Election Reform - Ontario under different systems

There are a number of systems we can look at, lets start with some of the simpler ones

Alternative Vote (Instant Runoff Voting)

The Liberals would lose their seat in Thunder Bay, but gain Eglinton-Lawrence.

The Tories would not gain any seats. The Tory loss in Eglinton-Lawrence to the Liberals is offset by the NDP gain from the Liberals in Thunder Bay, meaning we begin the counter with the NDP up by 1.

The NDP further takes the following ridings:

The soo
Ottawa West
Peterborough
Rouge Park
Brampton West
Conestoga
Hespeler
Cambridge

and quite possibly also

Scarborough Centre
Etobicoke Lakeshore
and Brantford Brant

For a total of 12 NDP gains from the Tories, pushing our numbers to a final result of:

64 PC
52 NDP
7 LIB
1 GRN

A narrow PC Majority. Note as well that the last three ridings I listed were quite iffy on the math, and its quite likely that in the event the real election had used IRV, these three would have remained PC, pushing our split from 64-52 to 67-49, a much more comfortable majority.

Pure PR (Proportional Representation)

A pure PR system would see a single province-wide "riding" that elects 124 candidates. According to the popular D'Hondt method of counting (and the method whose online calculator is most user friendly in my experience) the results are as follows:

51 - PC
43 - NDP
25 - LIB
5 - GRN
0 - LBT

The Libertarians fail to win a seat even without a threshold.

NOTE TO THE READER

This post originally was going to examine STV and other systems; and maps have been prepared for that purpose. However, other bloggers are dealing with STV, and as such, I've decided to truncate this post and end with an examination of a Parallel PR system.

Parallel PR

A Parallel PR system mixes the benefits and drawbacks of both PR and FPTP. Unlike a supplementary or "fill up" system, a parallel system is additive.

Longtime readers will know this is my reform of choice for Canada and its provinces. Two arguments seem to carry the most weight in Canadian debates about electoral reform. First, people want to be able to keep majority governments, even if they are, as some in the NDP have tried to classify them "false majorities". And second, Canadians are concerned about representation of the opposition; first that the main opposition party can, often, find itself without representation from certain entire regions, and secondly, that the third party and lower, can find itself with very few, if any, elected representatives. Parallel deals with both of these in ways Canadians want to see.

I also want to note that a true Parallel PR system would not see the total number of seats change much, but that I am using a larger number of seats as this saves about 6-8 hours worth of calculation of manually re-drawing every riding, and makes the calculation time for the Parallel system total around 2 minutes for calculating how popular vote turns into additional seats won. I use this d'hondt calculator for that purpose.

Additionally, most of the systems I propose for Canada have only a small number of PR MPs, as, polls do show Canadians are iffy on the concept of a mixed-member system, and having a smaller number is more likely to succeed. As such, to the 124 ridings, I am adding an additional 24 proportional seats.

Of these seats, the PC party wins 10, the NDP wins 8, the Liberals win 5, and the Greens take 1.

As such the final end results are as follows:

86 - PC
48 - NDP
12 - LIB
2 - GRN

As an example of how this may play out in reality, we could expect to see the 10 new PC MPPs from all over Ontario, including London, Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa, Northern Ontario, and various more rural areas. The NDP is more likely to see members elected from Mississauga, the York Region, and various rural areas, while the Liberals could easily end up with representation not just from Toronto and Ottawa, but in places like Windsor, Kitchener, Mississauga, and both rural eastern and southwestern Ontario. This would mean that all 3 parties have members from Mississauga, for example; and given how Parallel systems are usually implemented, this is extremely likely.

Turkish election results

While some of the results are somewhat disputed, the two sets of numbers are similar enough to produce a results post.


PRESIDENT

52.6% - AKP - Erdogan
30.6% - CHP - Ince
8.4% - HDP - Demirtas
7.3% - IYI - Aksener
1.1% - all other candidates

Erdogan has won a first round victory. Even the disputed results show that, even if it is not a first round win, his lead is large enough to overcome any second round challenge.


PARLIAMENT

293 - AKP
50 - MHP
343 - Government Alliance

146 - CHP
44 - IYI
0 - SP
190 - Opposition Alliance

67 - HDP

In sum, while the government retains its majority, the AKP loses its majority by a few seats. As such, this is not as big of a victory for Erdogan as it could have been. Again, while there are a set of dispute figures, they too show a government majority with an AKP minority.

Very quick summary on Turkey

As my long-time followers will know, I sometimes get long bouts of writers block; this is one of them. As such to give everyone a very quick run-down of today's Turkish election, I've decided to post a very quick summary on the grounds that having something up is better than nothing.

