproven.

I have corrected my two previous entries on this accordingly:

1. BC electoral reform options for referendum

2. What can we expect from electoral reform in BC?

 

Open lists in MMP: An option for BC and the experience in Bavaria

One of the options for electoral reform in British Columbia is mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation. The criteria for the potential system allow for a post-referendum decision (if MMP is approved by voters) on whether the party lists should be open or closed. The guide that was sent to all BC voters shows a mock-up of a ballot that looks like New Zealand’s, with closed lists. However, the provincial premier has stated that, if MMP is adopted, lists will be open.

When it comes to lists, it is my opinion that citizens will elect all of the members of the legislature. They will select names that are representative of their communities.

I remain uncertain about the value of open lists under MMP. Is it worth the extra ballot complexity? What additional gain does one get from having preference votes determine order of election for those winning compensatory seats? The MMP Review in New Zealand after the 2011 referendum (in which voters voted to keep MMP) looked at this question extensively. It came down firmly on the side of keeping lists closed.

Nonetheless, the statement by the premier suggests he believes the system is less likely to be chosen if voters expect the lists to be closed. And, given regional districts on the compensation tier, as explicitly called for in the system proposal, the lists would not be too long and thus the ballots not too complex.

It happens that there is one MMP system in existence in which the lists are open. Such a system has been used in Bavaria for quite some time. I actually proposed such a model in a post way back in 2005, quite early in the life of this blog. At the time I had no idea that what I had “invented” was, more or less, the existing Bavarian model.

Of course, Bavaria just had an election. In the thread on that election, Wilf Day offered some valuable insights into how the open lists worked. I am “promoting” selections from Wilf’s comments here. Indented text in the remainder of this post is by Wilf.

The Bavarian lists are fully “open,” and the ballot position has no bearing on the outcome, except to the extent the voters are guided by it, especially seen in voting for the number 1 candidate.

Of the 114 list seats, 31 were elected thanks to voters moving them up the list, while 83 would have been elected with closed lists.

Did the first on the list always get elected? Almost. In the region of Lower Bavaria, the liberal FDP elected only 1 MLA, and he had been second on their regional list.

Did the open lists hurt women? I did not check most results, but the SPD zippers their lists, and I noticed in Upper Palatinate the SPD elected 2 MLAs, list numbers 1 and 3 (two women). Conversely, in Middle Franconia the SPD elected 4 MLAs: 1, 2, 3, and 5 (three men).

Little known fact: a substantial number of voters in Bavaria, being used to voting in federal elections where their second vote is just for a party, blink at the Bavarian ballot, look for the usual space to vote beside the party name, it’s not there, so they put an X beside the party name anyway. A spoiled ballot? No, they count it as a vote for the party. Not a vote for the list as ranked, it does not count for the ranking or for any candidate, but it does count in the party count. Just like Brazil, where a vote for the party is not a vote for the list ranking, except Bavaria does not publicize the option of voting for the party.

Among the more interesting new Free Voter MLAs:

Anna Stolz, lawyer, Mayor of the City of Arnstein; she had been elected Mayor in 2014 as the joint candidate of the Greens, SPD, and Free Voters; the local Greens said they were very proud of her as Mayor. The Free Voter delegates meeting made her number 5 on the state list, but the voters moved her up to second place as one of the two Free Voter MLAs from Lower Franconia.

From Upper Bavaria, the capital region, list #12 was Hans Friedl, with his own platform: “a socially ecologically liberal voice, an immigration law based on the Canadian model, no privatization of the drinking water supply, a clear rejection of the privatization of motorways”). The voters moved him up to #8, making him the last of 8 Free Voters elected in that region.

Note: the comments are excerpted, and the order of ideas is a little different from where they appear in the thread. I thank WIlf for his comments, and for his permission to make them more prominent.

Why “voting system”?

In the earlier entry on the BC referendum, I quoted a passage from the ballot question. It uses the term, voting system.

Yes, “voting system” rather than “electoral system”. Why? What the voters are being asked to decide is clearly what we political scientists mean by electoral system. Is there something objectionable about that term to the general public?

