GDT: The Alberta Election 2012 - The Morning After - PC Majority Government

[photon]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

BC had a referendum a couple years ago on the Single Transferable Vote system. Basically, instead of voting for one candidate, you would rank several by order of preference. If a candidate achieves a majority of eligible votes votes in the region, they are declared elected and all further ballots with their name are counted for the second candidate. Losing candidates are lopped off as well, and those second choices are used, then third choices, then fourth, etc., until the required number of seats are filled.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Transferable_Vote

Complaints of the system are that it is very complicated, and that with huge multi-person ridings, you would lose the advantage (if one exists), of having a local representative.

I like this!

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

They might now, but the PCs wont, and frankly, if Wildrose wins next time, they wont then either. Unless they win, pass that referendum law, and Albertans themselves demand it.

Very surprised to see how poorly Wildrose did in the central and northern rural ridings. I would have expected several more seats up there, and more than twoish in Calgary. Ultimately not enough to win, but enough to put the breaks on Redford.

I suspect you're right; and I'm not even a total devotee to the idea of prop. rep. It does, as people have pointed out, suffer from some major downsides. I just think that a Wild Rose supporter looking at these results might be justified in feeling that it's a bit unfair that their 35% vote share translated into just under 20% of the seats, while the PCs 44% vote share translated into 71%.

[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

I'm wondering if the Wild Rose is now going to be more interested in proportional representation.

A 9% difference in the polls equated to a 40 seat difference in the legislature. On the other hand, the Wild Rose appears to have beaten the Liberals by 25%, but only have 13 more seats. Our current system produces odd results.

I'm not sure why people want purely proportional representation. There are just as many if not more downsides to purely proportional representation as there are is to the existing first past the post system. One such problem is trying to figure out who actually represents you. If the Liberals for example, get 10% of the vote, but all the candidates brought into parliament are from Edmonton, and you voted for them in Lethbridge, are you actually any better represented?

I can see why a mixed member proportional representation may be a good thing, but I'm against a pure proportional representation. At least first past the post has a candidate that is supposed to represent the concerns and interests of the citizens of their riding (all of them, not just the ones that voted for them).

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

PR gives a lot of power to whoever sets the order for party lists. Sounds like a potentially great way to add power to party insiders.

That is definitely one of the downsides, and you see this in some European prop. rep. systems.

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by Cube Inmate

The vast majority of people don't put that much thought into their vote, though. Momma Redford told them that she was "frightened," and they should be too.

Based on what? That they didn't vote for your party? That is a rather dim view to take of Canada's most educated province.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

It looks to me, with 49 polls reporting and a 250-vote bulge, that the race in Calgary-McCall, though tight, will go to Galpin.

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by Daradon

If you look at any of our threads about gay rights, religion and state, etc. I think you'll find that CP is more liberal than the average Calgarian. Course I imagine that could be cause a lot of posters here are not from Calgary, but I'd be willing to be the ones that are from Calgary or Alberta are generally a little bit more left than than average in the city.

That's not to say we'd measure the same against other areas of Canada, but I'd feel pretty safe stating that when it comes to Albertans.

How are you measuring the average Calgarian though? Anecdotal evidence?

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by photon

So you kinda lose direct representation, the idea that person X will represent me well so I'll vote for them.. or person Y is crazy so I'll vote for someone else even though person Y is on the party I like...

It does dispense with the polite fiction of the direct representation though, people mostly vote for the party anyway, and votes are pretty much along party lines.

Interesting.

And there's also a popular amendment of PR which is mixed member proportionality which tries to bring in local representation.

Basically, voters have two votes in this system. They vote for the national party which is used to calculate the proportionality described in the first system and then they vote for the candidate in their riding. Winning at the riding level is typically first past the post. After all of the riding candidates win they then superimpose the proportionality ontop and fill in the rest of the seats so that each party makes up the national proportional representation.

For example, in a 100 seat legislature voters voted for 50% party A, 30% party B, 20% party C. There are also 50 ridings where party A won 10, party B won 20 and party C won 20.

Party C will not get any more candidates because by their 20 riding wins they now have 20% of the legislature. Party B will get an additional 10 members in the legislature based on the party priority queue and Part A will get an additional 40 members based on their priority list.

This is a popular voting system.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Makarov

Based on what? That they didn't vote for your party? That is a rather dim view to take of Canada's most educated province.

It's not the outcome I voted for, but the point of democracy is the people get to pick. I'm certainly willing to respect that, and I think most people would feel that way.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

It looks to me, with 49 polls reporting and a 250-vote bulge, that the race in Calgary-McCall, though tight, will go to Galpin.

The last polls to come in take the longest to count because they have the most votes. Still up in the air. The last 10 polls to come in have made the lead jump around in the 120-300 range.

Last provincial election was quite similar, Shiraz Shariff had a close lead most of the night, and then people woke up the next morning to an unofficial Kang victory.

[photon]

Now trending to be about 53% voter turnout.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

And there's also a popular amendment of PR which is mixed member proportionality which tries to bring in local representation.

Basically, voters have two votes in this system. They vote for the national party which is used to calculate the proportionality described in the first system and then they vote for the candidate in their riding. Winning at the riding level is typically first past the post. After all of the riding candidates win they then superimpose the proportionality ontop and fill in the rest of the seats so that each party makes up the national proportional representation.

