Please note that in Germany you get 2 votes in the federal election. 1st is for a candidate to directly represent your district, 2nd is for a party nation wide. The map only shows the election result for the 2nd vote.
Here’s another map to show the party affiliation of winners of the 1st vote:
Colors are the same, except blue. Blue represents CSU, essentially the Bavarian version of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union).
For anyone interested in psephology or electoral systems, the system Germany uses is called Mixed-Member Proportional. It mixes the benefits of FPTP (having a local member who is your local area’s most liked candidate) with proportional systems (having the overall Bundestag proportionally representing the will of the people).
The system is pretty neat, but it does come with some issues. See all those dark blue districts in Bavaria? That’s way more seats for the CSU than they would be entitled to by the proportional representation.
Previously, these “overhanging mandates” were handled by simply increasing the size is Parliament until proportionality is met (“compensate mandates”). This was fine for decades, where there were always only a couple of those. But as CSU votership dropped (among other things), we were looking at more than 200 additional MEPs (in a parliament of officially 598 seats).
So it got reformed. Parliament now has a fixed 630 seats. The “overhanging mandates” get dropped based on the margin by which they won their electoral district (with some sorting by state mixed in). Most of those districts still got their representative via the party lists, but there actually are 4 districts that are unrepresented now. So it’s not a perfect system either.
The way overhangs are handled is one of the key differences between Germany and New Zealand, as I understand it. New Zealand makes no effort to level its parliament, and simply accepts overhangs as a distortion of the pure proportionality. I like the simplicity of it, but for fairness I think Germany’s system is probably better. The new system is almost like the inverse of how I suggested party seats should work, which I quite like.
One thing I don’t particularly like is the 5% minimum both countries use. It’s not unreasonable to have a minimum I think, but it’s unfortunate for all the voters whose vote is essentially wasted because they didn’t support a popular enough party. It’s a less severe version of the problem FPTP has, IMO. Over 13% of voters had their vote completely wasted in last weekend’s election. It’d be nice if there was, like, a preferential system, where if your first choice of party doesn’t get 5%, it can go to another party of your choice instead. BSW voters, for example, might have chosen to give their vote to Linke, and FDP voters to Union. So the end result would have been:
Union: 207
AfD: 131
SDP: 103 or 104 (depending on rounding)
Grune: 73
Linke: 86 or 87
SSW: 1
Plus more to whichever of those parties the 28 seats’ worth of “other” voters gave their 2nd preference to
I’ve also often been curious how it would work if the local seats were elected not by FPTP but by IRV. Would that have a positive or negative effect on the representation, or not really have much effect at all? I don’t think any place has done it, and I don’t even know if anyone has seriously sat down and theory-crafted it.
It’s the one people talk about most for a new Canadian system, but honestly it just seems unnecessarily complicated to me. It’s a minority that can even name their representative.
I actually really like it as a system. Though I prefer a version where instead of using a party list you use the “nearest loser” to decide who fills the proportional seats. It or STV (though preferably on a slightly larger scale than how Australia currently uses it in our Senate—electing 10–20 representatives per electorate rather than our 6) would be my favourite systems.
MMP, if we’re comparing it to a fully proportional system, has a few distinct advantages. Many but not all relate to it having a local representative. You might not know who yours is, but plenty of people do. Even if you don’t though, having one specific person be your primary contact with politics is useful when public pressure campaigns happen. It’s easier to say “write to your MP” than to say “write to a whole bunch of MPs. Which ones? I dunno, all of them I guess?” It also means you have a politician who is specifically supposed to help look after your area’s needs. Who can push for local infrastructure upgrades etc.
It also gives you the option of doing something other than party-list proportional representation. If you don’t do local representatives, the only feasible way to decide which MPs are elected by each party is for the party to decide. Which, IMO, I don’t like. If a party puts someone near the top of their list who is deeply unpopular, despite the party as a whole being popular, voters should be able to say “nah, not him”. With MMP, you can use a system like “nearest loser” where the people who get elected via the proportional system are the people who came closest to winning in their local seat, demonstrating that, out of the people who were not directly elected locally, they are at least the most popular in their electorate. I don’t believe either Germany or New Zealand actually do this, but it’s at least an option.
I say we do a zero-representation system. No one gets elected. No kings either. Government posts are filled by sortition.
No one who most desperately wants power should have it. Solve this problem by filling offices through a lottery. I’m in the US, and I personally think we would be doing a hell of a lot better with a Congress made from 535 randomly selected Americans than the 535 we have up there right now. Or maybe some sort of hybrid system, where you get to choose between a few randomly selected candidates.