I do not ever use the term, voting system. However, if I did, I would probably understand it to mean the ballot format and other aspects of the process of casting a vote. I would not understand it to include how seats are allocated. An electoral system, as I understand it, is a set of rules that govern voting, counting, and allocation. A whole electoral system is assembly size, district magnitude, tier structure (if not “simple” single-tier), ballot format, and the specific seat-allocation rule. The BC proposals cover all these aspects. It clearly is a referendum on the electoral system. Yet it is officially, “a referendum on what voting system we should use for provincial elections.”

I find it puzzling, although not troubling in any sort of way. (Now, if the term starts creeping into political science, I reserve the right to object.) On the other hand, proponents of change in Canada seem to prefer to call proportional representation “ProRep” rather than PR. I can kind of understand that (“PR” means public relations to civilians). Whenever I see “ProRep” I flinch just a little. But if calling it that helps sell it, I can get over it.

What could we expect from electoral reform in BC?

This week is the beginning of the mail voting period for the referendum on whether to reform the electoral system for provincial assembly elections in British Columbia. The ballot asks two questions: (1) Do you want to keep the current FPTP system or “a proportional representation voting system”: (2) If BC adopts PR, which of three types of PR do you prefer?

The second question offers three choices, which voter may rank: Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP); Dual-Member Proportional (DMP); Rural-Urban Proportional (RUP).

I have reviewed before what these options entails, and will not repeat in detail here. Besides, the official BC Elections site explains them better than I could. What I want to try to get it here is how we might expect BC’s provincial party system to change, were any of these options adopted. To answer that question, I turn, of course, to the Seat Product Model, including the extended form for two-tier systems developed in Votes from Seats.

The punch line is that the various scenarios I ran on the options all suggest the effective number of parties in the legislative assembly would be, on average, somewhere in the 2.46 to 2.94 range, the effective number of vote-earning parties would tend to be in the 2.83 to 3.32 range, and the size of the largest party would be somewhere between 45% and 51% of the seats. Again, these are all on average. The ranges just provided do not mean elections would not produce a largest party smaller than 45% or larger than 51%. Actual elections will vary around whatever is the point prediction of the Seat Product Model for any given design that is adopted. And fine, yet important, details of whichever system is adopted (if FPTP is not retained) will remain to be fleshed out later.

The ranges I am giving are formula-predicted averages, given the inputs implied by the various scenarios. I explain more below how I arrived at these values. The key point is that all proposals on the ballot are quite moderate forms of PR, and thus the party system would not be expected to inflate dramatically. However, coalition governments, or minority governments with support from other parties, would become common; nonetheless, single-party majority governments would not likely disappear from the province’s future election outcomes. As we shall see, one of the proposals would make single-party governments reman as the default mean expectation.

Before going to the scenarios, it is important to see whether the real BC has been in “compliance” with the Seat Product Model (SPM). If it has tended to deviate from expectations under its actual FPTP system, we might expect it to continue to deviate under a new, proportional one.

Fortunately, deviations have been miniscule. For all elections since 1960, the actual effective number of vote-earning parties has averaged 1.117 times greater than predicted. That is really minor. More important is whether it captures the actual size of the largest party well. This, after all, is what determines whether a single-party majority government can form after any given election. For all elections since 1960, the average ratio of actual largest-party seat share to the SPM prediction is 1.068. So it is even closer. For an assembly the size of BC’s in recent years (mean 80.7 since 1991), the SPM predicts the largest party will have around 57.8% of seats. The mean in actual elections since 1991 has been 62.7%. That is a mean error on the order of 4 seats. So, the SPM captures something real about the current BC electoral system.

Going a little deeper, and looking only at the period starting in 1996, when something like the current party system became established (due to the emergence of the Liberals and the collapse of Social Credit), we find ratios of actual to predicted as follows: 1.07 for effective number of vote-earning parties; 1.07 for largest parliamentary party seat share; 0.905 for effective number of seat-winning parties. If we omit the highly unusual 2001 election, which had an effective number of parties in the assembly of only 1.05 and largest party with 96.2%, we get ratios of 0.98 for effective number of seat-winning party and 0.954 for largest party size. The 2017 election was the first one since some time before 1960 not to result in a majority party, and it is this balanced parliament that is responsible for the current electoral reform process.

As for the proposed new systems, all options call for the assembly to have between 87 seats (its current size) and 95 seats. So I used 91, the mean; such small changes will not matter much to the estimates.

