A provincial parliamentary election has been called for 7 November in Saskatchewan.
The New Democratic Party currently holds the government, as it has after seven of the last nine elections, including four straight. It won a very narrow majority (30 of 58 seats) on 44.7% of the votes in 2003.
This will certainly be an election I will watch closely, as the provincial FPTP electoral system has been somewhat anomaly-prone. It has had two plurality reversals in the last six elections, and it has had some rather lopsided majorities, as well. A quick summary:
In 1986, the NDP won, as usual, the most votes (45.2%), but faced a spurious Conservative majority (38 of 64 seats on 44.6% of the vote). The Conservatives had won a rare majority–both votes and seats–in the previous election, so 1986 represented a spurious reelection.
In 1999, the NDP won fewer votes than the ingeniously named Saskatchewan Party (38.7% vs. 39.6%), but the NDP won exactly half the seats (29, to the SK Party’s 26) and was able to form a minority government.
In 1991, the NDP won 83% of the seats on a small majority of votes (51.1%), while the one Conservative vote majority in the last 30 years (54.1% in 1982) gave the party 87.5% of the seats.
This is not the world’s best performing FPTP system!
Seems like a FPTP system that is ripe for reform, don’t you think?
Seed planted by Mark Greenan — 17 October 2007 @ 15:08
Maybe over-ripe, even rotten. (Just to play with those fruits and votes metaphors.)
The inherent conditions and anomalies are certainly present. What has not been present thus far are the “contingencies”–the coming to power of a party that perceives itself to be “wronged” by the bad-performing system, and the presence of popular sentiment for changing how government works.
Why did the NDP not seek to reform when it came back to power after being on the wrong side of a spurious majority? Most likely because it is hard to perceive the system as bad for your party when it is the party that normally rules the province!
But the seeds from which a reform process could grow are there (those metaphors again).
Seed planted by MSS — 17 October 2007 @ 19:12
And now for Saskatchewan?
According to the Ballot Access News, Saskatchewan’s Premier has pledged a Citizens’ Assembly if voters return him to office on November 7. And if the Assembly proposes proportional representation, he’s pledged to fund public education efforts about the proposal.
Scion grafted by The Democratic Piece — 25 October 2007 @ 01:14
The Saskatchewan Party, for the first time, will rule the province, having won 37 seats to 21 for the NDP (a.k.a. “the natural governing party“).
That’s 63.8% of the seats on a bare majority (50.8%) of the votes for the SP and 36.2% of seats on 37.2% of votes for the NDP. When I have time, I will run the seat-vote equation, but it is obviously a fairly unremarkable result. In the original planting I said this was not a well performing FPTP system, but this year it acquitted itself quite well: A parliamentary majority–but not an overwhelming one–for a party that won a provincewide voter majority.
The Liberal party, with 9.5% of the votes, and the Greens, with 2%, will have no seats. The Liberals’ best showing appears to have been around 30% in its leader’s Saskatoon riding.
Only about 0.4% of voters favored the other two parties that presented candidates: The Western Independence Party and the Marijuana Party.
Seed planted by MSS — 08 November 2007 @ 17:36
Did FPTP acquit itself quite well in Saskatchewan this year? Not if you care about exaggerated regional differences. The Official Opposition, the NDP, holds not one rural seat. (The two or three seats in the North that they won are more “northern and aboriginal” than “rural.”) Typically they won 25% of the vote in the 26 rural ridings, voters with no voice. Conversely, the NDP won 44% of the urban vote but 60% of the urban seats. For a party with roots in the farmer’s co-operative movement of the 1930s, the lack of a rural voice is a sad day.
Seed planted by Wilfred Day — 09 November 2007 @ 13:41
The seat-vote equation does not care about exaggerated regional differences. (It’s not an especially compassionate equation.) It cares only about aggregate results.
FPTP is a system for electing regional delegates masquerading as a system for electing jurisdiction-wide parties. The S-V equation cares only about how well it takes aggregate votes and generates an aggregate party representation. And, of course, it assume there will be disproportionality. It tells us how much the actual disproportionality is over/below the “expected.”
On its own terms, the FPTP system in Saskatchewan acquitted itself quite well in this election.
Seed planted by MSS — 09 November 2007 @ 16:23
The problem with the seat-vote equation is not just its lack of compassion. It’s that it lends a spurious mathematical air of legitimacy to an otherwise illegitimate electoral system.
Could you call it the “skew projector?”
Seed planted by Wilfred Day — 09 November 2007 @ 17:27
No separate thread for Alberta? Is MSS foreshadowing the Canada of 2028, not of 2008? Anyway, this from Colby Cosh:
‘… The [Alta.] Grits and the Knee-dips have, unlike the federal Tories and Reformers of old, been squabbling over slices of an electoral pie that is none too voluminous even considered as a whole. A popular-front combo, assuming that the parties retained all of their supporters and were able to turn them out, would have won just 19 of the Legislative Assembly’s 83 seats in the March election. That’s still more than the 11 they are clinging to, and a larger rump might have given both parties the chance to stress-test some leadership timber.
After the results arrived, there was a natural expectation that Liberal leader Kevin Taft might step down, but nobody else seems eager to take over an underfunded, fractious party whose brand has about as much inherent appeal in Alberta as Union Carbide’s does in Bhopal. (The Liberals have traditionally drawn an inordinate number of candidates from Alberta’s legal profession, with which they enjoy close ties; and what Alberta lawyer, these days, can’t find more profitable uses for his billable hours?)
Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, has been circulating a three-step plan for cooperation between the Liberals, the NDP and the Green Party. His proposed strategy is to divide up the province’s ridings and run one candidate against the Tories in each; let each party handle its own campaign, but agree on a list of “core priorities”; and, in the case of a majority victory for the alliance, implement the main agenda, introduce proportional representation as a way of inoculating against runaway PC victories, and split amicably. Taft’s Liberals, who have already been discussing a name change, have said that “Everything is on the table” as far as they are concerned. In theory it is possible to imagine the New Democrats going along if organized labour leads the way.
In the end, though, such a pact would savour of a merger and would have a strong tendency to become one…’
- “Should Alberta’s opposition parties unite?> (9 May 2008), http://tinyurl.com/5gzj3b
Seed planted by Tom Round — 13 May 2008 @ 01:28