Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
Canadian Electoral System	chekhovToo	05/12/04
What sort of electoral system (ie preferential, FPP, proportional representation) does Canada have and is it a fair system?
Answered By		Answered On
stevehaddock		05/13/04
Canada's voting system is "first-past-the-post". Some of the provinces experimented with preferential, but it turned out to be a disaster. In British Columbia, the third-place party was an almost universal second choice and got a number of seats way in excess of their natural constituency. As such, majority governments are the rule in Canada, even though the majority party generally wins 35-45% of the vote. One of the really bad effects of this on the national level is that regional parties are given a boost and national parties have their votes spread out. In 1993, the national vote for the Bloc Quebecois, the Alliance, the Progressive Conservatives and the NDP were within a few points of each other. However, the Bloc and Alliance won about 50 seats each, when the PC's finished with 2 and the NDP with about nine. That's because the Bloc got all of their votes in one province, Quebec, and the Alliance got all of theirs in the Western provinces.

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