The MMP proposal calls for 60% of seats to remain in single-seat districts (ridings) and the rest to be in the compensatory tier (which would be itself be regionally based; more on that later). So my scenarios involved a basic tier consisting of 55 seats and a resulting 36 seats for compensation. Those 36/91 seats mean a “tier ratio” of 0.395 (and I used the rounded 0.4). The formula for expected effective number of seat-winning parties (Ns) is:

Ns=2.5^t(MS)^0.167.

With t=.4, M=1 (in the basic tier) and S=91, this results in Ns=2.81. I will show the results for other outputs below.

For the DMP proposal, the calculations depend on how many districts we assume will continue to elect only one member of the legislative assembly (MLA). The proposal says “rural” districts will have just one, to avoid making them too large geographically, while all others will have two seats by combining existing adjacent districts (if the assembly size stays the same; as noted, the proposals all allow for a modest increase). In any case, the first seat in any district goes to the party with the plurality in the district, and the second is assigned based on province-wide proportionality. For my purposes, this is a two-tier PR system, in which the compensatory tier consists of a number of seats equivalent to the total number of districts that elect a second MLA to comprise this compensatory pool. Here is where the scenarios come in.

I did two scenarios, one with minimal districts classified as “rural” and one with more. The minimal scenario has 5 such districts–basically just the existing really large territorial ridings (see map). The other has 11 such districts, encompassing much more of the interior and north coast (including riding #72, which includes most of the northern part of Vancouver Island). I will demonstrate the effect with the minimal-rural scenario, because it turned out to the most substantial move to a more “permissive” (small-party-favoring) system of any that I looked at.

Of our 91 seats, we take out five for “rural” districts, leaving us with 86. These 86 seats are thus split into 43 “dual-member” districts. The same formula as above applies. (Votes from Seats develops it for two-tier PR, of which MMP is a subset.) The total number of basic-tier seats is 48 (the five rural seats plus the 43 DM seats). There are 43 compensation seats, which gives us a tier ratio, t=43/91=0.473. Ah ha! That is why this is the most permissive system of the group: more compensation seats! Anyway, the result is Ns=2.94.

If we do the 11-rural seat scenario, we are down to 80 seats in the DM portion of the system and thus 40+11 basic-tier seats. The tier ratio (40/91) drops to 0.44. The resulting prediction is Ns=2.61. This does not sound like much, and it really is not. But these results imply a difference for largest seat size between the first scenario (45%) and the second (49%) that makes a difference for how close the resulting system would be to making majority parties likely.

Finally, we have RUP. This one is a little complex to calculate because it is really two different systems for different parts of the province: MMP for “rural” areas and STV for the rest. I am going to go with my 11 seats from my second DMP scenario as my “rural” area. Moreover, I understand the spirit of this proposal to be one that avoids making the districts in rural areas larger than they currently are. Yet we need compensation seats for rural areas, and like the full MMP proposal, RUP says that that “No more than 40% of the total seats in an MMP region may be List PR seats”, so this region needs about 18 seats (the 11 districts, plus 7 list seats, allowing 11/18=0.61, thereby keeping the list seats just under 40%.) That leaves us with 91-18=73 seats for the STV districts. The proposal says these will have magnitudes in the 2-7 range. I will take the geometric mean and assume 3.7 seats per district, on average. This gives us a seat product for the STV area of 3.7*73=270.

In Votes from Seats, we show that at least for Ireland, STV has functioned just like any “simple” PR system, and thus the SPM works fine. We expect Ns=(MS)^.167=2.54. However, this is only part of the RUP system. We have to do the MMP part of the province separately. With just 11 basic-tier seats and a tier ratio of 0.39, this region is expected to have Ns=2.13. A weighted average (based on the STV region comprising 80.2% of all seats) yields Ns=2.46.

The key point from the above exercise is that RUP could result in single-party majority governments remaining the norm. Above I focused mainly on Ns expectations. However, all of the predictive formulas link together, such that if we know what we expect Ns to be, we can determine the likely seat-share of the largest party (s1) will be, as well as the effective number of vote-earning parties (Nv). While that means lots of assumptions built in, we already saw that the expectations work pretty well on the existing FPTP system.

