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| "Look at those lovely trees. Let's put a sign up in front of them!" |
Germany and Canada have elections this September and I came across some interesting stats. In Germany, 41 percent of voters are undecied. In Canada, it's 13 percent.
What's up with that? Are Germans more indecisive voters? Do Canadians just have their minds made up vote by habit? Or is there something else?
Let's start with how they vote.
Germany's federal electoral system is a mixed-member proportional representation system. This means that you vote for your local candidate, and you vote for a party. They don't have to be the same. In 2017, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union won 185 of the 299 local seats, but only 15 of the 410 proportional party seats. But the far-right Alternative for Germany, the Greens, the Social Democrats, the Left (former DDR communists), and the liberal Free Democrats all got somwhere between got 95 and 60 votes respectively.
Canada has a first-past-the-post electoral system, so it's one vote for your local candidate who is a member of a political party. The party with that wins in the most local candidate races wins. First-past-the-post is straight-forward, but most of it's Wikipedia page is about its disadvantages.
Often, first-pat-the-post systems allow political parties to form a government with less than 50 percent of the popular vote. This is something the mixed member proportional representation solved. By adding that second party vote, Germany's Bundestag adds a popular vote to the mix that nixes some of Canada's first-past-the-post issues.
Every vote counts in Canada. But every votes counts more equally in Germany.
Before he got elected prime minister, Justin Trudeau ran in 2015 on a platform of electoral reform. He was going to hold a referendum on whether to move on from the current system to another.
But, J.T wasn't interested in proportional representation. Even though a commision he formed recommended it, he inaccurately claimed it would allow crazy fringe parties into parliament. Germany and other countries set a 5 percent threshold of the party vote that parties most reach to earn seats in the Bundestag for that very reason. So, the Pirate Party, the Vegan Party, the Bavarian independence party, and the Nudist Party must convince 5 percent of the people they're not too crazy to be taken seriously.
Trudeau wanted a ranked ballot system, which his commission didn't recommend and that some experts pointed out would favour his own arrogantly nicknamed "natural governing party." When he wasn't going to get what he wanted, Trudeau gave up on electoral reform in Canada.
Now, how does that long digression come back to undecided voters?
My theory is that German voters are strategic voters. They might have their minds made up for their local candidate, but they're keeping their options open for their party vote. So, someone might vote for the mainstream right-wing CDU, but cast their party vote for the Greens or the AfD because they're worried about climate chnage or want a bit of crazy in the Bundestag.
This makes the elections unpredictable. So, chancellors are loathe to call an opportunistic snap election and stick to the four-year election schedule.
If you're living under the tyanny of the first-past-the-post system, then you only have one vote and you have to go all-in for the mainstream parties or for the crazy parties. There's no splitting your vote on the party level.
That's probably why most Canadians usually have their minds made up. Which means if a prime minister is arrogant enough, he might call an election during a pandemic that no one wants in the hopes of going from a minority government to a majority government.
First-past-the-post system might not keep all the crazies out of Parliament.