Matthew Yglesias » Fun With Multi-Party Politics

Sep 24th, 2009 at 9:29 am

Fun With Multi-Party Politics

If we ignore the undecideds, this seems to make it quite likely that the Tories will secure a majority in parliament even as more voters prefer left-of-center parties. In Canada’s 2006 election a majority of people voted either Liberal, New Democrat, or Green but the Conservatives wound up with the most parliamentary seats and they’ve been running a minority government ever since even though it’s pretty clear that the median Canadian was supporting the Liberals. Most countries with strong multi-party politics have a substantial element of proportional representation in their system which helps iron out these kind of bugs. Canada and the UK, however, do first-past-the-post elections in single member districts.

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48 Responses to “Fun With Multi-Party Politics”

spokeytown Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Was it Will Rogers who said “I’m not a member of any organized political party; I’m a Democrat”? You can always count on us adorable free-thinking liberals to a) wander off in a dozen different directions and b) refuse to crack down on anyone who’s off the reservation. Then conservatives follow their authoritarian instincts, and rule from the back seat. This poll, the Canadian election, the inability to get much done with a 60/40 majority, etc.

I like Matt’s emphasis on Senate procedure as an obstacle to change, but I’m a little skeptical as to whether tightening up party discipline, ending the filibuster, etc. will ever work. These liberal disorganizational tendencies go all the way back to the People’s Front of Judea vs. the Front of Judean Peoples.
Ikram Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Parties are not linear. There are LibDem voters whose second choice is the Tories, and possibly even Tory voters who would prefer Labour to LibParties are not linear. There are LibDem voters whose second choice is the Tories, and possibly even Tory voters who would prefer Labour to Lib Dem.

In Ontario, the rural Protestant hinterland switched from voting Conservative (As it had foe generations) to voting for the socialist NDP in the 1990 provincial election. The NDP and Tories took the left and right wing Protestant vote, while the Liberals collected the urban and catholic vote. So rural protestants would rather vote for a commie than a p*pist.

All that to say, you have no idea who the median voter is, or how she would vote. Dem.

In Ontario, the rural Protestant hinterland switched from voting Conservative (As it had foe generations) to voting for the socialist NDP in the 1990 provincial election. The NDP and Tories took the left and right wing Protestant vote, while the Liberals collected the urban and catholic vote. So rural protestants would rather vote for a commie than a papist.

All that to say, you have no idea who the median voter is, or how she would vote.
Noah Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 10:01 am
So where on Earth does the multiparty system work effectively?

Italy? Switzerland? Germany?

I think what we’re looking at here is just the basic flaw in parliamentary democracy itself.
DTM Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 10:12 am
The left and right are hard to identify in the UK anymore. There has been such a convergence on economic issues among the major parties that arguably they are all center-left these days, and what have left is actually two different socially authoritarian parties (Labour and Conservatives) versus a socially libertarian party (Liberal Democrats). See, for example, here.
southpaw Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Why in heaven’s name would you ignore the undecideds?
ajay Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 10:24 am
These liberal disorganizational tendencies go all the way back to the People’s Front of Judaea vs. the Front of Judaean Peoples.

I think you mean Judaean People’s Front. Splitter.

Neither, of course, were caricatures of the liberal parties, but of the far more fissiparous Communist left. The liberal left in Britain has had rather more of a broad-tent approach – the Labour party in 1945 covered everything from Eurocommunism avant la lettre to Bevinite empire-building, and then there was the Lib/SDP Alliance in the 1980s, which was a sort of bizarre alliance between the William Morris hippie Liberal Party and the shiny-suited market social democrats of the New Labourish SDP…

And the far right hasn’t been exactly unified either, certainly in the UK, what with the various Iron Egos leading the BNP, UKIP, Veritas and so on…
skiddie Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 10:25 am
You’re not just ignoring the undecideds– you’re also ignoring the point that you later made: the election is decided in districts. Just as with the electoral college and the popular vote, this chart does not matter at all, electorally besides to show that many fewer people prefer Labour than used to.
Al Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 10:39 am
If we ignore the undecideds

