• @emergencyfood
    link
    11 month ago

    Only one of the four countries I listed does not use pure FPTP - Russia uses a mix of FPTP and party-list voting. But even if you only count the FPTP seats, and despite stuff like ballot-stuffing committed by the ruling party, 3 parties got >5 seats.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      11 month ago

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_United_Kingdom

      The five electoral systems used are: the single member plurality system (first-past-the-post), the multi-member plurality, the single transferable vote, the additional member system, and the supplementary vote.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Canada

      Although several parties are typically represented in parliament, Canada has historically had two dominant political parties: the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, which was preceded by the Progressive Conservative Party and the Conservative Party (1867–1942). Every government since Confederation has been either Liberal or Conservative with the exception of the Unionist government during World War I, which was a coalition of Conservatives and Liberals.

      Russia and India are also fairly recent democracies or “democracy” in russias case, not having the time to have devolved from a multiparty system into a duopoly through FPTP, and Russia has a whole host of problems with oligarchy, corruption and putin changing the rules so he’s the one who’s been in constant power for like 20 years.

      • @emergencyfood
        link
        11 month ago

        The five electoral systems used are …

        I was talking about Parliamentary elections in those countries, since the original discussion was about the US Presidential elections. The House of Commons is elected by FPTP. Local elections use a variety of systems.

        Every government since Confederation has been either Liberal or Conservative with the exception of the Unionist government during World War I

        True. At the same time, the NDP and the BQ have been able to hold their ground and consistently return several MPs. They have also enjoyed much greater success at the provincial level (in BC and Quebec). How many US states have a third-party governor or House majority?

        Russia and India are also fairly recent democracies

        In the first four parliamentary elections in India, the number of parties winning over 10 seats were 3, 3, 5 and 8. In the latest four, it was 10, 11, 8 and 9. So, if anything, support is moving away from the biggest parties over time.