Turkey's recently changed its constitution to give the President a lot more power.

In the Presidential race, Erdogan (the guy who has run the country for the past decade) is likely to win. His two main rivals are Ince from the CHP and Aksener from IYI.

While Aksener does better in polls against Erdogan in a second round than Ince does, Erdogan still has the clear edge, and will likely emerge as the winner no matter what.

Erdogan's power is the AKP, and, as mentioned, he and his party have been the government since 2003. Erdogan's coalition partner is the MHP, a nationalist party.

MHP, however, suffered a major split recently, and IYI is the splinter party. It is more moderate and anti-Erdogan. Mrs. Aksener is its presidential candidate. The CHP is the "founding" party of Turkey, and the party Ataturk belonged to; it is considered social-democratic in nature.

Turkey has a notoriously high threshold in order to get elected to Parliament, 10%. In the last election, HDP, which is supported by most Kurds, passed the threshold. HDP is expected to do so again. HDP is not contesting this election in any coalition.

AKP and MHP, the government, is contesting in a coalition called the People's Alliance. By doing so, MHP will win seats despite polling near 6%.

Facing them is the National Alliance coalition, which includes both the CHP and IYI. Also included are SP and DP.

The most interesting thing about the DP is its logo is based on a mispronunciation of its name, as in Turkish, the "Demokrat" is similar to "Demir Kirat", or, Iron White Horse. It is not expected to win many, if any, seats, even with the coalition deal, with perhaps 5 being an extremely optimistic number.

SP is a splinter party from the same old and banned party AKP was once part of; SP is avowedly Islamist in nature.

The Government alliance is expected to win somewhere between 45% and 55% of the seats in Parliament, while the main Opposition alliance, between 35% and 45%. HDP would make up the remainder.

Erdogan has worked with the HDP before, and in the event he fails to win a majority in Parliament, we could expect to see this again to some degree.

In summary, Erdogan is expected to win, and its only a matter of by how much.

Upcoming Turkish Election

Just a quick heads up that I'm following the upcoming Turkish election this weekend.

A new law means that electoral alliances will be able to pool votes for the purpose of passing the threshold. Two main alliances have thus formed.

According to a month long poll average, the AKP lead alliance would win 300 seats, 258 to the AKP and 42 to MHP, while the CHP lead alliance would win 230; 154 to the CHP, 64 to IYI, and 12 to SP. HDP wold take 70.

The presidential race is setting up to be a battle for second between Mr Ince from the CHP and Mrs Aksener from IYI. Aksener seems to have better chances of defeating Erdogan in the final round, but Ince seems to be leading her on the first preferences.

A more full post on the election will come within 48 hours.

various threads

From time to time I'll get various threads of information that may go somewhere or may not.

This morning for example, it was presented that the Premier of Nunavut may fall to a VoNC (Vote of Non Confidence). This just happened. A new premier has yet to be selected.

However; there are other threads I am following.

Merkel may be out in Germany as her sister party the CSU, may withdraw from the 'permanent' coalition they have with the CDU.

Italy's new government may refuse to ratify the Canada-EU free trade agreement.

Spain's government fell to a VoNC a few weeks ago, and the new government is from the socialist party.

Greece and Macedonia may have come to an agreement on the name of the latter country.

None of these are large enough for their own full post at this stage, but, I wanted to keep readers up to date on what is going on around the world nonetheless.

Ontario, combined

One of the thing I like to do after elections, especially in Ontario, is compare the results to Federal results.

In order to do this I've combined the results in both Federal and Provincial ridings, treating both the 2018 and 2015 elections as though they were a single election.

Keeping the parties separate, we find the following results:

62 - Liberal Party of Canada
21 - Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario
14 - Conservative Party of Canada
14 - Ontario New Democratic Party
1 - New Democratic Party of Canada

However, if we combine the results by party we end up with the following.

61 - Tories
37 - Liberals
14 - NDP

In particular, doing it this way, leads to some very close results. Mississauga Lakeshore is won by 40 votes, Oakville by 17. The Waterloo riding is very close, with the Liberals winning 36,329 votes over the Tories at 36,291, and the NDP at 36,243.

Northern ridings, which differ from their Federal counterparts, were not compared.

Here are some popular vote figures to mull over:

Note for this, OND stands for NDP, and GPO for the Ontario Greens; Federal parties are those without the letter O. This is compared popular vote for Ontario only, both Federally and provincially, going back to 1995. All entries over 111,000 votes are recorded. GOVernment, Official Opposition, and X for Other are also indicated, as is the name of the party leader in the given election.

