Barack Obama wins the Presidency!

WOHOO!

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U.S. Election Results - Check back here (hopefully) for live updating results...

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Conservatives win another election...

and the stock markets go down the tube again.

Coincidence?*





























(*probably)

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Who won the election, "progressives" or "conservatives"...

This will no doubt cause much controversy as to just who counts as "progressive" and who doesn't (and, should Andrew Coyne stumble upon this post, who counts as "conservative" and who doesn't) but in light of my earlier post on how broken our electoral system is, let's look at last night's election in terms of "conservative" versus "progressive" shall we?

For my first illustration, let's look at "progressive" as being the NDP, the Liberals and the Greens. One could argue that the BQ are much more "progressive" than the Conservatives too (heck, one could argue they're more "progressive" than the Liberals, and maybe even the Greens) but let's leave them aside as the whole separatist thing obviously skews things.

So, using this formulation, how did "progressives" (Lib/NDP/Green) do in last night's election?

Progressives: 7,087,812 votes (51%)
Conservatives: 5,205,334 votes (38%)

Of course, how does our system translate that into seats in the House of Commons?

Progressives: 113 seats
Conservatives: 143 seats

So, sure, arguably "progressive" candidates received more than 1.8 MILLION more votes than "conservatives" last night, they nonetheless end up with 30 fewer seats in the House of Commons.

Just as galling, look what happens if you take out the Greens (and ignore the 940,000 Canadians who voted for them - which, let's face it, is basically what we'll do now):

Progressives (Lib/NDP): 6,147,065 votes
Conservatives: 5,205,334 votes

So, despite having received more than 900,000 more votes than the Tories, the Liberals and NDP are nonetheless outnumbered by the Tories in the House by 30 MPs. 30!

So, in case anyone's wondering, in Canada:

5.2 million votes gets you 143 seats.
6.1 million votes gets you 113 seats, and
0.94 million votes gets you squat.

So much for the "will of the people", eh?

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Our electoral system is still totally broken....

So, first, congrats to the Tories on the big win last night. I maintain that the Tories have now found their ceiling, while the Liberals have found their floor, so I wouldn't bee TOO excited if I were a conservative, but still, a win is a win.

Now, on to a discussion of how messed up our system is. Last night, the Conservatives won 46.4% of the seats in the House with 37.6% of the votes. The Liberals got 26.2 % of the votes, but less than 25% of the seats. The poor NDP got 18% of voters' support, and only 12% of the power.

Look at it another way.

The main federal parties each got a seat for every X votes they received, as follows:

Tories: 1 seat for every 36,400 votes
Liberals: 1 seat for every 47,763 votes
NDP: 1 seat for every 68,029 votes

Bloc (an anomaly obviously): 1 seat for every 27,791 votes.
Green Party: 0 seats for every 940,000 votes

Our electoral system is totally broken:

• Our electoral system turns an 11 point spread at the polls into a 21 point spread in Parliament (Liberals to Conservatives) and a 19 point spread at the polls into a 34 point spread in Parliament (NDP to Conservatives).
  
  
• It results in a party which gets over 940,00 votes lacking any representation in Parliament whatsoever.
  
  
• Today, the Tories are 12 seats shy of a "majority" government, and could probably get there with the support of about 500,000 more voters - but they're over 1.7 million votes shy of actually getting 50% of the vote.
  
  
• Worst of all, the Tories outnumber the Liberals and NDP combined by 30 seats in the House of Commons. But the Liberals and NDP combined received over 940,000 more votes than the Tories. It's totally insane.

How can it be considered just or democratic that the representatives of two parties that received 6,147,065 votes can be outnumbered by a large margin in the House of Commons by the representatives of a party that received 5,205,334 votes??? You'll forgive my incredulity, but by my reckoning, "progressive" candidates received over 51% of the votes last night (and I'm not even counting the BQ as "progressive" just the Liberals, NDP, and Greens) yet today, that MAJORITY of Canadians is represented in Parliament by 37% of MPs, and the 38% of Canadians who voted conservative get 46% of the MPs. Again, it's totally insane.

Here's the Parliament our system gives us (minus independents):

Tories: 143 seats
Liberals: 76 seats
NDP: 37 seats
Bloc: 50 seats

Here's the Parliament as determined by the parties' actual share of the vote (arguably, the Parliament Canadians as a whole actually voted for):

Tories: 117 seats
Liberals: 81 seats
NDP: 56 seats
Bloc: 31 seats
Green Party: 21 seats

Not that our politicians will do anything to fix this (though if they were going to do so, now would be the most likely time) but it still bears repeating. Our electoral system is totally messed up. It results in Parliaments that don't represent the will of the people (nor even, really, attempt to) and leaves millions of voters effectively disenfranchised. If we were governed by the will of the people, we'd probably have a coalition government today representing over 50% of Canadians. As it is, we're stuck with another minority government where 38% of the people are just shy of having 50% of the power.

It's totally insane.

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