The 12% Democracy

With Canada’s national election less than a week away, it’s worth reflecting on why we are even having it. Make no mistake, this election is a direct result of our winner-take-all electoral system that encourages the failure of “minority” governments whenever one of the parties to the minority decides to roll the dice to try for a phony majority. It only takes persuading perhaps 4% to 5% of the voters to change their vote to change a minority into a phony majority.

True majorities are rare. We haven’t had one in decades. But even when we get one, the 50%+ vote that the winning party receives gives it far more than half the seats.

I’ve frequently pointed out that in a typical Canadian election, only about 30% of the votes have an impact on the results. That statistic is true for any winner-take-all electoral system when you have multiple candidates vying for a single position.

Under first past the post, all you need to win is one more vote than the second place finisher. Extra votes makes the winner feel more secure but don’t confer any extra power. Conversely, votes going to other candidates confer no power to them. Variations on this system, such as a ranked ballot, don’t change that fundamental problem.

When electing a legislative assembly using winner-take-all systems with multiple parties, it usually only takes around 40% of the vote to win a phony majority – over half the seats with less than half the votes. This leads to a phony majority government being elected by 12% of the voters.

People have pointed out frequently that, due to low voter turnout, phony majority governments are elected by only 50% – 60% of the supporters of that party – assuming that non-voters would make the same choices as voters. This assumption is reasonable given that party support in polls generally mirrors the election results. This makes a phony majority government elected by perhaps 20% – 25% of the citizens.

However, given that votes aren’t freely given under any winner-take-all system (see, for example Arrow’s impossibility theorem), we really need to view the actual votes a party gets with some suspicion. While not as bad as in Australia or the U.S., where voters are forced to choose between 2 parties, so-called “strategic voting” (which is actually tactical, not strategic) is well established in Canada, with multiple groups promoting it in any given election.

“Strategic voting” is closely related to a ranked ballot but gets reflected in voting preferences leading up to an election, so it can more reliably produce the desired result. Ranked ballots require voters to consider the order and consequences of candidates being dropped in order to elect the least objectionable candidate. Neither system really reflects real voter preferences.

If we take voter turnout into account, then a phony majority government is actually elected not just by only 12% of the voters but by only 6% – 7.2% of the citizens. Perhaps some larger share of the population is OK with the way the election turned out, but that is speculation. Because votes aren’t given freely, we don’t really know.

In jurisdictions using proportional representation, we see different results than we see in Canada. It is rare for a party to get much more than 30% of the vote, and the floor for social democratic parties is around 20%. In winner-take-all elections, there are almost always two parties that take at least 30% of the vote (often more) with smaller parties rarely getting to 20%.

The difference is crucial because it reflects how parties have to be responsive to voters once votes can be freely given. Under proportional representation, a governing coalition needs to represent more than 50% of the voters. Couple this with higher voter turnout, and a proportionally-elected government rarely gets down to even 30%.

In 2015 the Liberals promised to make every vote count, but failed to deliver, just as he has failed to deliver on most other promises made since. Instead he continues to try to convince people that they need to vote Liberal to stop the Conservatives from winning the phony majority he wants for himself.

This is not how democracies operate.

We wouldn’t be having this election if Trudeau didn’t have reason to expect he could win a phony majority. These winner-take-all elections are why Canada has had more elections than any other industrial democracy (with the exception of Australia and the U.S., which have fixed elections every 3 years and 2 years respectively) since WWII.