International and a unique project

Belarus
Belarus is not a free democracy and all indications was the election would be identical to the last;
110 - Pro Government
0 - Opposition

Much to my surprise, I'm delighted to report that has not occurred. The results are as follows:
108 - Pro Government
2 - Opposition

This is unexpected. Belarus is also a very repressed country so I really have no other information. Regardless it's good news, and hopefully, these 2 members will be allowed to serve out their term alive and well.


Croatia
Not much has changed in seat counts, which are as follows
61 HDZ (Conservative)
54 SDP (Social Democratic)
13 Most (Fiscal Libertarian)
13 Others

This is a gain of 2 seats for HDZ and a loss of 6 from Most (which means Bridge in Croatian) who had a 'coalition' of sorts in the last Parliament that barely lasted a year.

I think the 'message' here is that Most was too fussy in coalition, and HDZ members would agree. The Coalition was always a bit strained. Given the numbers, the most logical result is another coalition but with Most having it's wings clipped, they'll be far more willing to bend.


Russia
September 18th is election day. I did a preview of the election earlier, and wish to provide an updated prediction. Changes from last election indicated.

268 UR +30 (Regime, Conservative)
78 LDPR +22 (Nativist, Nationalist)

62 CPRF -20 (Communist, Dictatorial)
42 JR -32 (Social Democratic)

Based on polls, which may not exactly be accurate.

Announcement

While you are reading this I will be watching the 2015 Canadian election over again, from the starting gun to the end of coverage. Why? Well I enjoy that sort of thing; it is always fun to rewatch coverage of an old election to see what people are saying. Contemporary thinking is always interesting in hindsight. While watching the election I will be doing something that, from what I know, has never been done before. I'll be keeping track of what the first poll to report from each riding has said. I'll be posting a map as well to show what those first polls indicated.

This is where I'll need to make another decision. I have access to some results programs of past elections through various (mostly american) online resources. If, and that's a big if, I do not find the work to do this too taxing, I will go back and do this for every election that I can. It may turn out that this work is too taxing; that I find it too hard to keep track of all these results while watching hours and hours of coverage for an event that I know the ending to. However, it is my hope that I will not find it that taxing, and, as a result, be able to produce such results for many elections.

If this all works, the end result will be a rock solid number that I can give you that will indicate, clearly, the chance that any single poll on election night, in fact, indicates the winner.

More STV; Ridings in Quebec, Ontario.

I've chosen two ridings, Saguenay and 'Quebec' on the map. While the Greens do run in Quebec, they tend to do poorly in most areas. In fact, the Green vote in Quebec is concentrated in the english parts of Montreal, where, in some radical cases, they can be the 2nd largest party. As such, I will ignore them in this examination, which is in francophone areas. The reason I've chosen these two ridings is that these are two areas where all the 4 major parties in Quebec are competitive. While the Tories have not run ridings in 'Quebec' in quite a while, they do perform well in these areas. Well enough that in a 4-seat riding it's quite possible, if not plausible, that they could walk away with 1 of those seats. In Saguenay the 4 party balance is even closer, and the reason I've chosen this riding is to show how the number of seats can be crucial. Saguenay's population and it's geographic distribution are very friendly to a single multi-member STV riding. The population is pooled far enough away from anywhere else that expanding this riding is unpalatable. The entire saguenay area is an area on to itself, and as such, 3 members just makes sense. This puts pressure on the 4 parties, as if each party only runs 1 candidate (and they would) whichever candidate finishes 4th, simply does not win a seat. Should a party risk running 2 candidates, they risk seeing the other 3 elected while their candidates split the vote.

This is the strategy that you will see within STV. How many candidates to run, how to divide them within the riding to properly manage the vote, and even to some degree, what sort of 'deals' to make with other parties. What if, for example, the NDP, knowing they might find a difficult race in Saguenay, approached the Greens. What if the NDP said "hey, we know you are having some problems winning in Vancouver. You always come close, but you just don't quite clench it. If you'll withdraw from Saguenay, we'll only run 1 Candidate in Vancouver, and urge our supporters to rank you #2." To the public the NDP can simply say that they only think they can win 1 seat in Vancouver, and that if the Vancouver NDP thinks the Greens should be preferenced #2 their's their business.

