Fair Vote Canada Predicts Election Outcome

Fair Vote Canada

Although the writ has barely dropped, Fair Vote Canada figures it’s not too soon to announce the results of the coming federal election.

The President of Fair Vote Canada, Bronwen Bruch says, “Our dysfunctional voting system throws up erratic and irrational results,” says “but some outcomes are sadly predictable.”

So, Fair Vote confidently predicts the following:

· Most Canadians will be “represented” in Parliament by somebody they voted against. Under the current, winner-take-all system, votes for losing candidates do not help to elect anybody and are essentially wasted votes.

· Canada will elect less than 25% women to Parliament. That’s about as good as it gets with our voting system. Fifty countries do better than we do in this regard, most of them using proportional voting systems. Every democracy with at least 30% women in its legislature uses a proportional voting system.

• The Conservatives will win every seat in Alberta, or all but one, with about 65% of the votes.
• The Liberals will win almost all the seats in Canada’s major cities, with about half the votes.
• The NDP will get one million more votes than the Bloc Quebecois, but the BQ will win almost twice as many seats.
• The Bloc Quebecois will win two-thirds of the seats in Quebec with half the votes. 
• The Green Party will get one million votes (enough to elect 25 Conservatives) but will not win any seats.

· Voter turnout will be the lowest in history, or close to it. When your vote doesn’t make a difference, why bother? Unprecedented amounts of negative campaign advertising will deliberately foster apathy and cynicism.

Our antique voting system is not really competitive, Two-thirds of Canadian voters already know who will be elected in their riding, before the votes are even cast. Really, it’s a tribute to Canadians’ sense of civic duty that any of us bother to vote at all