For example, in a 100 seat legislature voters voted for 50% party A, 30% party B, 20% party C. There are also 50 ridings where party A won 10, party B won 20 and party C won 20.

Party C will not get any more candidates because by their 20 riding wins they now have 20% of the legislature. Party B will get an additional 10 members in the legislature based on the party priority queue and Part A will get an additional 40 members based on their priority list.

This is a popular voting system.

There are also systems that use large ridings with multiple representatives. So Calgary NW might be 8 ridings, with 8 MLAs, where the highest 8 candidates get seats. Keeps local reps, but also gives a party that gets an evenly distributed 20% of the vote a reasonable amount of representation.

Ultimately, you can think up an essentially infinite number of ways to run an election. First past the post has a long history, so changing has a high bar.

[kn]

Things I'm looking forward to following:

1. the cat fight in the legislature
2. do the PCs see this as a mandate to spend, spend, spend or will WR hold them in check a bit?
3. what will the deficit be in four years?
4. how long will the WR still be hampered by social conservatism?

The PCs definitely had the better candidates so I think it's a good result actually for both Alberta and the Wildrose. If they had gotten in and fcuked things up, they'd be a one-and-done protest party. This gives them a chance to get experience, filter out their wingnuts, moderate their policies, and demonstrate to Albertans that they truly are a government in waiting.

Not much different than the evolution of the Reform Party to be honest...

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by kn

Things I'm looking forward to following:

1. the cat fight in the legislature
2. do the PCs see this as a mandate to spend, spend, spend or will WR hold them in check a bit?
3. what will the deficit be in four years?
4. how long will the WR still be hampered by social conservatism?

The PCs definitely had the better candidates so I think it's a good result actually for both Alberta and the Wildrose. If they had gotten in and fcuked things up, they'd be a one-and-done protest party. This gives them a chance to get experience, filter out their wingnuts, moderate their policies, and demonstrate to Albertans that they truly are a government in waiting.

Not much different than the evolution of the Reform Party to be honest...

Does this end the same way, wildrose/pc merger?

[longsuffering]

Originally Posted by Table 5

Up until I went into the booth, I wasn't 100% sure who I would vote for....just that it wasn't going to be for the WR or NDP. I ended up putting an x next to the pube in the wheelchair. Despite his party not having much power, he seems like a decent guy with good ideas. Plus it was still a bit of a protest vote against the PCs.

I'll admit that I had to look that reference up.

[freedogger]

Not looking forward to a PST.

[You Need a Thneed]

On the official elections Alberta results, the polls reporting and the votes cast #s aren't updating at the same time.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

My final report card:

We kind of knew it was going to be a long night for Wild Rose when results started trickling in from rural ridings where they should have been doing really well, and they showed a slight lead to the PCs. Looking at the results now, it appears that the Wild Rose actually did quite poorly in urban areas: they may win as many as three seats in Calgary--two seems more likely at this point--and were absolutely shut out in Edmonton, in a few cases coming in a distant third place. They even came in third in one riding in Lethbridge.

On the other hand, they also did much less well than they needed to in rural areas--they lost a number of ridings that if the polls were right they SHOULD have won easily. In some of those cases (West Yellowhead; Grand Prairie, eg) it wasn't even close.

So what happened?

One of two things:
1. The first is that the polls failed to capture a late shift in voter preference over the last weekend of the campaign--the only poll to show such movement was Forum, and it showed a 2-point lead for Wild Rose as recently as yesterday--a 9% loss is not all that close to a 2-point lead, though you could argue that Forum came closer than anybody else. We might call this scenario (the late-breaking wave scenario) the "Leech-Hunsberger" effect.

2. The second possibility is that there was never this appetite for Wild Rose in the first place. Under this scenario the polls were just, for lack of a better word, "wrong." They vastly overestimated Wild Rose's support and underestimated Tory support.

I actually favour the second scenario, mostly for its simplicity. It does mean that certain pollsters (I'm looking at you, Angus Reid) need to take a long hard look in the mirror tomorrow morning. You got it wrong, guys: not a little bit wrong, but a lot wrong. Angus Reid had the Wild Rose at 41% (they came in at 35) and the Tories at 31: they came in at 44! The only thing they apparently got right was the level of support for the Liberals and NDP; both fell within the margin of error.

More importantly, a 9-point lead for the Wild Rose became a 9 point lead for the Tories on election day. That's not even close enough for horseshoes: that's an 18% difference.

Clearly, the big losers tonight are pollsters.

[cal_guy]

According to wikipedia Calgary, Edmonton and Medicine Hat actually used the Single-Transferable Vote to assign ridings while all of the other ridings used instant-runoff! They only changed to the first-past-the-post system in 1955.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...le_Vote#Canada

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by Makarov

How are you measuring the average Calgarian though? Anecdotal evidence?

I have no polls to support my claim right now, but after being a member here for eight years and being a citizen of this city for thirty-three (reading it's news, seeing it's polls, seeing it's election results, working several jobs and having many friends) I would feel safe in making that claim. I do think the average CP member slants a bit more liberal than the average Calgarian. I think we just got fooled by the pollsters (like damn near everyone in this province).

I understand it's not a very quantitative or qualitative claim, but I was merely giving my opinion on your claim.