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How Canada Keeps the Conservatives Shut Out of Power (thewalrus.ca)
submitted 3 days ago by Sunshine@piefed.ca to c/fairvote@lemmy.ca
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The result was that the Liberals won 157 seats in 2019 and 160 in 2021 in the 338-member House of Commons and formed government despite winning just about 33 percent of votes. In other words, the backing of one-third of the electorate gave them nearly 47 percent of representation in Parliament. Meanwhile, the Conservatives got approximately 34 percent of votes in both elections and won 121 and 119 seats respectively. With more votes, they won far fewer seats than the Liberals.

In 2025, progressive voters from the NDP and the Bloc Québécois voted Liberal strategically. This kind of reversion to something closer to a two-party system favours the Liberals under FPTP—the Conservatives typically win elections only when there is a divide among the centre and left. Assuming six out of ten voters are broadly progressive in their political attitudes, Conservatives have to capture the remaining four while hoping for a favourable split among progressive voters, former Tory campaign manager Fred DeLorey argued in a 2023 article for iPolitics.

A united “progressive” vote means a Liberal win. 2025 is the perfect example: an anti-conservative coalition launched the Liberals back into power. The Liberals won 49 percent of seats with 44 percent of votes, while the Conservatives received 42 percent of seats with 41 percent of votes. Despite the popular vote share for the two parties being within a 3 percent range, the Conservatives ended up with virtually no governing power.

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[–] timbyte@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

During the 2015 election campaign, Trudeau was interviewed and said he wanted AV/RV/RB. The official party position was to replace FPTP, not AV/RV/RB, but after the election Trudeau sent a committee out to see what Canadians wanted and they said they want PR. Then Trudeau shut down the process. It seems evident the reason he shut it down is because wanted AV/RV/RB. Why? Because it would benefit the Liberal party due to it being the middle of the three largest parties and so the Liberal candidates would more often be the second choice of most NDP and CPC voters.

Before I go much further I want to point out that the only reason Trudeau got a majority in 2015 is because Canadians so strongly wanted Harper out. Normally Trudeau would never have won a majority as the next two elections showed. Also, in his first two terms, Harper only had a minority, which tempered what he could do, but when he finally got his majority, he had full freedom and Canadians didn't like what they saw him do. This is part of the reason the CPC didn't win in 2019 and 2021.

Canadians definitely want PR but the issue is which type of PR of the half dozen or so available? The article discusses PR-STV (Single Transferable Vote) but I wish they had also discussed PR-MMP (Mixed-Member Proportional) as that is what the NDP wants to implement. Another moderately PR system is the one Stéphane Dion created specifically for Canada: P3. You can see how it works here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLeClCrfgQ

So far the CPC seems to want to keep FPTP. While it means they form government less frequently, they have a better chance of forming a majority government when they do. PR would mean they would form government more often, but also that they would be minority governments. PR would mean the Liberals would form fewer majorities as well.

The other issue the article didn't mention is that switching to PR would result in shifts in party positions on the political spectrum, splits in the largest parties and possibly even mergers between sub-groups within various parties. Some other countries with PR have up to a dozen political parties. This means that trying to determine what would have happened in 2019 or 2021 under PR is not realistic. As the biggest tent party is the CPC, it would be the most likely to split. This would likely result in a less right leaning CPC party which in a minority situation would be supported by the right leaning part that split off.

In any event, PR would result in few majority governments and mostly minority governments, meaning rarely would a single party have full freedom to do whatever they want, and it would force minority governments to work together with the other parties, which is why Canadians want PR.