[Marxism] Proportional Representation the NZ experience

["Jurriaan Bendien" <adsl675281@xxxxxxxxxx>]

matt gibson:

If a mass working class party could get more than 30% of the
popular vote (and therefore potentially a parliamentary majority)
tactically Marxists should support the retention of FPP.

Reply:

Interesting idea. The NZ Labor Party in its history regularly got more than
30% of the vote, with FPP, yet lost the election. It's not so much the
absolute amount of votes that is critical here, but the margin by which they
win or lose electorates in a multi-electorate system.

Assume a country with three electorates, 100 votes per electorate and 2
political parties (N and L)  fielding candidates in each electorate. We
can construct this hypothetical example:

Electorate 1: 51 vote N and 49 vote L
Electorate 2: 51 vote N and 49 vote L
Electorate 3: 5 vote N and 95 vote L

In a FPP system, party N wins here with two candidates, against one
for party L. Party N has 107 votes, and Party L has 193 votes.
So even although party L had nearly double the amount of votes,
they still lost. Out of 300 votes cast, 103 votes are "lost" or
"wasted" votes. In other words, a third of the votes cast are
wasted.

Proportional representation is therefore always preferable to
FPP, although FPP sounds sexier. The real debate however
concerns the type of PPR to be used, because various different'
systems are possible. The question here is "proportion of
what"?

Another reason why PPR is preferable is because
is enables small parties to gain representation more
easily.

Jurriaan






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