Here are the results of the scenarios for all three output variables:

System	Expected Ns	Expected Nv	Expected s1
MMP	2.81	3.19	0.46
DMP1	2.94	3.32	0.45
DMP2	2.61	3.01	0.49
RUP	2.46	2.87	0.51

“DMP1” refers to the minimal (5) seats considered “rural” and DMP2 to the one with 11 such seats. If we went with more such seats, a “DMP3” would have lower Ns and Nv and larger s1 than DMP2, and the same effect would be felt in RUP. I did a further scenario for RUP with the MMP region being 20 districts, and wound up with Ns=2.415, Nv=2.83, s1=.52; obviously these minor tweaks do not matter a lot, but it is clear which way the trend goes.And whether any given election is under or over s1=0.50 obviously makes a very large difference for how the province is governed for the following four years!

I would not really try to offer the above as a voter guide, because the differences across systems in the predicted outputs are not very large. However, if I wanted to maximize the chances that the leading party would need partners to govern the province, I’d probably be inclined to rank MMP first and RUP third. The latter proposal simply makes it harder to fit all the parameters together in a more than very marginally proportional system.

By the way, we might want to compare to the BC-STV proposal that was approved by 57% of voters in 2005 (but needed 60%, and came up for a second referendum in 2009, when no prevailed). That proposal could have been expected to yield averages of Ns=2.61, Nv=3.0, and s1=.49. By total coincidence, exactly the same as my DMP2 scenario.

Edit: The following paragraph is based on my own misreading of the proposal, which contrary to what I say here, calls for province-wide proportionality if MMP is chosen. What it says about Scotland still applies, so I will leave it here. [Then again, maybe not?]

A final note concerns the regional compensation in the MMP proposal vs. province-wide in DMP. In an on-line appendix to Votes from Seats, I explored whether regional compensation in the case of Scotland produces a less permissive system than if compensation were across all of Scotland. I concluded it made no difference to Ns or s1. (It did, however, result in lower proportionality.) Of course, if it made a difference, province-wide would have to be more favorable to small parties. Thus if this were a BC voter’s most important criterion, DMP might pull ahead of MMP. However, the benefit on this score of DMP is greater under a “low-rural” design. The benefit of DMP vanishes, relative to MMP, if the system adopted were to be one with a higher share of seats marked as rural. I certainly am unable to predict how the design details would play out, as this will be left up to Elections BC.

The bottom line is that all proposals are for very moderately proportional systems, with MMP likely the most permissive/proportional on offer.

BC electoral reform options for referendum

[Correction made, re the MMP proposal]

The electoral-reform process in British Columbia has advanced another step with the Attorney General’s release of recommendations. The existence of this process is a product of the deal struck after the 2017 election, which resulted in a minority NDP government, backed by the Green Party.

In either October or November, there will be a province-wide vote consisting of two questions: First, do you want to keep the current FPTP system or replace it with a proportional system? Second, which of three PR options would you prefer if the province were to adopt PR? The second part will permit voters to rank-order their choices.

The choices being put to the voters are (using the names given in the recommendations):

Dual-Member PR (DMP)

Mixed-Member PR (MMP)

Rural-Urban PR

I will take the three in order of most familiar to least.

Readers of this blog are probably generally pretty familiar with what MMP is. The short version is: a system in which some percentage of seats (the proposal is for no more than 40%) are elected as “compensatory” list seats, while the rest continue to be elected as under FPTP, in single-seat districts (ridings) by plurality. The key feature is the compensatory nature of the process, so that any party’s number of seats in the provincial assembly are roughly proportional to its province-wide votes. Any seats the party wins in individual ridings are deducted from this total, and remaining seats a party is entitled to hold under the proportionality principle come from the list. It should be noted that the report says “List PR seats are to be allocated within defined regions, not on a province-wide basis.” This could limit proportionality somewhat, but this proposal is likely to be the most proportional of the three (unless perhaps if the compensation regions are quite small). However, it also says “The overall share of seats each party holds in the Legislative Assembly is determined by the party’s share of the province-wide vote it receives.” Thus the regional allocation refers only to which candidates get the seats and where, not to how many seats in the assembly each party wins.

