Say what you will about first past the post, its defenders argue, but at least it delivers stable majority governments. The governing Liberals beat the opposition Conservatives by six percentage points in the popular vote, 38 to 32, yet somehow emerged with one fewer seat, 21 to 22. in 1996, despite winning neither a majority nor even a plurality of the popular vote. But that’s the point: it was bad enough when first past the post only stuck us with wildly unrepresentative majorities. Whereas under PR there’s no such “leverage”: small changes in the popular vote only lead to small changes in seats.

Source: National Post September 27, 2018 01:11 UTC