These are the sorts of things we may see if we go down the route of STV (which is looking more likely)


Lastly, I want to look at the "Ontario" riding. You'll notice it's a very strange shape. Guelph is within it, but a small portion of another riding is between it and the remainder of the riding. Despite that, the riding actually makes sense given commuting patterns. Guelph is 'closer' to Kitchener and Waterloo than it is to Burlington and Oakville, while the riding that surrounds it is centered around Georgetown, which most certainly is closer to Burlington and Oakville than it is to Kitchener and Waterloo.

That aside, the reason I've chosen this riding is the Greens. In the last election, Gord Miller ran in Guelph, and there's no question that a "star" candidate like him would have been the only candidate in a STV riding.

The important thing is we are talking about a 6 seat riding. Arguments like "I can't vote for you because you can't win" become moot. As such, you can expect to see the Green vote increase significantly in areas like this, where they, in fact, can win. The simple existence of ridings like this is reason to expect the Greens can, and will, win more seats. Had this riding existed in the last election, I have no doubt that Gord Miller would have been elected as an MP. With STV and the transfer of votes, it becomes likely that NDPers, in an effort to stop either Liberals or Conservatives from winning, would preference the Greens well.

Due to the existence of 'dead' votes, it's likely the race for the final seat in many ridings will see three candidates, all below the threshold. In these cases, whoever is last, becomes the kingmaker.


Regardless, I hope that this has been a helpful look at STV and how future elections might be run. It's gone on far longer than I'd thought it would. In the future I do plan on examining specific races in Ireland to show as an example for how 'non obvious' things might happen. Until then, I'll leave you with this thought; every system has complex things, including FPTP. The only difference is we are exchanging one set of complexities for another.

More STV

Of the other ridings named, I want to start by addressing the "PEI" riding, as this is the shortest. We'll end up with a single province-wide riding. This means the threshold for winning a seat is 20%+1. One thing to keep in mind when you look at real STV results is that 100% of voters do not always stay within a party. In the 2015 election, the Liberals did extremely well. Normally we see a more balanced result. Lets make up a fake future election based on that. This is what we may see in a future election.

I will presume 84,999 ballots cast, a reasonable number for PEI. This places the threshold at exactly 17,000.

In elections where one party does very well, we could see one of the main parties (Liberal, Conservative) running 3 candidates, but outside of that, we are far far more likely to see each only run 2. The NDP is smart to only run 1, as are the smaller parties. In the last 5 elections, the CHP has run, and in the election before that, the CHP candidate in 4 of those 5 elections, ran as an Independent, due to registration problems. As such I will be using the 4 national parties, and the CHP in this example. I will use names from the 2015 election for the names of candidates, though no guarantee any of these people will want to run for another term.

Here is a possible result.


17,181 - Easter - L  ELECTED
17,094 - Shea - C  ELECTED
16,838 - Pataki - C
16,822 - MacAulay - L
13,263 - Cann - N
3304 - Viau - G
497 - Squires - H

you may wonder how exactly the main parties manage such quality vote management. There are a few ways to do this. You could tell everyone born on an odd numbered day to vote for one and everyone even for another. You could ask everyone with a name that start with A-M to vote for one, etc etc, but the most logical way, and the usual way parties do this, is geographically. The Liberals, in this example, would likely have said something to the effect of "If you lived in the ridings of Egmont or Malpeque, vote for Easter, and if you lived in Cardigan or Charlottetown, vote for MacAulay." This could produce a result like what we see. Had the Tories done the same they would have been more imbalanced, so they could fix this by asking everyone living in Charlottetown, Winsloe, and on or east of Winslow Road to vote for Pataki, while asking anyone who lived east of Charlottetown, and on or east of Rustico Road to vote for Shea. This means that in general, voters are considering either Easter/Shea or MacAulay/Pataki, but that some voters in the Brackley/Stanhope area, are considering Easter/Pataki. The ability of the parties to pick a dividing line is what makes this work. Parties that pick the right dividing line do very well indeed, while picking the wrong one, will leave you terribly unbalanced. However, lets look at how this would play out.

First we start at the top. We distribute Easter votes.181 of them. Most of them, lets say 150, will go straight to MacAulay. So what of the other 31? Well 10 of these folks are voting for "progressives" so they voted NDP second. 8 of them liked Easter in cabinet, but also liked Shea in cabinet, so they voted for her. 6 of them care about the environment, so they voted Green. 4 of them have met Easter personally, as well as Pataki, and like them both, so that's where they go. 2 of them consider themselves Christian, so go CHP. And 1 of them really don't like any politicians except Easter, on the grounds that they are related, he's 18, and was pressured to vote, so they did not rank anyone else. This becomes, effectively, a dead vote.


