E-mail Archives6/3/97 Update: Canadian Elections CANADA'S 1997 ELECTORAL EQUATION : PLURALITY = POLARIZATION
The winner-take-all national elections that took place in Canada yesterday (June 2, 1997) were clearly unfair -- with the Liberals turning 38.5% of the popular vote into 51.5% of seats and the Conservatives seeing their 19.1% of the national vote translate into a paltry 6.6% of seats. What was most stark, however, were the incredible distortions, province-by-province. The distortions are not simply a theoretical problem: they will increase tensions over national unity, with the second and third largest parties at bitter odds over how to handle French- speaking Quebec -- instructively, the Quebec separatist party (theBloc Quebecois) won only 37.6% of the vote in Quebec, but snared a comfortable majority of the province's delegation and will be the third largest party in parliament despite not fielding any candidates outside of Quebec. Meanwhile, the second largest party in parliament, the Reform party, has no patience with Quebec and won no seats east of the western province of Manitoba. To add to the distortions, the governing Liberals also won a full two-thirds of their seats in only one province -- Ontario, where their 48.5% of the vote won an astounding 101 of 103 seats. Below are the results, first nationally and then province-by-province. Also included in an excerpt from a commentary by Henry Milner, a political scientist who is co-editor of INROADS, a journal of Opinion. Results as of 1:30 A.M. EST June 3, 1997
S PS PV DIF
Lib 155 51.5 38.5 13.0
Ref 60 19.9 19.1 0.8
BQ 44 14.6 10.8 3.8
NDP 21 7.0 11.0 -4.0
PC 20 6.6 19.1 -12.5
Oth 1 0.3 1.5 -1.2
301 100.0 100.0 0.0
Lib= Liberal (Seats won, with percentage of popular vote in province in parentheses -- it does not add up to 100% in provinces because it is not listed for parties that did not win seats there)
(Below is an excerpt from Henry Milner's commentary, co-editor of INROADS, a journal of Opinion and professor at the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University, Universite Laval) ...Let us imagine that, instead, the election had been fought under the German-style electoral system recently adopted in New Zealand known as MMP (mixed-member proportional). MMP gives each party winning at least five percent of the popular vote an overall number of seats in Parliament proportional to its share of the popular vote. And yet, since half those seats come from single-member districts, each New Zealander still has his or her own MP. Had Canadians voted just as they did on Monday but under MMP, the numbers would have been very different -- especially for the Conservatives. They would have come in third with 58 seats just behind Reform's 59, with the NDP up and the Bloc down to 33 each. The Liberals would have been left with 118. But the contrast between an MMP Parliament and our newly-elected "rainbow" Parliament would have been greater in its composition than in overall numbers. Liberals, Conservatives and NDPers would have won seats in all provinces or regions; Reformers in all but Quebec. To state this is still to understate how different the outcome would have been: the campaign itself would have been very different in an MMP environment. Unlike under our present system, the parties would have had no incentive to concentrate their efforts and resources only in the regions where they were doing well, since under MMP every vote counts equally toward electing an MP. The Conservatives would have put far more effort into the West. The NDP and also Reform would have worked hard for support in Quebec. The Bloc might even have been tempted to run candidates outside Quebec, since any votes they garnered could only help it win seats. ..... Stay tuned, for more on Canada, recent elections in France and more..... E-News Index |