Thursday 11 October 2007

MMP - The Aftermath and The Future

Nothing much changed with this election. The number of seats changed only by one (one less for the Liberals, and one more for the Conservatives). And, the NDP did better than the last provincial election in seats and popular support (3 more seats and about 2% more popular support), and a lot of Conservative support switched to the Green party, almost tripling their vote.
And, the electoral system remains at FPTP.

Here are some numbers for thought:

This was the lowest voter turnout in the history of the province - 52%.
(4.4 million out of 8.4 million eligible voters)
And, only 39% of these people of these people voted in the referendum (1.7 million voters).
And, the referendum was defeated by 63% of these people (1 million voters).

The highest support for MMP in a single riding was in my riding of Trinity-Spadina - 59%

How did MMP fail?
I agree with how More notes from underground put it:
It was overwhelmed by the election. It could have been explained much better. More people probably based their decision on the Toronto Star's fearmongering editorials. The MSM still dominates political debate for most people. And, Ontario's cautious political nature.

But, information did come out and at least about 700,000 people managed to learn enough about MMP to want to embrace it in the referendum. This means that there is that seed of knowledge out there in Ontario, which can only grow. Of the people who voted in the referendum, in the youth group of 18-34, 67% voted for MMP.

Now, here is the food for thought for those who voted against MMP.

If you recalculate the seats from this election under MMP, we would see something like this

Party - Vote % - Seats under FPTP - Seats under MMP

Lib - 42% - 71 - 45
Con - 32% - 26 - 35
NDP - 17% - 10 - 18
Green - 8% - 0 - 9

In this election, the majority, 58%, did not vote for the Liberal party. But now, for the next 4 years, the Liberal party will rule with an absolute majority power in parliament.
If we had MMP, the Liberals would have a minority of seats in parliament and would have to work with others (either vote by vote or in collaboration) in order to govern - which would be more representative of the people of Ontario.

MMP may be gone for now, but it will not be forgotten.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The comment I heard from a friend in Scarborough was 'why the hell should I pay for more politicians'. I suspect he was not alone in thinking that. Second comment I heard was on the CBC the day after - the caller expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that MPs would be chosen from a pool, without voter input. I think MMP is a good idea, but I think it needs to be fine-tuned a bit before coming back to the table.

M.

Thor said...

See previous posts here about MMP on my blog for answers to these concerns.