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

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Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

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.)

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