Things looked fantastic for the NDP, and not good for the Liberals and their new young and inexperienced leader, Justin Trudeau, who seemed to only have his name and good looks going for him.
Until the latter half of the campaign, when three things happened: 1) Mulcair took a principled stand during the debate about Islamaphobia (anti-veil laws) in Quebec... while Trudeau waffled. 2) Canadian capitalism got freaked out about the idea of an NDP government... and ... most importantly ... 3) The Liberal pivoted on policy on two popular issues: Marijuana legalization and Electoral Reform... both things they had always been opposed to, and which were NDP policy planks since its founding.
They stole the policy items from the NDP, insisted that this would be the last FPTP election, and in the last few weeks of the election the polls shifted dramatically and the NDP have never recovered.
We did get cannabis legalization, but electoral reform never happened. It never will because any party that has enough power to enact would have too much to lose from actually enacting it.
The Liberals have "died" a couple times in the last couple decades and always re-emerge. Because Canadian capitalism will never ever let the other "left" party -- the NDP -- get elected federally. When it happened provincially in Ontario, Bay Street finance shit their pants and went on a capital strike and no how moderate they attempted to govern, they were railroaded and destroyed. Similar thing in Alberta, down to death threats and harassment, etc.
I prefer IRV ranked choice to FPTP. I prefer proportional if possible. I tend to really like cardinal systems [1].
I think the fact that ranked sometime leads to deadlocked systems is more of an issue of how representative voting is made (rather than the public voting system itself). You talk about mixed representation, which is a good idea for instance.
My main issue is that we don't change the voting system all that much, when it could yield massive societal benefits. I'd much prefer a ranked system to a FPTP system we currently have.
> It's notable that Australia's ranked ballot system also seems to have narrowed choices there to a two party system and they have no left wing party equivalent to the NDP anymore.
It's been a while since I studied the topic, but that's a bad way to frame it. You have a set of policy ideas, which get aggregated in member constituents (congress in the US, parliament in Canada, etc.) and those get aggregated into parties.
Changing the voting system changes the voting power of policies against each other. Ranked voting for instance diminishes the electability of policies that people *hate* (so a lot of right wing culture war stuff for instance get reduced by ranked choice)
> because in a Venn Diagram of voter preferences in Canada the Liberals almost always end up in the centre
That was a very short term way of thinking on their end (no surprise from politicians tbh). The change in voting system would change what policies the parties are about over the medium-long run.
Even though the name of the parties might remain the same -- the actual discussion and policies being proposed change in response.
> The NDP favours a proportional or mixed-member proportional system
I'd be fine with that. I also like cardinal voting a lot tbh.
> the Conservatives don't want any reform at all.
No surprise there, they're coasting on the hilarious overrepresentation of suburbs and exurbs + FPTP being a broken piece of crap.
> If Canada ever gets electoral reform federally it will be because the NDP wins power, by some freak accident.
Canadian liberals will sink themselves like they did in Quebec IMO.
The sad truth is that it'll get us some wacko culture war right winger for a decade rather than a healthier center-left wing party.