17,000 - Easter - L  ELECTED
17,104 - Shea - C  ELECTED
16,972 - MacAulay - L
16,842 - Pataki - C
13,273 - Cann - N
3310 - Viau - G
499 - Squires - H
1 - Dead


Now we distribute the 104 Shea votes. Much like above, all of them have a host of different reasons for voting how they did. A few of them voted Shea #1, and Easter #2. With Easter eliminated due to winning, those votes need to go to their #3 choice. As such, the 3rd round looks like this:


17,000 - Easter - L  ELECTED
17,000 - Shea - C  ELECTED
16,977 - MacAulay - L
16,929 - Pataki - C
13,276 - Cann - N
3315 - Viau - G
502 - Squires - H
2 - Dead

After this we need to eliminate the last placed candidate. However, many people voted CHP precisely because they didn't like the other 4 parties; as such, this may well be the next round:

17,129 - Pataki - C ELECTED
17,004 - MacAulay - L ELECTED
17,000 - Easter - L  ELECTED
17,000 - Shea - C  ELECTED
13,296 - Cann - N
3325 - Viau - G
247 - Dead

With 4 candidates elected, the count ends.



This is the last time I directly look at counts. In a few hours, more ridings.

STV, some specific examples.

I've taken the idea of "Urban PR" and expanded it. One reason that it was popular on the Prairies is just how gosh darn big those Prairie provinces are. Ontario's "rural" ridings (not it's remote northern ones) are tiny compared to the average "rural" riding from Western Canada. As such I've only taken the largest ridings out, and have lumped everything else together into multi-member STV ridings. Here is the map:

You'll notice some ridings have names in ALLCAPS written in or beside them, these are ridings I will be using for my examples. You'll also notice white ridings; these ones are the ones that are unmerged. The coloured ridings are the ones that will now be represented by STV. You may wonder why some "remote" ridings are lumped in. A great example of this is ridings lie BC's Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon, the big dark red one on the BC Map. The reason is the huge majority of this riding's voters live in the small corner stuffed beside the other ridings that are also coloured dark red. This is also why ridings in the Kelowna area are not in this STV proposal, as most of their populations are more spread out. Remember too this is a simplified proposal to use in the first election in 2019, and that the boundaries should be redrawn prior to the 2023 election, at which time, such remote fringes would be cut off from the more urban STV focused ridings, and be given their own single-member riding.

Regardless, I wanted to get right to the examples.

First, lets look at Saskatoon. Here are the 2015 results for the 3 ridings that make up the single Saskatoon STV riding.


Waugh - CPC - 19,166
Trost - CPC - 18,592
Benson - NDP - 14,921
Card - NDP - 14,115
Bell - NDP - 13,909
Donauer - CPC - 12,401
Muggli - LPC - 12,165
Block - LPC - 11,287
Abbott - LPC - 9,234
Pritchard - GRN - 846
Harvey - GRN - 686
Mitchell - GRN - 658
Pankiw - CAN - 271
Hart - LBT - 230
Schalm - RHI - 93

(Note, that "Pritchard" is Mr Brigland-Pritchard, whose last name I've shortened to better fit)

With a total of 128,574 votes, and 3 members to elect, 32,144 becomes the threshold to become elected according to the droop quota. No candidate has that so we need to start dropping the lower placed candidates and distributing their votes to other candidates. Mathematically it's impossible for the bottom 3 candidates, even if their votes combined, to advance, so I'll drop all of them right now. I'm going to assume Pankiw folks and the Libertarians will preference the Conservatives, while the Rhino voters will preference the nearest 'protest' party, the Greens. Since this is just a rough example, I'm going to weight all preferences at 100%, even though that is not realistic, and, will weight all preference flows to the top candidate in terms of votes, or, actually elected MPs. Given this, our second round looks like this:

Waugh - CPC - 19,667
Trost - CPC - 18,592
Benson - NDP - 14,921
Card - NDP - 14,115
Bell - NDP - 13,909
Donauer - CPC - 12,401
Muggli - LPC - 12,165
Block - LPC - 11,287
Abbott - LPC - 9,234
Pritchard - GRN - 939
Harvey - GRN - 686
Mitchell - GRN - 658

Now we find that the Greens, even combined, can't overtake the next lowest candidate. As such, we'll drop all of them, and transfer all of their votes, including the transferred Rhino vote, to the Liberals, as the next weakest party, as to make this count more visually interesting.


