This is a very interesting debate so far, and I'd just like to make a few comments
It's both remarkable and fascinating to watch how eagerly Labor is throwing their own president and the key reform project of his administration under the bus.
It's almost as if this isn't a labor plot to seize power...
It's worth pointing out that my race against Deus in the comparitively left leaning northeast was 16- Bore 17- Deus and 1- Dallasfan which flowed to me. If any 1 of my voters had first preferenced Deus instead I would have lost. When you're talking of margins that thin it's not an example of any sort of structural impediment, but just bad luck. If shua had run in the mideast for an open seat or maxwell in some southern district they would have won.
There is a difference between exciting and a technically close race. There have been plenty of at large elections where the winner is decided by 0.0124356123's of a vote. That doesn't make them exciting because no one remembers them or enjoyed watching them. In fact the only people who really had any inkling they were close are each parties respective number crunchers.
A ten member party if unified and at 100% turnout can easily win that election by peeling off support from a largely party or parties and securing like minded Indies.
This is exactly what Xahar, Shua, Deus and now Cris managed to do running as Third Party members in the At-Large elections.
A district will have a limited number of voters, and pulling Smoltchanov from the NE, Angus from the Midwest and Torie or somebody like that from the Pacific won't be possible. Those indies are scattered as are the voters in a major party who would be willing to break ranks for such a candidate.
In a one and one race, the push will be for conformity. In an at-Large race, once your guys are in, a major party can then flex's its remaining muscle in trying to decide who gets the third seat. Or members will feel like they can vote for someone else or just go ahead and do that regardless, which happened in April 2014 with the Feds. Shua got EG and Sanchez, and they are far away from each other. That is where the indies stand their best chance, that played out in five of the last six At-Large elections.
This largely misses the point of FPTP elections which is that it's not all about voting for the candidate, it is also about voting against him. In my race against Deus you had staunch social conservatives voting for Deus because he was not a laborite but in an at large there is no way in hell he would get their first or even second preference. There were many voters in Poirot's race against me who had never voted for him before and who have not voted for him since.
With regard to what Clyde's said in the debate:
There are lies, damned lies and statistics. It's true that I had a large percentage over poirot in that election, but how could I not and still win? Every voter in the northeast is like 4 or 5%, whereas in the at large elections every voter is less than a percent. When you look at absolute margin, the most important thing it is true that Poirot came closest in the northeast senate race.
This is misleading, because the sample size is too small to be significant. It is largely a function that the senators who, over that period, were the most active and the least likely to quit where regional ones. In fact it was always noticeable how few regional senators resigned due to activity. I'd suggest the high number of at large senators is because they kept on getting expelled for inactivity
But even so, the reason the regional figure is so low is because me, yankee tnf and tyrion/cranberry basically held those seats for the entire time. But it is just as plausible for us to have held those seats as at large senators. 3 or 4 people happening to be regional senators over that whole period does not suggest let alone prove anything. Especially since, as yankee keeps on telling us (and he's right
) we all had to work really hard to keep those seats, which isn't necessarily true of at large senators, as SWE can tell you
If the larger parties are running more candidates, then it stands to reason that it’s more likely for candidates from the larger parties to be elected - as there is more candidates that could be elected.
Voters have less of a choice in candidates for regional elections - as smaller parties may decide not run, as they feel they have no chance of winning the seat.
The evidence for the current voting system helping smaller parties is clear – in the last ten Senates, only three parties have represented regional seats, compared to five parties in at-large seats. If districts had been used - then it would be likely that only three parties would've been elected to the Senate over that time. Smaller parties have only represented at-large seats recently.[/quote]
Firstly, as oakvale pointed out, the three parties stat is just wrong.
But secondly I don't actually disagree with Clyde's interpretation of my post. It is true that under districts the federalists could, say, win 3 seats. But they could also win none. We could run at large elections every weekend for the next year and labor would never get more and never get less than 2. With districts we could see 0 or we could see 3 or 4. The same is true of the federalists and TPP and the DRs.
Thirdly the idea that smaller parties might decide not to run is also not borne out by the facts. In my elections for the northeast I ran against, in order, a federalist and an indy, a federalist and an indy, a DR, and a TPPer. The only people who don't run in district elections is, perversely, members of big parties, because of primaries (but even so, more will run than do now).
