Comment

Comment on Attacks on Australia’s preferential voting system are ludicrous. We can be proud of it | Kevin Bonham

And it really hurts to see the NDP fall so much, which likely would not have occurred if Canada had the same system as Australia

Maybe. But although the fact that Dutton, like Poilievre, lost his own seat, was much more remarked-upon in the international press, we here in Australia had another parallel to your election. Our Greens are probably the best equivalent to your NDP, being a left-wing party with significant mainstream success historically. And Adam Bandt lost his seat while his party lost 3/4 of their seats, just as Jagmeet Singh lost his seat while his party lost 70% of seats.

This happened largely because of a quirk of how IRV works. The precipitous drop in support for the LNP mostly went to help Labor (side note: for weird historical reasons, our party spells its name the American way, despite in every other context in Australia, labour having a u), which helped them finish ahead of the Greens on 3-candidate-preferred, which meant the Greens got eliminated and their votes went to support a Labor victory. In essence, a drop in support for the right-wing candidates resulted in a centrist candidate winning where previously a left-wing candidate had won. That’s an aberrant result that doesn’t really match anyone’s intuition of how elections should work. And it’s one reason

The linked article is a response to

Thanks. I didn’t realise it was in response to a specific article, but I gathered it was a response to general comments from some in the LNP praising FPTP. I agree with the conclusion it makes about campaigns being run differently and voters’ strategy being different. I was responding primarily to the headline suggesting we should be “proud” of what is literally the worst acceptable voting system. (Personally, I consider FPTP completely unacceptable and anti-democratic; it should not even be part of any discussion among serious people.)

source

Sort:hotnew top

abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

we here in Australia had another parallel to your election.

I didn't realize this, but this is really interesting. Thank you for the hattip!

In essence, a drop in support for the right-wing candidates resulted in a centrist candidate winning where previously a left-wing candidate had won. That’s an aberrant result that doesn’t really match anyone’s intuition of how elections should work.

Unless, like me, you grew up in a FPTP system - then this is exactly what you'd expect. (As you already know in FPTP the votes would be split, so with the centrist and the right-wing splitting the vote, the left-wing would win. But if the right-wing drops out, then the votes would mostly go to the centrist instead, likely putting the centrist ahead now.)

I didn’t realise it was in response to a specific article, but I gathered it was a response to general comments from some in the LNP praising FPTP.

Accurate enough - the article that it was responding - well, it was basically what you wrote above.

I was responding primarily to the headline suggesting we should be “proud” of what is literally the worst acceptable voting system.

I took this with a fair bit of humor. I would have said that it's not the worst voting system because FPTP is worse, but then,

(Personally, I consider FPTP completely unacceptable and anti-democratic; it should not even be part of any discussion among serious people.)

So actually, you are right. Agree 100% here.

a proportional system would be better.

And here too.

source
- Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  As you already know in FPTP the votes would be split, so with the centrist and the right-wing splitting the vote
  
  Ah, but it was never that. The party I’m calling centrist is viewed as centre-left here by the media and general public. With our IRV, this bears out with approximately 80% of the preferences of centrist voters going to the left-wing party; the same ratio as votes from the left-wing party that go to the centrist party. (Why about 20% of left-wing voters prefer the right-wing over the centre I will never understand.) Greens and Labor split each other’s votes, not Labor and LNP.
  
  source
  - abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    The party I’m calling centrist is viewed as centre-left here by the media and general public.
    Greens and Labor split each other’s votes, not Labor and LNP.
    
    Sounds reasonable enough, actually.
    
    (Why about 20% of left-wing voters prefer the right-wing over the centre I will never understand.)
    
    Hmm, puzzling. If they were USians then I'd suggest that it was because they confused over the name (liberals are always on the left, right?) but I digress.
    
    Ah, but it was never that.
    
    Isn't it though? As you wrote,
    
    The precipitous drop in support for the LNP mostly went to help Labor
    
    Just as it'd be confusing why left-wing voters would support a right-wing party over a centrist or centre-left party, it'd be equally confusing why right-wing voters would support a left-wing party (the Greens) over the centrist one. Well, sounds like they didn't.
    
    (With IRV of course it's not that this happened because of a split vote but that because Labor had more support in the first preference that it survived over the Greens, when normally it'd be the other way around - so the specific reasons are different and a bit more complex, but this specific result which occurred is intuitive to someone who only understands FPTP. More generally, both FPTP and IRV suffer from spoiler effects (as explained in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect ) - while IRV is better than FPTP there are still cases where spoiler effects can happen and this example of a Green losing to a Labor due to a loss of support by the LNP is one of them - it just feels more intuitive to someone familiar with FPTP because this is the worst when it comes to spoiler effects).
    
    source
TrippaSnippa@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

The precipitous drop in support for the LNP mostly went to help Labor (side note: for weird historical reasons, our party spells its name the American way, despite in every other context in Australia, labour having a u), which helped them finish ahead of the Greens on 3-candidate-preferred, which meant the Greens got eliminated and their votes went to support a Labor victory. In essence, a drop in support for the right-wing candidates resulted in a centrist candidate winning where previously a left-wing candidate had won. That’s an aberrant result that doesn’t really match anyone’s intuition of how elections should work. And it’s one reason a proportional system would be better.

This isn’t what happened though. Bandt had a 5.2% swing away from him on first preferences which seems to have gone largely to Labor, who had a 5.7% swing towards them. The Liberals actually had a miniscule swing of 0.2% towards them. That swing away from the Greens and towards Labor pushed them ahead of the Libs into the 2 candidate preferred count, where they won on Liberal preferences.

source
- Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I was actually talking about the nation-wide results there, rather than seat-by-seat. Hence the case for a proportional system.
  
  But I’ll admit, when looking at actual individual seat results, not being from Victoria, I was mostly looking at my own seat of Ryan (where the effect I described occurred, but not quite enough to flip from Greens to Labor) and neighbouring Brisbane (where it happened exactly as I described).
  
  Melbourne is a difficult case because just looking at the swing doesn’t tell the full story. The division was also redrawn such that the strongest Greens booths moved to another division, and it received new booths that were much more Labor-friendly. Even if no individual voters had swung at all, you’d have seen a big swing towards Labor in 3CP, though not quite enough for the seat to flip.
  
  The best case you could have made would actually have been Griffith, where the LNP lost a large amount of 1st preference support, and the Greens lost a moderate amount, while Labor benefited from both with a huge boost.
  
  source
  - TrippaSnippa@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    That’s fair, I was talking specifically about Melbourne. However, the redistribution doesn’t account for the swing against Bandt. The ABC’s analysis put his first preference vote nominally on ~45% after redistribution, but he only got 39.5% (and I believe their swing figures are adjusted for redistributions, which is why they show Bennelong as a Labor gain from the Liberals even though Labor previously held the seat).
    
    You’re completely right about Brisbane though (and the same thing nearly happened in Ryan). The swing against the Greens alone wouldn’t have dropped them out of the 2CP, the massive surge for Labor at the expense of the LNP was what did it.
    
    source