British Columbians are still waiting to find out who their next provincial leader will be, five days after the election, as several tight races make it difficult to project a clear winner.
As it stands, the B.C. NDP has about 44.6 per cent of the vote, the B.C. Conservative Party 43.6 per cent, and the B.C. Green Party 8.2 per cent. Under B.C.’s first-past-the-post electoral system, that translates to a projected 46, 45 and two seats, respectively, out of the 93-seat total.
But if the province had a different electoral system, the breakdown of representatives in the legislature might have been a little different, according to political science professor Chris Beach.
“Proportional [representation] means if a party gets 25 per cent of the vote, they get 25 per cent of the seats,” he told Daybreak North host Carolina de Ryk.
That means under proportional representation, the Green Party, with about eight per cent of the vote, would be in line to get seven or eight of the total 93 seats.
B.C. has had three referendums on electoral reform: one in 2005, another in 2009 and the third in 2018, all asking voters if they’d prefer to maintain our current system, which gives a seat to whoever gets the most votes in their riding, or if they wanted to switch.
Proportional representation effectively divvies up seats based on the percentage of total votes a party gets.
None of the referendums met the threshold of votes that would have led to B.C. changing its electoral system.
But some maintain it’s a more democratic system, one that hasn’t been explained well enough for voters to make an informed choice.
CBC’s Justin McElroy explains the differences between the two voting systems on which B.C. is holding a referendum.
The main downfall in our current first-past-the-post system, Beach said, is that a candidate can win a riding with just one vote or one per cent of the vote.
“There’s a sense that all those other votes, some people feel that they’re wasted because they get no representation.”
It would also benefit smaller parties who don’t end up in the legislature at all; for example, if the Communist Party had one per cent of the vote, it might get a seat at the table.
Election results
Political science instructor Daniel Reeve said the B.C. Green Party might consider making a switch to proportional representation a bargaining tool when parties are asking them to work together.
“That seems like a lot to ask about a coalition, because there certainly would be members who would be like, ‘This isn’t a winning formula.’ But maybe that’s one of the cards that’s on the table.”
Political parties in power aren’t always excited about the change because, in some cases, it might mean they’d end up with fewer seats.
For example, he said, people in Western Canada often vote Conservative, but because of voting habits elsewhere in the country, the Liberals have been the governing party nationally for nine years. This, despite only receiving 33.1 per cent of the total votes in Canada in the last election, compared to the Conservatives’ 34.4 per cent.
“[Justin Trudeau] might have ceased to be the prime minister in 2019 when he lost the popular vote,” Beach said.
Voter impact
B.C. was “more polarized than ever” this election, according to Fair Vote Canada, a national campaign for proportional representation.
Voter choice and the perception of effective representation influenced the tone of the campaign, and the years leading up to it, Fair Vote argues.
“It is much harder for parties to divide the electorate in two and fuel voter rage against their opponents by hurling simplistic ‘us vs. them’ narratives when the ballot offers a rich variety of options,” the campaign said in a statement on Monday.
In B.C., 57 per cent of eligible voters cast their ballot in this election. That’s up slightly from 54.5 per cent in 2020 — during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2017, 61.2 per cent of eligible British Columbians voted in the provincial election.
Beach said the decline could be because some don’t believe their votes matter.
“In places where they have a more democratic system, the turnout often is much higher, so I think that [proportional representation] would decrease polarization, in my opinion, because parties would naturally have to work together.”