Waugh - CPC - 19,667
Trost - CPC - 18,592
Benson - NDP - 14,921
Muggli - LPC - 14,448
Card - NDP - 14,115
Bell - NDP - 13,909
Donauer - CPC - 12,401
Block - LPC - 11,287
Abbott - LPC - 9,234

We can skip yet another step since our rules tell us votes always flow to the top candidate, so we can drop both Liberals at once.

Muggli - LPC - 34,971 ELECTED
Waugh - CPC - 19,667
Trost - CPC - 18,592
Benson - NDP - 14,921
Card - NDP - 14,115
Bell - NDP - 13,909
Donauer - CPC - 12,401

This marks our first elect! Muggli has met the threshold and so becomes an MP. The mark is 32,144, so votes over that get transferred. This means we now distribute 2827 votes to other parties. I'm going to presume that these votes will flow to the NDP

Muggli - LPC - 32,144 ELECTED
Waugh - CPC - 19,667
Trost - CPC - 18,592
Benson - NDP - 17,748
Card - NDP - 14,115
Bell - NDP - 13,909
Donauer - CPC - 12,401

Now things become a bit simpler and more straightforward

Muggli - LPC - 32,144 ELECTED
Waugh - CPC - 32,068
Trost - CPC - 18,592
Benson - NDP - 17,748
Card - NDP - 14,115
Bell - NDP - 13,909

Now we drop both lower NDP Candidates (as just one is not enough to meet the mark)

Benson - NDP - 45,772 ELECTED
Muggli - LPC - 32,144 ELECTED
Waugh - CPC - 32,068
Trost - CPC - 18,592

At this point it's clear each party will elect one member.


Now, I want to address something known as "vote management" Wikipedia provides an excellent example. Let's redo this election with only 5 candidates.

Benson - NDP - 27002
Card - NDP - 26999
Waugh - CPC - 29073
Muggli - LPC - 24429
Trost - CPC - 21071
In this situation, Trost's vote goes to Waugh who gets elected, Benson gets elected from Card's vote, and Muggli also wins a seat, the same as above, however, what if the Tories in this example had better vote management. What if things looked like this:

Benson - NDP - 27002
Card - NDP - 26999
Waugh - CPC - 25073
Trost - CPC - 25071
Muggli - LPC - 24429

Suddenly it's the Liberals who drop first, and as such, do not win a seat. This can be easily replicated if a Second Liberal had run, even using the first example:

Benson - NDP - 27002
Card - NDP - 26999
Waugh - CPC - 29073
Trost - CPC - 21071
Muggli - LPC - 12215
Block - LPC - 12214

For this reason the actual number of candidates a party runs can be crucial.



Saskatoon is also important in that it is a single city. Imagine if Saskatoon had a mayor who was very popular, but a bit of a political rebel. Someone who does not identify with any party. This mayor would almost certainly win a seat under this system even if he only is able to acheive 26% in any part of the city, so long as he is consistent with that level of support across Saskatoon.



I will be examining the other ridings named a bit later, in a post later today.

US Election: "Week 1"

We are a week out from the unofficial start of the election, and not much has changed in terms of events. Oh sure there were minor news stories, but in terms of real game-changers, nothing. Trump has had a bit of momentum, but his momentum seems unfocused, and as such, unable to swing too many states.

There is not much to say specifically about this update, but I want to make something clear about the "odds".

Trump can win this election.
The Republican nominee, no matter who it was, could always have won the election. It was always a possibility. It was, and remains, "possible enough" to make it something that could really happen.

It was the nomination Trump couldn't win. The odds of Trump winning the nomination was below the point of worrying about.

Of course we know from reality that Trump did, in fact, beat the odds and won the nomination. Some people think that means he'll also win the election, as that's more likely, but I'd question when was the last time you rolled two yahtzees in a row?

At this time, Clinton has a large lead where it matters, leading 307 to 231. Even if Florida swung it would only bring things to 276 to 262, still a Clinton victory. Virginia is getting more solidly Democratic, and even North Carolina is more likely to vote Democrat than Ohio.

Still, it remains an open race, and we'll have to see exactly who wins. The only real "news" is that Gary Johnson has failed to break through. It's all but certain he will fail to make the debates, and will likely continue to bleed more support. I'll be talking more about Johnson next week.

Daily posts; but not always here

As a personal objective, I've set out for myself to make daily posts on my blogs. One problem is I've not always been able to do that, but I do try. This does come with a caveat; my blogs.