Rural-Urban PR is mostly single transferable vote (STV), but in the rural parts of the province MMP would be used. This is an unusual system in that it actually is two electoral systems, depending in where you are in the province: STV in urban and “semi-urban” areas, but MMP elsewhere. Under STV, voters rank candidates, but under MMP it seems that it would remain plurality. The logic is to prevent rural ridings from being significantly larger than they are now–one of the concerns raised with “BC-STV” when it was proposed in the province’s previous electoral reform process. The provision for MMP compensation regions in rural areas is obviously an effort to allow for proportional representation even in the areas where the districts will be single-seat. The proposal suggests district magnitudes for the STV regions of 2-9, with a preference for the higher end of that range.

Both MMP proposals–the full province-wide one or the rural component of Rural-Urban PR–could have either a single vote or two votes. The proposal explicitly leaves this (important!) detail to the legislature after the referendum. If there were one vote, then votes for candidates in single-seat ridings would be aggregated by party for the purposes of carrying out proportional compensation (which, for Rural-Urban, would be taking place only over the regions in which the single-seat districts were located). With a two-vote MMP (as found in Germany and New Zealand), voters can vote directly for a list of their preferred party, and thus vote for a party that is different from that of their preferred local candidate. Yet another feature to be left to the legislature to decide would be whether lists would be closed (as is typical for MMP systems), open, or flexible (also known as semi-open, but misleadingly called in the recommendations “open list with party option”).

DMP is a system not actually used anywhere (but see the earlier P.E.I. proposal), and it is a bit complex. In general, each district would elect two members, although the recommendations allow that the “largest rural districts could remain unchanged as single-member districts.” Each party could nominate two candidates, and they would be ranked by the party. Thus we have a closed-list system. Voters would cast a single party vote. The first seat in each 2-seat district would be won by the first-ranked candidate on the party with the most votes in the district. The second seat would actually be allocated based on province-wide votes. It is thus a two-tier compensatory closed-list PR system. How would the assignment of the compensatory seats to districts–given that there is no separate list or compensation district–be done? The proposal says only, “The process for allocating the second seat in each district is fairly complicated.” (Perhaps it would be something like the provisions in Slovenia or as an option for parties in Denmark.)

DMP ensures that all candidates, even those elected on province-wide votes, would represent a riding. It also ensures that one member in each 2-seat riding is elected based on the riding’s own votes. (Exception: it seems there would be a 5% threshold for any party to win seats under any of the list-based provisions being proposed; if that is correct, then it is conceivable that a party could win a plurality of votes in some riding but not be entitled to a seat.)

A puzzling aspect of DMP is the one on independents. If an independent places first in a district, that candidate is elected. That is straightforward enough. However, it is also the case that if an independent places second, that candidate is elected and “the district is removed from the remainder of the second-seat allocation process.” I don’t understand the logic of that provision.

Each proposal allows for the assembly to be increased from its present 87 members up to a maximum of 95, but does not require that the assembly size be increased.

An observation: Why not do DMP with open lists? Have the voter vote for a candidate, rather than a party. It would be a lesser break with FPTP while still being quite proportional. A potential answer: it could mean the candidate with the most personal votes is not elected (because that candidate is on a party that is overall less popular than another in the district). That could be addressed by making it more like MMP–the leading candidate wins the first seat, but that seat is deducted from the compensation entitlement. Otherwise, the DMP provisions would apply. It is interesting that the DMP proposal is explicitly closed list, whereas the list type in the MMP variants would be left up to the legislature.

Any of these systems would seem like a clear improvement for BC. Rural-Urban is an odd mix, but it could work. MMP is proven. DMP is unusual but not based on wholly unknown principles.

(For further reading, see On Elections or Sightline)

BC deal between NDP and Greens

In the wake of British Columbia’s provincial assembly election, which did not result in a single-party majority, a deal has been stuck that would see the government change. The NDP (41 seats) and the Greens (3) would topple the incumbent Liberals (43).

It is a “confidence and supply” arrangement. That is, the NDP and Greens are not forming a coalition cabinet; rather, the Greens are promising support to the NDP to form and maintain a minority government. The deal is intended to last for four years.

Details remain scant at this point, but regarding Greens’ priorities, the Globe and Mail (second link above) reports that the party

had set out three “deal breakers” that include official party status, campaign finance reform and proportional representation, although other issues, including the party’s opposition to several Liberal resource priorities, also would have factored into such talks.