First of all, the grey arc isn’t “undecided”, it is “Other”. Which includes a host of smaller parties, like the BNP, UKIP, etc. Is it clear that these Others are distributed in a neutral fashion? I don’t think so.
Aqua Regia Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 10:45 am
One thing about parliamentary democracies that I’m not sure that anyone has mentioned: party loyalty is very very high, particularly so in Canada. And a PM releasing his MP’s to vote their conscience is quite rare. What that means is that a party that can gain a majority has a LOT of legislative power. None of this garbage where democrats would refuse to vote for a democratic bill.

In Ontario we had a referendum a few years ago to change our pure first-past-the-post system but it was voted down, for some reason.
Ginger Yellow Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Don’t put it beyond Labour to try to introduce PR before the next election. Sure, it would be a transparent attempt to save their own skin, but it would almost certainly get the support of the Lib Dems, and probably many opponents of PR within the Labour party who are afraid for their jobs.
Chris Dornan Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 10:57 am
This is the basic reality of our system: minorities get absolute rule. Its not good–not good at all.

Many countries offer proportional representation and coalition government and they seem to work quite well. The Irish system, for example, works quite well, as do many others.
Aqua Regia Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 11:03 am
I wish we had a culture of official coalitions up here. Instead all we get is backroom deals and left-wing parties quietly “propping up” Conservative governments in order to gain advantage against other left-wing parties. It’s not cool, not cool at all, and its allowed the Conservatives to govern as though they’ve had a majority when they don’t.
Andrew Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 11:09 am
In the UK, the Lib Dems sort of function by being everybody’s second choice. So they get the votes of would-be Tory voters when the Tories do badly and the votes of would-be Labour voters when Labour does badly.

If we had a parliamentary system, I could see a situation where a centrist party sort of played a similar role. Although given the ideological breakdown in the U.S., a Westminster-system might look more like Canada’s, with a dominant centrist party, a conservative party, and a social-democratic third party.

Granted, both the UK and Canadian systems function as essentially two-party ones. First-past-the-post voting encourages that. But it seems to me that having both FPTP and presidentialism reinforces the two-party system by dramatically reducing the incentives to forming a third party. At least with a parliamentary system, third parties can hope to have some constructive influence in forming coalitions or giving support to minority governments.
jon Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Let me speak in defense of the first past the post system. It does what it’s supposed to do: keep the fringe out of parliament. Proportional governments are littered with Marxists, Fascists, Theocracists and single-issue parties of all stripes. Imagine Israel with a first past the post system. You would probably have Kadima forming a minority government that would make deals with Labour on security issues and Likud on economic issues. Avigdor Lieberman would be a nobody instead of a cabinet minister.
Aqua Regia Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Let me speak in defense of the first past the post system. It does what it’s supposed to do: keep the fringe out of parliament.

It also means that parties which are strong regionally but weak nationally are vastly over-represented. Now, that may be a feature, not a bug, since it does help to increase national unity, but it is devastating to Canada’s left-wing parties. The New Democrats have far less as a % of seats than as a % of the popular votes, and the Greens cannot win a single seat despite getting 7% of the national vote, since their supporters are so diffuse.

What I would ideally like to see us move towards is a hybrid system, where the majority of seats are decided by first past the post but some are decided by rep-by-pop. A similar system was proposed in Ontario, but as I said, it was voted down. The party in power rarely would support rep-by-pop, since the leading party is one that almost always is a winner in the existing system.
James Conran Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Point already made but the grey bit is “Others” not undecideds. The others will really get a substantial share of the vote – they include BNP, UKIP, Greens, and Scottish/Welsh/Northern Irish parties as well as miscellaneous independents, far left, Monster Raving Loony etc.

