Prediction on Referendum on Electoral Reform
Posted May 11, 2009 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: Predictions, Referendum
Comments (10)
In order for the referendum to “pass”, the government set a 60% threshold for approving a change to another electoral system. The other criterion was 50% of the ridings must have 50% support for the referendum.
The 60% requirement on a binary question makes it very difficult for the referendum to pass – for every 2 people voting for status quo, it requires 3 STV voters to offset.
The way that the ballot was worded (from a yes/no question in 2005 to a much more wordy ballot in 2009), combined with the general lack of public education on the nuances on the electoral system, meant that the pro-STV forces had an impossible task at hand.
The referendum was likely to fail on that basis alone – if you have enough people voting on an issue they know nothing about, it will normalize to 50/50. If you have 100 people in a room, and 60% of them don’t know of an issue (which is generally what proportion do not have a good grasp of electoral reform issues), you then require the remaining 40 people in the room to vote 75% in favour of STV in order to have the room reach the 60/40 threshold.
For those of you that understood the previous paragraph, it becomes mathematically obvious that the referendum was never going to be passing. In fact, it was a statistical miracle it ever came to 58/42 as it did in 2005 – most of this was due to the positive wording on the ballot. Specifically the change of the words from the 2005 ballot of “as recommended by the Citizen’s Assembly” to “as proposed by the Citizen’s Assembly” is crucial.
The pro-STV campaign made some serious mistakes. The first mistake was that their main slogan on signage everywhere was “Power up your vote”, which might work well for a video game, but the bulk of the voting populace will be older than the “video game generation”. The second mistake they made was spending too much time on the mechanics of how STV worked (which is an unwinnable proposition). A better alternative would have been to tap into the general detachment the public has with the government (“Don’t like Gordon Campbell or Carole James? Choose STV!”), and to link together the concept of STV and better government.
Conversely, the anti-STV campaign was very successful on their messaging – the single message that “STV will cause larger ridings, which will reduce your local representation” carried. For rural ridings, the argument of “all of your representatives can be elected from a single city” is incredibly powerful, easily understood, and will crush the STV campaign. It doesn’t even matter if it isn’t true (which it is not!), but counter-arguments will get lost in the noise.
In terms of measuring the relative effectiveness of both campaigns, my guess is that Bill Tieleman and David Schreck beat the pro-STV campaign.
Prediction on 2009 referendum on electoral reform:
First Past the Post 54%
BC-STV 46%
STV ridings that vote above 50% for STV: 20/85 (24%). My guess is that Vancouver Island would vote for STV, and dense urban ridings. The interior of the province will reject STV convincingly.
I’ll consider this post to be the obituary on any serious electoral reform in the province. It is too bad considering that STV is the best of alternative systems. For the record, I consider first past the post a good system – just that STV allows voters much more precision in voting. I voted for BC-STV.
Inevitably, if people want “proportional” results in elections with the First Past the Post system, they will need to consider increasing the numbers of members in the legislature to a higher level. The more electoral districts there are, the more proportional the FPTP results will be.
There’s a lot in the political climate that’s shifted the winds against electoral reform:
Memories of 1996 and 2001 have faded: it’s much easier to campaign against FPTP when the existing government is such a ridiculously lop-sided distribution than to depend on people’s memories of elections past.
Federally, the string of minority governments have dampened the layman’s feelings that FPTP is not “accurate”: sure the current Parliament is Bloc-heavy, but the relative balance of power is, in fact, not terribly far off from public opinion. If one was in favour of majorities, it’s not like you can make something MORE majoritarian than FPTP without looking artifically undemocratic. If one was in favour of minorities and power-sharing, the urgency doesn’t seem as great.
Ontario and PEI failed in their MMP referendums, and New Brunswick’s got torpedoed by the government before it got to a vote. Voting for FPTP no longer looks outdated.
General recession risk aversion.
As for the question of rural representation, I honestly don’t know for sure. The odds are high that a large Interior riding with one central city will see more representation by the city: the city’s major party candidates will likely be much closer to a quota and preferences will flow out from other candidates, but it depends on the distribution and I imagine any serious party would leave enough non-city candidates on the slate that there will be one or two that make it through preference flows on the margin. The problem is that there are no previous examples: Ireland, Malta, and Tasmania are nowhere near as vast and sparse as BC, and testing if rural representation will increase or decrease takes a big leap of faith on the part of electors.