As you may know, I have a personal blog I run. It is a place I can deposit my random thoughts, my rants that won't fit on twitter, or just interesting things I've been thinking about. You'll find an assortment of posts there like an examination of native tribes in alternate history, a look at a world where a stargate is real, a newfie joke that newfies might like, and random profanity. My personal blog is a mish-mash of things that I tell people to avoid unless they have a strong stomach, as from time to time, I post highly offensive things there. My commitment to myself is a post on one of my blogs, and so, there may not always be a post here. If that happens, that may be a day where I have chosen to post on my other blog, or it may simply be a day where I've failed in my commitment to myself.

I do have a rough schedule for the coming week. On Monday I will update my US election projection, and will likely continue to do so every Monday until the election. On Tuesday I am working on an examination of electoral reform, in particular, what STV might look like if most, but not all ridings in Canada became multi-member STV ridings. Think of it as like a version of "Urban PR" where the definition of 'urban' is very loose. On Wednesday I will look internationally, perhaps with an update on Russia, or an update on recent events in Germany, or coverage of today's election in Croatia; perhaps even all three. Beyond that, I have nothing currently planned, and may make a post on my personal blog, or, may have other interesting things to look at over here.

Is Kellie Leitch positioning for the leadership of another party?

There have been much written about Leitch and her plans around "Canadian Values", and why she's done it. The leading theory is that by doing this she locks up a huge portion of the Conservative Party; in particular, the socially conservative voter, and to a smaller but no less important extent, those who had backed the Reform Party in the past. 

I present an alternate theory. 

If you've not read it yet, you may want to give my post about electoral reform a read. You'll note that almost all of the reform proposals would see a new "Reform Party" springing up. My earlier examination of "Urban PR" could even be the best possible system for such a party; which would lock up wins in the rural areas, while getting a few seats in urban areas where they would otherwise win nothing. This becomes far more likely if the rural ridings accept a form of ranked ballot, something that may not be possible if the proposal is to get Conservative support. 

Kellie Leitch is one of those people I've had my eye on for a while as a political watcher; she is under-estimated by too many. She has always been quite skilled in the commons and has proven that her ability to politik outside Parliament is equal if not greater. 

I thus propose that Leitch has an ulterior motive for pushing so hard at social conservatives.

If Electoral Reform happens, and this does indeed trigger a new "Reform Party", Leitch would be excellently positioned to take charge of that party. Nobody else of stature on the federal level is currently going after this audience, and it most certainly is possible that, if they move quickly, Leitch and a small group of currently Conservative MPs could start such a party. May 2017 is the current timeline for introduction of legislation around electoral reform, which just so happens to be same month the Tories pick their new leader. Legislation needs to be debated, and I for one think that the Liberals will want to pass such legislation prior to the summer break. 

This thus gives us our timeline. Leitch purposefully isolates herself on the right among the major candidates. Chong, possibly MacKay, as the 'progressive' faction leader, wins the election, but Leitch places well, perhaps even making it to the final ballot. The legislation drops in early May, and is debated in Parliament. The leader is chosen later in May, after Leitch draws some 'lines in the sand' over issues that she is well aware the party can't support. June will come and the legislation will clear Parliament, and Parliament will break for the summer. Leitch will spring into action, and get together with other MPs, possibly including Brad Trost, Kevin Sorenson, Mark Warawa, and others. This group would then declare their independence from the Tory party, and start a new "Reform Party". While I think it unlikely they'd use the old name, they will be working hard to avoid one thing: the way Reform rose up.

Reform rose up from outside the political establishment to challenge it. This is, in fact, the tradition in Canada. Social Credit, the CCF/NDP, and even the Liberals when they got their start, all rose up from outside the establishment. If this group plans to head off that (and I strongly suspect they would; as this is the first time they may get 'advance notice' of a party creation due to the encouragement of such a thing that electoral reform offers) they will need to move quickly. This means by the time parliament returns in the fall of 2017 (probably with a throne speech) there will be another party. Weather or not they get 12 seats is still in question, but they certainly will have enough to outclass any technical grouping between the Bloc, Greens, and Independents. Nor will the party have enough seats to challenge the NDP for the 3rd position. They'll nicely slot into the #4 spot.

All of this, of course, depends on a great number of variables and assumptions. It is not a map to the next election, but rather, a possible alternative explanation as to the strategy being used. If it is correct, we might yet see far more from Leitch on the front of social conservatism.