BC 2017: Non-Duvergerian watch

British Columbia votes for its provincial assembly on 9 May. Eric Grenier’s vote and seat projections at CBC suggest it could be a “non-Duvergerian” outcome, especially in the votes. The NDP looks likely to win a majority of seats, manufactured by the electoral system, as its votes are likeliest to stay below 45%. The Liberals are running well behind, but are also likely to be over-represented due to their more efficient votes distribution: Grenier’s average projection for the party would put them on just under 35% of votes but 39% of seats.

The non-Duvergerian aspect of the election is the Greens: average projection of 20% of the votes, which is on the high side for a third party under FPTP. The mechanical effect will crush them, however: average seats only 2 of 87. That, of course, is “typical” FPTP.

Where things get interesting is if the Greens rise even just a few percentage points. The “high” projection takes their votes up only to around 23% but their seats to 12 or more (around 14%)! Clearly, they are running second in many districts–particularly on Vancouver Island.

The reason this pattern is non-Duvergerian is that the so-called Duverger’s law says voters tend not to want to waste their votes on a third party. They should “coordinate” with the more-preferred of the two big parties. Further, this defection should be more likely after the third party has suffered from the mechanical effect of FPTP in past elections, as the Greens in BC have. Instead, their support is evidently growing.

But there is not much incentive to choose between the major parties when you have three-party competition throughout much of the province, and the third party could win a significant number of seats even if it stays well below 50% in the districts where it is most viable.

The BC NDP platform promises: “We’ll hold a referendum – and campaign for the “yes” side – on replacing our outdated voting system with a proportional one.”

Will they follow through if FPTP delivers them a majority?

Update: The tracker of where the party leaders are campaigning is interesting. Of course, there is much emphasis on swing districts, particularly for the NDP. However, this quotation from Richard Johnston (UBC political scientist) is spot on:
“You do have to campaign everywhere; you have to validate the existence of your candidates.” In Chapter 10 of Votes from Seats (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press), Rein Taagepera and I refer to this phenomenon as the “embeddedness” of districts in nationwide (here, provincewide) politics. We do not consider non-Duvergerian districts to be quite the puzzle that others do, because we expect voters to be more oriented towards the aggregate outcome than towards their own district, and parties to care about “showing the flag” even in districts they may not be very likely to win.

Brexit vs. BC-STV: Help with my principles!

As I noted earlier, I happened to be in British Columbia while the British were voting to leave the EU.

[Note: If you want to make general comments on Brexit and what happens next, please comment at the earlier thread. I’d like to keep this one on the narrower topic raised here.]

I never liked the BC-STV vote having been “defeated” in 2005 despite a clear majority (57%), due to a threshold of 60% having been set. But I do not like the UK “mandate” to leave the EU by a vote of 51.9%.

Is there a principle that reconciles my two positions? Or do I just have no principles regarding referendums*, and assess the rules for passage by whether I like what is being proposed? Help, please!

(I have written about referendum approval thresholds before.)

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* Other than that, in general, I’d rather not have them. I rather like representative democracy and deliberative institutions.

BC election 2013

British Columbia’s general election is today.

All indications are that the NDP will defeat the incumbent Liberals, in power since 2001, by a wide margin, although the race has tightened during the campaign. BC’s First Past the Post electoral system has a history of periodically producing anomalous results, but a near-total wipeout of the losing party no longer seems as likely as it did when the election was called. The last time the NDP won a BC provincial election was in 1996, when it was the beneficiary of a plurality reversal: it lost the vote to the Liberals, 39.4%-41.8%, but won the seats, 39-33. The only other time the NDP won an election was 1991, when their 41%-33% vote lead translated into a whopping 51-17 lead in seats. Today’s result could be similar.

The Greens, who won their first seat in federal politics in a BC riding (district) in 2011, have some shot at picking up their first provincial seat. The Green Party has won as much as 12.4% of the vote in a provincial election; that was 2001, when the Liberals defeated the NDP in a landslide. In 2005 and 2009, the party’s votes declined to 9.2% and then 8.1%.

As the election has tightened, the Greens’ odds of winning a seat may have declined. The BC Greens leader says her party has a chance at 4-5 seats on southern Vancouver Island, and that she will resign if she does not win her own seat. She is running against an NDP incumbent; given the strong NDP winds blowing this year, her odds would seem not so good.

