Thanks to everybody who responded to my last thread asking how the system works. I went in thinking Australia had Winner Takes All (WTA) or First Past The Post (FPTP) for parliamentary elections of the House of Representatives, but found out it does in fact have preferential voting.
As a European living in a democracy with lower houses / parliaments / houses of representatives that have proportional representation (multiple parties in parliament forcing requiring coalitions) allowing only a single tick per list on the ballot, it’s a little strange to see the choice in Australia seemingly come down to two political parties. There are multiple groups here fighting for preferential voting and you guys have it yet look like the UK or the US when considering voting outcomes.
Why doesn’t preferential voting not lead to plurality in Australia and more choice? Have there been efforts to change the system in such a way that plurality can be achieved?
Thank you for your insights! This is quite interesting to me.
It’s a phenomenon that has been studied by psephologists and political scientists. Ultimately, it’s because IRV is a single-winner system. And single-winner systems have a strong preference for 2 party systems because at the end of the day, if one person wins, it’s likely to be from one of the largest groups.
Our Senate doesn’t use a single-winner system. It uses STV, which is a proportional system. Unfortunately because we only elect 6 Senators per state, there’s not a lot of room to create proportionality, so there are still only a relatively small number of groups represented. Contrast with the MMP system used in New Zealand and Germany, or direct proportional systems like the Netherlands and Norway, and you get much better truly proportional results.