This doesn't necessarily MEAN anything, but I thought it was an interesting experiment. Divide each parties number of votes (globeandmail.com), into the number of seats they received, to see how their popular vote relates to their power in parliament.
The BQ received 30,432 votes nation-wide per seat won.
The Tories received 43,305 votes nation-wide per seat won.
The Liberals received 43,457 votes nation-wide per seat won.
The NDP received 89,333 votes nation-wide per seat won.
The Greens received 665,876 votes nation-wide - no seats.
Again, what this means, if it "means" anything is up to debate, but given how dramatically skewed to the positive I knew the numbers would be quite for the BLOC, I was pretty shocked at how skewed they are to the negative they are for the NDP.
Now, of course, this doesn't mean that the NDP needed 89,333 votes for each seat they received, or that the Tories only needed 43,305 votes to get each seat they got. What I think it actually means though, is that a lot of NDP (and Green) votes are rendered relatively meaningless given the way our system skews the national popular will.
I don't know what the solution is, but I just can't get around the fact that the NDP and the Greens just won 22% of the votes in a Canadian election, and they're being rewarded with 9.5% of the power. That just doesn't seem right. Is it just me, or do others think that if you win one in five votes you should get more than one in ten seats???
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
An interesting number crunch...
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3 comments:
I agree completely. The Greens get the shaft every time out. I don't know a solution either, except maybe they could increase the number os seats and divide the extras up by the popular vote tally.
Say 350 so 42 seats are divvied up. That would mean 2 seats for the Greens at least...
I sort of agree, but the issue with that logic is that you'd have to give seats to *any* party based on a certain vote total. Fringe parties would be popping up all over the place, representing this group or that group.
They would need a lot of votes as a "fringe" party to get a seat if the Greens at 5% only gets 2...
I do see that point though.
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