Please note that in Germany you get 2 votes in the federal election. 1st is for a candidate to directly represent your district, 2nd is for a party nation wide. The map only shows the election result for the 2nd vote.
Here’s another map to show the party affiliation of winners of the 1st vote:
Colors are the same, except blue. Blue represents CSU, essentially the Bavarian version of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union).
For anyone interested in psephology or electoral systems, the system Germany uses is called Mixed-Member Proportional. It mixes the benefits of FPTP (having a local member who is your local area’s most liked candidate) with proportional systems (having the overall Bundestag proportionally representing the will of the people).
The system is pretty neat, but it does come with some issues. See all those dark blue districts in Bavaria? That’s way more seats for the CSU than they would be entitled to by the proportional representation.
Previously, these “overhanging mandates” were handled by simply increasing the size is Parliament until proportionality is met (“compensate mandates”). This was fine for decades, where there were always only a couple of those. But as CSU votership dropped (among other things), we were looking at more than 200 additional MEPs (in a parliament of officially 598 seats).
So it got reformed. Parliament now has a fixed 630 seats. The “overhanging mandates” get dropped based on the margin by which they won their electoral district (with some sorting by state mixed in). Most of those districts still got their representative via the party lists, but there actually are 4 districts that are unrepresented now. So it’s not a perfect system either.
The way overhangs are handled is one of the key differences between Germany and New Zealand, as I understand it. New Zealand makes no effort to level its parliament, and simply accepts overhangs as a distortion of the pure proportionality. I like the simplicity of it, but for fairness I think Germany’s system is probably better. The new system is almost like the inverse of how I suggested party seats should work, which I quite like.
One thing I don’t particularly like is the 5% minimum both countries use. It’s not unreasonable to have a minimum I think, but it’s unfortunate for all the voters whose vote is essentially wasted because they didn’t support a popular enough party. It’s a less severe version of the problem FPTP has, IMO. Over 13% of voters had their vote completely wasted in last weekend’s election. It’d be nice if there was, like, a preferential system, where if your first choice of party doesn’t get 5%, it can go to another party of your choice instead. BSW voters, for example, might have chosen to give their vote to Linke, and FDP voters to Union. So the end result would have been:
I’ve also often been curious how it would work if the local seats were elected not by FPTP but by IRV. Would that have a positive or negative effect on the representation, or not really have much effect at all? I don’t think any place has done it, and I don’t even know if anyone has seriously sat down and theory-crafted it.
It’s the one people talk about most for a new Canadian system, but honestly it just seems unnecessarily complicated to me. It’s a minority that can even name their representative.
I actually really like it as a system. Though I prefer a version where instead of using a party list you use the “nearest loser” to decide who fills the proportional seats. It or STV (though preferably on a slightly larger scale than how Australia currently uses it in our Senate—electing 10–20 representatives per electorate rather than our 6) would be my favourite systems.
MMP, if we’re comparing it to a fully proportional system, has a few distinct advantages. Many but not all relate to it having a local representative. You might not know who yours is, but plenty of people do. Even if you don’t though, having one specific person be your primary contact with politics is useful when public pressure campaigns happen. It’s easier to say “write to your MP” than to say “write to a whole bunch of MPs. Which ones? I dunno, all of them I guess?” It also means you have a politician who is specifically supposed to help look after your area’s needs. Who can push for local infrastructure upgrades etc.
It also gives you the option of doing something other than party-list proportional representation. If you don’t do local representatives, the only feasible way to decide which MPs are elected by each party is for the party to decide. Which, IMO, I don’t like. If a party puts someone near the top of their list who is deeply unpopular, despite the party as a whole being popular, voters should be able to say “nah, not him”. With MMP, you can use a system like “nearest loser” where the people who get elected via the proportional system are the people who came closest to winning in their local seat, demonstrating that, out of the people who were not directly elected locally, they are at least the most popular in their electorate. I don’t believe either Germany or New Zealand actually do this, but it’s at least an option.
I say we do a zero-representation system. No one gets elected. No kings either. Government posts are filled by sortition.
No one who most desperately wants power should have it. Solve this problem by filling offices through a lottery. I’m in the US, and I personally think we would be doing a hell of a lot better with a Congress made from 535 randomly selected Americans than the 535 we have up there right now. Or maybe some sort of hybrid system, where you get to choose between a few randomly selected candidates.
Thanks for the new word, I like it!