But you don’t need to exclude others/undecided to conclude that 43% gets the Tories a big win – after all Labour only won about 36% in 2005 and got a substantial parliamentary majority.
Myles SG Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 11:30 am
If we ignore the undecideds, this seems to make it quite likely that the Tories will secure a majority in parliament even as more voters prefer left-of-center parties.

That might seem so, except an overwhelming majority of the country now vehemently, and viscerally, want Labour, and any government that could include Labour, out of power. The animus has some specific relation to the astonishingly unpopular Gordon Brown, but nonetheless the animus is quite animated and widespread.

Most of the people who vote Lib Dem, essentially nice Southerns who are turned off by Tory authoritarianism, could not vote for Labour in a million years.

If anything, it makes more sense to speak of the Tory-Lib Dem inner dynamic, than the Lib Dem-Labour inner dynamic.

So in fact, British politics is even more skewed at the moment than the chart shows. The right way to look at it is 43 + 19 % anti-Labour or anti-current-Government, and 26% pro-Labour or pro-Government.

Only the most uninformed hearsay could motivate one to think of the Lib Dem-Labour as some sort of an unifiable left-wing block; come to think of it, Lib Dem isn’t even necessarily left.
Myles SG Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Labour, frankly, is looking electoral extinction if they don’t kick out Gordon Brown soon. Replace him with Alan Johnson, Peter Mandelson, anyone; but to stick with Brown is enforcing certain suicide.

But you don’t need to exclude others/undecided to conclude that 43% gets the Tories a big win – after all Labour only won about 36% in 2005 and got a substantial parliamentary majority.

Labour actually lost in England in 2005. Nonetheless, it is pretty much past the tipping point by now, as Labour could well lost Scotland as well as some of the Northern seats, not to mention every single seat they’ve got left in the South.
Andrew Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Right, much as I hate to agree with Myles, if it were a straight two-way contest between Labour and the Tories, the Tories would crush them. Much like Ross Perot’s ‘92 candidacy actually just split the anti-Bush vote (rather than cost Bush the victory as commonly believed), the Lib Dems serve to take the votes of people who don’t want to vote Labour but would prefer to not vote for the Tories.

Also, while jon’s point about FPTP is partially true, it’s not at all clear that Israel wouldn’t elect at least some members of Avigdor Lieberman’s party in a FPTP system. Yisrael Beitanu has very concentrated support in Russian areas of Israel.

And Aqua Regia, a hybrid system was proposed in the UK some years back. 75-80% of seats would be decided not by FPTP but by instant-runoff-voting, but an additional 20-25% of the seats would be distributed to even out inequities. The results wouldn’t be purely proportional, but they would be more proportional than pure FPTP or pure IRV. That’s a system that I think could work well in Canada or even in the U.S. House.

Of course, Germany does a mixed-member system, but in there’s half the seats are distributed by the party-vote and half by FPTP (although the overall number of seats is supposed to reflect the party vote.
Myles SG Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Or put another way, no matter how the election turns out, Labour will lose whatever sense of legitimacy it has as a national, governing party, as it is likely it will have no seats in the South, which is where most of the people in the U.K. lives. It could become like what the GOP is today, a regional party.
Myles SG Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 11:45 am
And Aqua Regia, a hybrid system was proposed in the UK some years back. 75-80% of seats would be decided not by FPTP but by instant-runoff-voting, but an additional 20-25% of the seats would be distributed to even out inequities.

I think that aside from PR (on which I have no opinion), instant-runoff would be a very good idea for those country with single-member FPTP constituencies.

I was actually thinking of the Chilean binomial system of two-member, proportionally allocated constituencies, which would create a great deal of political balance and prevent the sort of difficulties with single-member FPTP. I think it would be ideal for the U.K.
Myles SG Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Much like Ross Perot’s ‘92 candidacy actually just split the anti-Bush vote (rather than cost Bush the victory as commonly believed), the Lib Dems serve to take the votes of people who don’t want to vote Labour but would prefer to not vote for the Tories.