The Liberal Party ran an ad in the Victoria Times-Colonist that has created some controversy. It praises the Greens for their environmental leadership, apparently hoping that a strong Green vote in the region will allow the Liberals to win some three-way races. NDP leader, Adrian Dix, responded to the ad by saying:

They will say anything, they will do anything. What the Liberals are saying is our path to get to power is for you to vote Green. I say the way to change the government, to get a new and better government, is to vote NDP.

The Green candidate in the Oak Bay-Gordon Head riding also had an interesting response to the ad, saying that if his campaign could afford a full-page ad, it would say the same thing about their environmental leadership and the NDP’s “flip-flopping”. Moreover,

What it would acknowledge is Ida [Chong, the Liberal incumbent] is certainly not in the lead … she’s not even second in this riding.

That’s a great example of the expectations game in FPTP elections: if you can convince voters that a given candidate is in third place, you might be able to promote strategic defection your way. The district in question was won by the Liberal with a margin of only a few hundred votes in 2009, without the presence of a strong Green challenge.

The other small party to watch is the Conservatives, who long have been scarcely a factor in the province’s politics. The last time the party placed as high as third was in 1979, with 5.1%. The now defunct Reform Party, which was a Western splinter from the Conservatives that later re-merged with it, was third with 9.2% in 1996. ((And probably a factor in the plurality reversal that year, though I have never looked at riding-level results to see to what extent.))

The BC Conservatives could have a chance at a seat this time. As the Tri-City News notes about the contest in Coquitlam-Burke Mountain :

If there is one thing Shane Kennedy is hoping voters remember when they head to the polls next week, it’s this: they needn’t cast a ballot for the NDP to get rid of the Liberals.

A bit deeper into the story is this interesting policy note:

He agrees with the Liberal’s stance on bringing the Northern Gateway pipeline to B.C. but said the money it generates for the province should be used to fund green industry.

Kennedy is also quoted as advocating more bus service for the area, so we have both local and provincewide–and not necessarily obviously “conservative”–positions being advocated in attempt to secure the seat.

Nonetheless, as with the Greens, the overall tightening of the race probably works against any BC Conservative candidate.

Good headline: “BC Conservatives woo voters with liquor.”

“I don’t think electoral reform is going away”

The Sun reports that Rick Dignard, who was one of the few members of the BC Citizens Assembly who opposed STV when it first came before the body, and was vice-president of the No STV campaign, thinks reform is not dead.

The article has quotes from several pro-STV members of the Assembly as well.

BC: FPTP forever?

The BC-STV proposal suffered a resounding defeat in British Columbia’s referendum yesterday. The electoral reform, originally recommended by a Citizens Assembly, won only 38.2% of the vote,* a nearly 20-percentage-point drop from what it earned the first time it was on the ballot, in 2005. (Then as now, it required 60% provincewide and majorities in 60% of the districts to pass.)

One needs only to look at the results of the concurrent general election to see why FPTP retains such widespread support: The first-past-the-post system is working well for the province. FPTP, in a parliamentary form of government, is expected to produce a contest between two principal parties, one of which will win a clear governing majority. And that’s what BC got out of this election, with the incumbent Liberals winning 46% of the vote (a small increase over the 2005 election) to the New Democrats’ 42.1%. The Liberal party’s strong plurality translates into an even stronger majority of seats–49 (57.6%)–just as is expected from FPTP.

That the STV proposal managed a majority in the 2005 referendum is likely attributable to the fresh memories of how a FPTP parliamentary system can fail to do what is expected of it. Two elections prior to that, it had produced a plurality reversal (NDP seat majority despite Liberal vote plurality), while in 2001, the Liberals swept almost every seat, depriving parliament of an opposition presence.

The 2009 election represents the second consecutive return to normal performance after those two anomalies. Presumably, roughly three fifths of BC voters are relieved that they had the opportunity to revisit their yes-but-no outcome of four years ago, and cast a loud-and-clear vote against abandoning their British electoral heritage.

BC results at CBC.ca and Vancouver Sun.

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* Very marginally better than the MMP proposal crafted by a Citizens Assembly in Ontario performed in October, 2007.

