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May
The results of the 2009 BC Election are in – Gordon Campbell’s Liberals are in for a third straight term (albeit with a smaller majority – something that does not shock me). What did shock me was how badly the BC STV electoral reform proposal got beaten in the referendum. Last time this issue was up for discussion, it garnered 57.7% of voters’ support. It needed 60% to pass. Because the vote was so close last time and many voters had expressed confusion about the option at a technical level, it was decided to run the referendum again.
The initial results on STV this year is 39% in favour of the change. Because of this substantial drop, the issue is effectively dead in BC and is unlikely to go to referendum again in the next few elections. Some pundits are claiming that this result has killed STV for a generation in BC and probably in the rest of Canada as well.
My theory as to why STV died at the polls is that voters never really understood how the process works and when they did, they had some fears about how it would affect the political balance in this province. I imagine that a good number of Liberal supporters voted “no” on the issue because they felt it would lead to NDP majority governments. I also heard some folks with concerns about coalition governments that “wouldn’t be able to get anything done”.
Other pundits have suggested that the way the question was framed this time impacted the results. Last time, voters were told that a group of citizens had recommended STV and they were asked to vote for or against it. This time, voters were simply asked to vote for the existing system (first past the post) or for STV. This could have scared some voters off because it put things in terms of “abandon the current system”.
In any case, it was an interesting election. Voter turnout was down to 47.6% this year (compared to 62% in the 2005 BC election). The NDP gained three seats and still no special interest parties represented.
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Hi Aaron, both the Liberals and NDP gained seats in this election as it sits now (pending Delta South) Liberals have 49 seats and the New Democrats 36 in an 85 seat legislature.
I would agree that people likely didn’t understand the STV system. I’m relatively interested in this area and I didn’t have the time to thoroughly study STV and understand how it would work. So if a system is so complex that people have to study it to understand it, then how can we expect it to pass a referendum?
Having written this, what I do know is that it would likely end up with perpetual coalition governments (not a majority of one party or another, as you suggest in your post). And the anomaly of a coalition parliament is that often times a fringe party holds the balance of power and. Consequently, a very small portion of the electorate essentially controls government. Witness the hapless Dion and his merry band of separatists and socialists in his failed federal coalition last year. That coalition failed because, in large part, the separatist Bloc (a party with its primary purpose being to break up our federation and a party that was elected by a small portion of the population of one province) would hold de facto power over Dion’s minority.
So the contradiction between STV better representing the electorate through proporationality and the functional realities of a parliament controlled by a tiny fraction of a coalition parliament have not been reconciled.
In any event, I agree that this form of electoral reform is dead. It will be interesting to see what happens in 2013.
Hey Mark,
Thanks for the input. I think a good example of the power a fringe party can weild came when we saw the late Chuck Cadman (former Independent MP from Surrey) decide whether a vote of non-confidence would bring down the government in power.
Sometimes these issues do come down to the influence of a single swing-voter.
Congratuations on the win, by the way. You guys must be pretty chuffed.