Bush Sr. was a hopeless politician and there really was no way he could have secured a second term against Clinton. He was just plain unpopular. I really don’t know what motivates people to claim that he could have won, when one look at the coverage of the era shows how hopeless his campaign was.
ajay Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 11:58 am
no matter how the election turns out, Labour will lose whatever sense of legitimacy it has as a national, governing party, as it is likely it will have no seats in the South, which is where most of the people in the U.K. lives.

Oh, be quiet, Myles, you ignorant man. No seats in the south? So they’re going to lose, say, Hackney North? Where they had a 25% lead last time? Or Camberwell? Or Lewisham? Or Tottenham?
The inner-city seats in London are safe for Labour. Nothing’s going to change that.
Were you not aware that London is in the south of Britain, or what?
Dale Sheldon Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
@21, Myles SG:

Instant runoff is a marginal, if any, improvement over FPTP.

The best way to improve on single-winner elections would involve using completely spoiler-free methods, such as approval or score (AKA range) voting; not IRV, which is only slightly more resistant to spoilers than FPTP. This has been shown in theory and in computer simulation by Dr. Warren Smith of the Center for Range Voting (which eh founded shortly after his simulation results surprised him): rangevoting.org
Adam Villani Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Dr. Warren Smith of the Center for Range Voting

You mean to tell me that the Center for Range Voting came up with a study supporting range voting? Astonishing!
Dale Sheldon Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
No, I’m telling you the exact opposite: that the Center for Range Voting was founded because a study *unexpectedly* concluded that range voting was superior.
Scott de B. Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
If Labour and the Liberal Democrats don’t want the Conservatives to win, they can bury their differences and merge to form a majority. That they don’t suggests that they are happy with the current situation. If they can’t be bothered to do something about it, why should Matt (or anyone) care?
Adam Villani Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
OK, sorry, I misread what you wrote. I’m still not a fan of range voting.
pseudonymous in nc Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
As others have said, the Lib Dems present different faces to the electorate when they’re challenging in Labour country, Tory country or the traditional Liberal heartlands of the English West Country or the Scottish Highlands.

Is it clear that these Others are distributed in a neutral fashion? I don’t think so.

You’re counting UKIP and the BNP by name and not the SNP and Plaid Cymru, which currently account for nine MPs, and are to the left of Labour.
Rob Richie Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
So where on Earth does the multiparty system work effectively?

Pretty revealing statement, Noah, given that the United States is one of the very rare well-established democracies that doesn’t have multi-party representation in its legislature. So you’re basically saying that the great majority of well-established democracies are somehow failures. The United States has good things going with it, but we sure can have some troubles in some policy areas and it’s safe to say that the rest of the world shouldn’t just be tossed on the scrapheap.

Similarly, Jon writes about the experience of one form of proportional representation in one country (Israel), but there are many variations, with differing impacts on representation of “fringe” voices. But note that Israel’s political problems would be highly unlikely to be solved by going to first-past-the-post. It’s an extremely diverse nation with people from many different countries, and having many (if not most) of them not represented would create whole new risks. Better to mend it there, not end it.

In the UK, there’s serious talk of giving voters a chance to vote on the “AV Plus proposal” put forward by a commission led by Roy Jenkins a decade ago – mostly seats elected by instant runoff voting in single-member races, then “top off” seats to increase fairness of representation.
Myles SG Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
As others have said, the Lib Dems present different faces to the electorate when they’re challenging in Labour country, Tory country or the traditional Liberal heartlands of the English West Country or the Scottish Highlands.

Perhaps. Although I think the really interesting question in Britain is the dissolution of the Catholic vote, which Labour used to absolutely own. What happened to that? Let’s not forget that Lib Dem was originally the Dissenter party (Methodist), Tory the Established party, and Labour the Catholic party.
Myles SG Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Oh, be quiet, Myles, you ignorant man. No seats in the south? So they’re going to lose, say, Hackney North? Where they had a 25% lead last time? Or Camberwell? Or Lewisham? Or Tottenham?
The inner-city seats in London are safe for Labour. Nothing’s going to change that.

