Election possibilities

Well, the election is over now and the Conservatives have secured their place as a minority government. Looking at the stats, they gained 19 seats with an additional 2% of the popular vote. Thanks to the glory of the first past the post system, they gained a further 6% of the total seats in parliament while only gaining that 2% of the actual vote. Bah, ah well thing can’t be perfect and neither the liberals nor the conservatives want to see Canada adopt proportional representation any time soon. Just for fun, here are how many seats each of the parties would have gotten if we had proportional representation:

Conservatives: 118 seats with 38% of the vote

Liberals: 81 seats with 26% of the vote

New Democrats: 56 seats with 18% of the vote

Green Party: 22 seats with 7% of the vote

Bloc Quebecois: 31 seats with 10% of the vote

So as you can see, It’s really in the interest of the 3 currently leading parties to keep our archaic first past the post system since it guarantees them more seats. This is pretty much the reason why we don’t have a proportional system. Ultimately a mixed system would be nice, as it would allow the major parties to retain power while giving the smaller party more of a say. For example here is what things might look like with a mix system:

Conservatives: 72 seats FPP, 59 seats by proportion: Total of 131 seats

Liberals: 38 seats FPP, 40 seats by proportion: Total of 78 seats

New Democrats: 19 seats by FPP, 28 seats by proportion: Total of 47 seats

Green Party: 0 seats by FPP, 11 seats by proportion: Total of 11 seats

Bloc Quebecois: 25 seats by FPP, 15 seats by proportion: Total of 40 seats

With this kind of system most of the parties would actual see a gain, the only ones who really have something to loose would be the Bloc as they only have ridings in Quebec itself. And even then, their only loss comes up as 10 seats in this case, something that, while notable, is hardly disastrous.

Anyway, that was a quick rundown of what the election would look like if we we’re running with a more democratic electoral system, however until we can get out act together and demand this kind of representation we won’t be seeing it.