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.
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