Except nobody counts the inner-London seats as being really representative of the South, culturally or otherwise, in any way.

You know as well as I do that at this point Labour is already well on its way to being viewed as pretty much a fringe party in the Home Counties and the broader parts of the South. In the Euro elections they dipped below 10% in Home Counties. That is the question which Labour must resolve, become a party that is viewed as being the fringe in the central part of the country is not going to have governing legitimacy.
Myles SG Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I recall Orwell described a most curious phenomenon, that in the Midlands one sees houses with heavy Catholic imagery on the walls, and copies of the Daily Worker on the dining-table. That was the original Labour vote.

You’re counting UKIP and the BNP by name and not the SNP and Plaid Cymru, which currently account for nine MPs, and are to the left of Labour.

That is like saying the Bloc is to the left of the Liberals. Sure, if you split the hairs. But the difficulty is that, with devolutionist-nationalist parties, they naturally tend toward radicalism and left-Utopianism, as a natural thing, so the leftism is a side-effect, a side-show really, no central to the premises of those parties.
Myles SG Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
One should like to see Labour replaced, as the chief national party on the left, with Lib Dems, who are the kinder, gentler, and more civilized party.

It was a tragedy that the Liberals were replaced by Labour in the first place. Time for a switchback.
Aqua Regia Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Disagree with you Myles about the centrality of the Bloc’s leftist politics. Quebec’s conservatives have recently been splitting their vote between the Bloc and the Conservatives. In the last federal election the right-wing vote went to the Conservative party. The leader of the ADQ, notably, threw his support behind Harper, and not Duceppe.

In the last provincial election 85% of Quebecers voted for a left or centre-left party, so it really is important that the Bloc embrace progressive policies in order to get electoral success. As I’ve mentioned before, support for the Bloc isn’t necessarily tied to separatist sentiment, but more to who Quebecers trust most to act in their interest.
pseudonymous in nc Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Shorter Myles: “rah rah rah rah rah.”
pseudonymous in nc Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I think the really interesting question in Britain is the dissolution of the Catholic vote, which Labour used to absolutely own. What happened to that?

Liverpool awaits you, Miley. Given their attitude towards Boris Johnson, I think you’ll receive a fine Scouse welcome.
pseudonymous in nc Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
the leftism is a side-effect, a side-show really, no central to the premises of those parties.

Again, you prove that you’re all crinoline pantaloons. For all the talk of independence referenda, the attraction of voters to SNP and Plaid is built upon policies such as the abolition of tuition fees and NHS prescription charges that have nothing to do with national aspirations. That’s clearly not a sideshow.
foxtrotsky Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I think the size of the legislature is an overlooked variable here. Canada, for instance, has (IIRC) 308 MPs; the U.S., with ten times the population, has a 435-seat House.

If House districts in the U.S. were one-sixth of their current size, we might have something more like the Canadian party system.

That doesn’t mean that in any given district, there wouldn’t be pressure for supporters of third-or-lower-placed parties to vote against their first choice, and for most district elections to resolve into two-horse races.

But it might mean that we wouldn’t have the same top two parties in every district.

For instance, I live in WA-7, Jim McDermott’s district, among the country’s most liberal. I could see, if this were split into three or four districts, that one or more of those would feature a competitive Green party, but not a competitive Republican party.

Problem is, you’d then have a thousand-plus member House.

I think there was a thread on Yglesias not long ago about increasing the size of the House; here’s a link to fairvote regardless.
Myles SG Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Liverpool awaits you, Miley. Given their attitude towards Boris Johnson, I think you’ll receive a fine Scouse welcome.

I think you meant Boris’s attitude toward Liverpool. The whole, absurd fracas started when he penned an editorial in the Spectator decrying Liverpudlian mawkishness in reacting to Ken Bigley’s expiration.

