4.3 - Canadian Elections

political parties

• most candidates represent a political party, so the party members first have to decide if they’re tea or not

• also make it so that voters (the electorate) know what kind of ideology they can expect form the candidate

• people can also run as independents, but campaigns are hard to do (expensive and logistics, also ppl dont know what you stand for)

ridings/electoral districts

• candidates run in their 1/343 ridings (number is adjusted after censuses)

• each riding is supposed to have relatively equal population, so each MP represents the same amount of people

the actual vote

• canada follows the FPTP system

  • the candidate with the most seats wins the seat

• the losing candidates just go back to their normal jobs

forming gov’t

• the political party with the most seats gets to form government (get to pick PM and they pick the cabinet)

• the party with the second most seats forms “his majesty’s loyal opposition” (the official opposition)

problems with FPTP

• the percentage of the popular vote typically doesn’t match who won the seat (the power given to a party doesn’t match how many votes they got)

• tends to punish smaller parties

  • trend toward a two party system (think the spoiler effect)

• artificial majority (% of seats not equal % of votes)

how is FPTP so effed?

if a riding has three candidates, and Candidate A gets 45% of the vote, Can. B gets 27.5%, and Can. C gets 27.5%.

Can A wins with the most votes, but in reality, 55% of the riding voted against them

alternative to FPTP: proportional rep.

• different system where people vote directly for a party, and the amount of the vote that party got is the percentage of seats it holds.

• second alternative is ranked ballots but don’t really need to know them

advantages of prop. rep.

Pros:

• voter turnout is typically higher

• people feel more represented

Cons:

• typically form minority governments or coalitions (unstable, increases election frequency)

• breeds election fatigue (votes so often nobody wanna do it)

• extremist or fringe parties show up more in government because there’s no opportunity for them to lose out a seat if they get votes