The ‘no’ argument on BC-STV

I find it quite striking that the argument submitted by the campaign to defeat British Columbia’s referendum on adopting STV (and posted alongside the ‘yes’ at CBC) does not address the inter-party dimension. That is, it does not attack STV on the grounds that it would eliminate (or reduce) the tendency towards single-party governments or allow “extreme” parties into the legislative assembly.

In fact, the argument against STV is almost entirely directed at the intra-party dimension, that is the nature of the parties and the extent of individual legislator accountability one would get, buttressed by claims about the Irish experience. The core of the intraparty attack is:

STV replaces local representation with regional representation by a group of MLAs, who would be hard to hold accountable for their actions. Proponents claim that there are no safe seats with STV, but with STV many politicians in Ireland hang on for over thirty years.

Their parties run only as many candidates in each area as they think they can elect, thereby creating safe seats and increasing the power of political parties who determine who they nominate to be members of parliament. That reduces the choice available to voters.

Attacking the “vote management” incentives STV gives parties is a very smart strategy, as is arguing that members will be less “accountable” to local constituents.

Before the quoted passage, there is the usual line of attack on the alleged complexity of voting and vote-counting under STV, including a rather disingenuous claim about how transfers work. Rather remarkably, this attack is buttressed by a link to a video made by the Citizens Assembly that recommended the system.

No STV is confident that those who watch the short video (prepared by the Citizens’ Assembly) explanation of how the Single Transferable Vote count takes place will reject; so confident that it is posted on the top of the No STV website.

Nowhere are any inter-party arguments invoked. Indeed,

No STV takes no position on whether other electoral systems – such as Mixed Member Proportional – might be an improvement [on the status quo].

The Green Party, currently not in the legislature due to FPTP, is also invoked:

In this election the Green Party is supporting STV, but in 2004 it submitted a brief to the Citizens’ Assembly strongly opposing STV. They interviewed the Green Party in Ireland and reported to the Assembly on how it actually works.

(Of course, in the meantime, Ireland’s Green Party has become a member of a coalition cabinet–something that would not happen with FPTP, even if it might plausibly have happened earlier or with greater strength under MMP.)

By contrast, the ‘yes’ argument is almost entirely based upon the inter-party dimension (a preference for not having majorities that are manufactured by FPTP), as well as an appeal to BC voters to establish their province as “the foremost laboratory of electoral reform in Canada.” Their argument even acknowledges the “too complicated” objection to STV (thereby violating one of the principles of framing an argument). It invokes the majority vote in 2005 in favor of the proposal,” essentially admitting that vote was based on low information!

While I would certainly vote ‘yes’ were I voting in BC, I have to give the ‘no’ side the credit for a much stronger argument. They attack STV where it is most vulnerable, rather than attempt to defend FPTP and manufactured majorities. And the use of the Citizens Assembly video looks like a master stroke. Meanwhile, the ‘yes’ side fails to even mention the process by which ordinary citizens crafted the proposal, which was allegedly a selling point last time around.**

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* When it won 57% of the vote. It required 60%.

** Is deliberative democracy dead?

BC-STV, take 2

British Columbia is now just over a week away from its (second) referendum on the proposal to change to single transferable vote for future provincial legislative assembly elections. The referendum will be concurrent with the election to the next provincial assembly, by FPTP, at which the Liberals will be seeking a third term. The voting takes place on 12 May.

The election race could be tightening, with a recent poll putting the Liberals on only 42%, the NDP at 39%, and the Greens 13%.

If the race is (at least) that tight between the top two parties, and the Greens are that strong, just about any outcome is possible, given the past history of this province’s FPTP but multiparty elections–the history that initially put electoral reform on the map over the past decade. In fact, the item just linked includes a section about how the poll is an “echo [of the] B.C. Liberals’ 1996 defeat.” In that year the NDP won its most recent assembly majority despite the Liberals’ having won their first-ever voting plurality.

The referendum requires 60% to pass, plus majorities in 60% of the provincial ridings (electoral districts). Sixty percent of votes is probably at least 20 percentage points more than it would take either party to win 60% of ridings, depending on margins and geographical distribution of the vote.

There are YES and NO sites regarding the referendum that are worth a look.

I have addressed many of these issues in past B.C. plantings.