Cons, do you still have faith in Canada?

[kimmy]

There's enough. There were nearly 30,000 Liberal voters in Alberta last election. Add in the NDP's numbers, you total 40,000. Admittedly, that's still approximately less than half of what the Cons got, but the point is that those 40,000+ Albertans recieve almost no representation in Parliment.  Yes, there are regional parties and regionaldifferences, but not anything close to what the electoral situation would lead one to believe.

I agree with the general theme you're expressing, but surely 30,000 is an error? I'm sure that Kilgour alone had nearly 30,000 votes...

While you're right in saying that the FPTP voting system results in these monolithic looking electoral maps that exaggerate regional differences, I don't think the regional differences should be trivialized. The Conservatives had 60% of votes in Alberta, 30% in Ontario, and 10% in Quebec... that's a rather profound difference that defies explanation by FPTP or any other voting system.

In the recent US election, the networks showed gradated maps, showing not just the overall result but the degree of that result-- strong tendancy to vote Democrat was shown dark blue, slight tendancy towards the Republicans was a pale red, etc. The resulting map was very different from the polarized "red state/blue state" picture that people got from the election. It would be interesting to see a corresponding map for Canada.

-k

[Black Dog]

Oops! That would be 300,000.

While you're right in saying that the FPTP voting system results in these monolithic looking electoral maps that exaggerate regional differences, I don't think the regional differences should be trivialized. The Conservatives had 60% of votes in Alberta, 30% in Ontario, and 10% in Quebec... that's a rather profound difference that defies explanation by FPTP or any other voting system.

I'm not seeking to trivialize existing regional differences, just trying to put them into perspective.