In any case, the North of England is a funny place. I most highly recommend it to those who desire to get knifed at the first instance for no apparent purpose.
pseudonymous in nc Says:
September 25th, 2009 at 1:20 am
I most highly recommend it to those who desire to get knifed at the first instance for no apparent purpose.

You’ve never been there, have you, Miley?

Keep rah-rah-rahing; thing is, you’ll never be considered Bullingdon Club material, no matter how hard you try.
Myles SG Says:
September 25th, 2009 at 2:26 am
You’ve never been there, have you, Miley?

As my buddy from Charterhouse once said, the North is like Yugoslavia without Dubrovnik. Queried whether he has actually been in the North, he proudly responded in the negative.

I consider it wise to replicate that response.

And of course I have nothing to do with Bullingdon; I don’t go to Oxford. What exactly was your point?

Really, at this point I am disposed to consider you one of those self-hating British people who bitterly hate Britain for all those very qualities for which the country was once known and admired. It’s quite an unattractive sight. If I have to guess, probably Catholic, Labourite, and brawl-happy.
ajay Says:
September 25th, 2009 at 5:10 am
You know as well as I do that at this point Labour is already well on its way to being viewed as pretty much a fringe party in the Home Counties

Oh noes!

Q: when was Labour not a fringe party in the Home Counties?
Q2: since when did “legitimacy” = “being able to get a majority vote in the Home Counties – a Tory heartland since god knows when”?
Q3: in what sense are the Home Counties “the central part of the country” when in fact, if you exclude London, as you have done, they are central neither geographically nor in population? Why not announce that the Midlands are vital for legitimacy?
Myles SG Says:
September 25th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Q3: in what sense are the Home Counties “the central part of the country” when in fact, if you exclude London, as you have done, they are central neither geographically nor in population? Why not announce that the Midlands are vital for legitimacy?

But you ignore the organic relationship between London and the Home Counties, which is essentially the suburban cousin to London. The two together defines the entirety of elite British media and education.

Perhaps a comparison; the relationship between New York City and Long Island, or LA and Orange County. People tend to ignore Long Island quite a bit, but it is actually quite important politically (every single Hillary donor that I knew of lived on Long Island).
BruceMcF Says:
September 25th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Right, much as I hate to agree with Myles, if it were a straight two-way contest between Labour and the Tories, the Tories would crush them. Much like Ross Perot’s ‘92 candidacy actually just split the anti-Bush vote (rather than cost Bush the victory as commonly believed), the Lib Dems serve to take the votes of people who don’t want to vote Labour but would prefer to not vote for the Tories.

Another argument for second preference, instant run-off voting. If the majority of people first and foremost want a party out of government, though they disagree on which party should take over, as opposed to a majority first and foremost being in support of the main opposition, that is reflected in a much greater likelihood that the primary opposition party has to govern in coalition
Myles SG Says:
September 25th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Another argument for second preference, instant run-off voting.

Not really. At this point David Cameron is more popular in the U.K. than Obama is in the U.S. It’s quite striking, really.
Nathanael Says:
September 26th, 2009 at 11:41 am
There was a massive website last UK election for voters opposed to the Iraq war, which told you which candidate to vote for. In each district they picked the anti-war candidate who was most likely to win: a mess of different candidates from all five parties. (They didn’t manage to analyze Northern Ireland, though.)

I wonder if they’ll be back up again this time around. It would be a good thing. The Iraq war is so intensely stupid that opposing it is a good proxy for sanity.
r b-j Says:
September 29th, 2009 at 1:59 am
i dunno why only IRV, Range-voting, Approval-voting, and the “good old” first-past-the-post (plurality winner) election methods are the only considered. no one here considers Condorcet?

Matt Yglesias

Fun With Multi-Party Politics

48 Responses to “Fun With Multi-Party Politics”

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