The polticians could have an interesting dilemma on their hands after May 12, which I agree will probably not happen.
What if BC-STV does get 50% support and it will be a squeaker.
We will then have had two referendums where a majority of the voters rejected FPTP.
What then?
I agree that the STV is a worthwhile option, although for different reasons; while I appreciate the finer control voters have in selecting their representation, given the current decline in voter turnout I really believe it is important to get people interested in politics again. The current system works if the population supports it and stays informed and involved, however Canadians appear to be tuning out and perhaps the STV is just the ticket to changing this attitude.
What will really be a shame (and ironic) is if the referendum fails AND we have another lopsided result at the same time.
STV maligns the idea of proportional representation to the point of a caricature.
An MMP or other form of PR that would be less subject to abuse as compared to STV will certainly pass. Question is why are the PR advocates pushing something as convoluted and subject to abuse as STV?
I believe they are driven by an unwarranted idealism and a wrong headed model of society, and that scares the heck out of me.
STV will squeak through
Your mathematical analysis is out of date. Indeed, the electorate is being asked to vote a second time on the same question. Consequently, if we take the previous result as our starting point (consider the difference
in the sample size of the Angus Reid poll as compared to the last B.C. general election) and assume that there will be only a small percentage who change their minds, we begin with a 57/43 split in favour of STV. Moreover, as the individual’s understanding of STV increases so does the probability of selecting the STV option. Therefore, for that portion of the electorate that voted in the previous referendum, we can anticipate a small increase for STV at the expense of FPTP, in the neighbourhood of 1% to 2%.
Where the referendum will be decided is in any changes to the participation rate. A ten percent increase in the participation rate could be very favourable to the STV cause, but it depends on how it breaks down. In the best case scenario, we see a significant increase in the participation rate of the 18 to 35 year old age group, a significant increase in the number of Greens who show up at the polls, a sigificant number of disenchanted voters who, in the past, have cast ineffective votes, but decide to vote this time because of the referendum question, and a significant number of pissed off Liberals who decide to sit this one out. The unknown is the manner in which NDP supporters who sat out the last election and referendum will vote on the referendum question.
In order to carry the day, this additional 10% of the electorate needs to
opt for STV at about 65%. Certainly, this is a tall order, but within reasonable probabilities.
Prediction: STV 60.2% FPTP 39.8%
This is kind of like the Morlocks and the Eloi in the Time Machine, isn’t it?
As usual, the progressives and social justice people have mainly stayed home washing their hair or what ever they do. And I agree with the writer who suggested that the pro-STV people had a poorly conceived campaign. As usual, the “lets keep everything the same because it suits us” crowd are out in force, well organized and willing to pound their drums.
Progressives and Social Justice people will have to get out of their heads, into their running shoes and start to participate physically before changes ever happen.
Brian Gibb:
Sorry to burst your bubble, but you have one glaring flaw in your argument.
The more people know about STV, the less likely they will support it.
http://www2.canada.com/nanaimodailynews/news/story.html?id=1577960
“The rise in awareness seems to have lowered the chances of BC-STV being implemented in the next provincial election”
I consider myself quite knowledgeable about STV and even supported it. Seeing people like Shreck and Tielmann go against it confirmed my support for it.
It was not until I saw what my riding would look like that I changed my mind. It had nothing to do with the pro or anti side.
In fact, I thought the pro side had a really nice professional website. The anti website was amateur and boring in comparison.
It was my own research that convinced me to change my mind; not any arguments from the pro or anti sides.
Brian, what you just said is as complicated as the rules for how it works.
I have told everyone in Nechako Lakes that I could talk to, that as a candidate to represent the best interests of my community, I would be remiss if I suggested for one second that STV would be good for this area or even BC. I told them whether I am elected or not, that BC STV will not only effectively triple the cost of keeping MLA representation in the communities we have them in now, but for all of that expense, there isn’t one shred of a guarantee that there will be any more conrol of politicians than there is now.
When asked “Do you understand it?” and they all said “No.”, then I said would you sign a mortgage document without KNOWING what you were signing? They always replied “NO!” Then I said to them, “Then keep FPTP.”