by Jack Santucci
On Friday, I showed NOMINATE scores for Cincinnati City Council members elected under permissive rules. Polarization was super low* for some years because, in each of those years, a lone wolf was able to play coalition kingmaker in a hung parliament.**
Now look at 1947, which is new in this plot, and watch those parties diverge. Yup. STV is totally compatible with high levels of polarization. (I never said it wasn’t.)
Continue reading “STV is also totally compatible with polarization”
In seeking an explanation for why several cities once adopted PR-STV, I sometimes encounter the following hypothesis. Among myriad goo-goo reform ideas, PR was unusually obscure, and that’s why it only happened in 24 places.
Obscurity could not have been the cause of PR’s rarity, and I’ll show you why below.
Continue reading “Evolution of the American proportional representation movement”
Last week I described and reflected on twenty-four U.S. cities’ experiences with proportional electoral rules in the first half of the last century. That post included brief comment on similar episodes in twenty more Canadian cities.
I reported that Edmonton and Winnipeg had the longest runs with PR-STV. Dennis Pilon pointed out that I got Edmonton wrong (late-night transposition goof). It was Calgary instead. So here is the chart from last week, this time with the Canadian cities:
