FPTP produces distorted results in New Brunswick

Fair Vote Canada:

The New Brunswick election provided yet another example of why the 2004 electoral reform proposal from Bernard Lord’s Commission on Legislative Democracy should be adopted, says Fair Vote Canada, a national organization calling for electoral reform across Canada.

“Yesterday, half of the voters cast votes for the Progressive Conservatives and half for other parties,” said Fair Vote Canada Executive Director Larry Gordon. “But the half supporting the Progressive Conservatives will be represented by more than three times as many MLAs – 42 PCs vs. 13 Liberals. The opposition is severely under-represented and the 17% of the electorate supporting parties other than the Progressive Conservatives and Liberals have no representation whatsoever.”

If New Brunswick voters had voted the same way, using the Commission’s proposed mixed-member proportional (MMP) voting system, Fair Vote Canada calculated that the approximate seat allocation would have mirrored what voters actually said with their ballots.

The figures below show the popular vote for each party, along with the number and percentage of seats under the current voting system and the proposed MMP system.

Progressive Conservatives, popular vote 49% - with MMP, 28 seats (51%) rather than 42 seats (76%).

Liberals, popular vote 34% - with MMP, 18 seats (33%) rather than 13 seats (24%)

NDP with 10% of the popular vote – with MMP, 5 seats (9%) rather than 0 seats

Greens with 5% of the popular vote – with MMP, 3 seats (5%) rather than 0 seats

“While some voters would vote differently under a different voting system, this projection illustrates the core problem,” said Bronwen Bruch, President of Fair Vote Canada. “With first-past-the-post, voters say one thing with their ballots and get something different. With fair and proportional voting systems, what voters say is what they get.”

In 2006, then Premier Bernard Lord promised a referendum on the Commission’s proposed mixed-member proportional voting system. Ironically, before a referendum could be held, Premier Lord was defeated in a “wrong winner” election, in which the Progressive Conservatives won more votes, but the voting system gave the Liberals a majority of seats.

Fair Vote Canada (FVC) is a national multi-partisan citizens’ campaign to promote voting system reform. FVC was founded in 2001 and has a National Advisory Board of 37 distinguished Canadians from all points on the political spectrum.