2,929,393 - LPC - 2015 - GOV - Trudeau
2,583,065 - LPC - 1993 - GOV - Chretien
2,457,463 - CPC - 2011 - GOV - Harper
2,324,742 - PCO - 2018 - GOV - Ford
2,294,594 - LPC - 1997 - GOV - Chretien
2,293,393 - CPC - 2015 - OO - Harper
2,292,075 - LPC - 2000 - GOV - Chretien
2,278,875 - LPC - 2004 - GOV - Martin
2,260,024 - LPC - 2006 - GOV* - Martin
2,090,001 - OLP - 2003 - GOV - McGuinty
2,020,641 - CPC - 2008 - GOV - Harper
1,985,242 - CPC - 2006 - OO* - Harper
1,978,059 - PCO - 1999 - GOV Harris, M
1,925,512 - OND - 2018 - OO - Horwath
1,870,110 - PCO - 1995 - GOV - Harris, M
1,869,271 - OLP - 2007 - GOV - McGuinty
1,862,907 - OLP - 2014 - GOV - Wynne
1,751,472 - OLP - 1999 - OO - McGuinty
1,743,241 - LPC - 2008 - OO - Dion
1,625,102 - OLP - 2011 - GOV - McGuinty
1,607,337 - CPC - 2004 - OO - Harper
1,559,181 - PCO - 2003 - OO - Eves
1,530,076 - PCO - 2011 - OO - Hudak
1,509,506 - OND - 1990 - GOV - Rae
1,506,267 - PCO - 2014 - OO - Hudak
1,417,435 - NDP - 2011 - OO - Layton
1,400,302 - LPC - 2011 - X - Ignatieff
1,398,806 - PCO - 2007 - OO - Tory
1,291,326 - OLP - 1995 - OO - McLeod
1,203,134 - OLP - 1990 - OO - Peterson
1,124,381 - LPO - 2018 - X - Wynne
1,114,576 - OND - 2014 - X - Horwath
1,100,366 - NDP - 2006 - X - Layton
1,085,916 - NDP - 2015 - X - Mulcair
1,051,209 - ALL - 2000 - OO - Day
982,065 - REF - 1993 - OO* - Manning
981,508 - OND - 2011 - X - Horwath
944,564 - PCO - 1990 - X - Harris, M
937,921 - NDP - 2008 - X - Layton
921,240 - NDP - 2004 - X - Layton
886,797 - REF - 1997 - X* - Manning
871,616 - PCC - 1997 - OO* - Charest
859,596 - PCC - 1993 - X - Campbell
854,163 - OND - 1995 - X - Rae
741,465 - OND - 2007 - X - Hampton
660,730 - OND - 2003 - X - Hampton
642,438 - PCC - 2000 - X - Clark
551,009 - OND - 1999 - X - Hampton
495,155 - NDP - 1997 - X - McDonough
409,936 - GRN - 2008 - X - May
368,709 - NDP - 2000 - X - McDonough
354,891 - GPO - 2007 - X - de Jong
291,658 - NDP - 1993 - X - McLaughlin
264,094 - GPO - 2018 - X - Schreiner
263,400 - GRN - 2006 - X - Harris, J
233,269 - GPO - 2014 - X - Schreiner
226,812 - GRN - 2004 - X - Harris, J
207,435 - GRN - 2011 - X - May
185,992 - GRN - 2015 - X - May
126,651 - GPO - 2003 - X - de Jong
126,021 - GPO - 2011 - X - Schreiner


* = Reflects the first, second, or third/fourth status of the party in terms of seats in ontario, and not total federal seats.

New "electomatic", crazy map shows where Libertarians can win

Note that "can win" is very generous. It shows where, in 2-3 decades, if the demographics do not change (which they will) where a Libertarian party could actually win seats.

you can view the sheets here, page 4 "projection machine" is what you want.

Note that it's not currently hooked up properly in terms of making your own projections; but the base data is all there, and as I said in my previous posts, that base math was far better at making projections than I was.

Anyway, this is all part of a series of 4 maps I plan to present, the first set of two I've decided to present now, as, I was so interested in the results:

This answers the question of "what would happen if all 5 parties which ran over 100 candidates tied in the number of seats won"

So we have 25 Tories, 25 NDPers, 25 Liberals, 25 Greens, and 24 Libertarians, as, 124 is not perfectly divisible by 5.

What's most interesting is how well the Libertarian vote matches expected vote patterns from Libertarian voters. Note that Hillier's riding goes Libertarian, as does the belt in Toronto north of the 401, west of Yonge st; both areas I've personally identified before as strong small l libertarian parts of Canada. Peel region too sees a heavy Libertarian presence, wich has been shown in the party's past performances.

We also get an idea of places a future Green government may find core voters, and see where both the Liberals and PC Party have their cores as well.

More to come.