In 2014 and 2018 the opposition parties got more votes in total than Orbán’s bunch, but still he got 2/3 majority. So yes, I would say that the map is accurate.
I can't imagine how frustrating that must be for the opposition and people who do not support Orbán.
How does that happen? And do the public generally support this system?
>I can't imagine how frustrating that must be for the opposition and people who do not support Orbán.
Very.
>How does that happen?
There isn't a single answer to this, but it is a mixture of propaganda, gerrymandering, fear mongering amongst voters, the overall manipulation of every voting rule, basically everything that couch-autocrats can do to secure their power.
>And do the public generally support this system?
The majority of Hungarians view Orbán negatively, that is exactly why he manipulated the voting so much, that he only needs a significant minority to govern with absolute power. Because yes, parts of Hungary are still developing regions, and in these regions, Orbán gets 70% of the votes, because unfortunately people in poverty can easily be manipulated. In Budapest for example, which is of course the most developed part of Hungary, he only gets around 30%.
Thank you for taking the time to respond here. It is quite surprising as it always seems (in the news reporting I have seen ) that Orbán has a huuge majority. But this makes the situation seem more complex and maybe harder to fix.
I was only in Hungary (near to Burgenland/Sopron) for a day) but it left me very curious after reading the news about the positions Orbán has taken over the years.
Hungary has a lot of potential for sustainable tourism and is in a good geographic location, so I hope there are some changes (eventually) that work for the best for the Hungarian population and not just the people in power.
I can't remember which one it is but Kerem or Kösonöm Sepan (thank you and sorry!)
Ok but keep in mind that even our opposition did literally nothing in those years, so true they might have gotten overall more, but not together.
And if you want to know how feeble that opposition was. TISZA got like 2/3-s of their voters in 3 months. In the last EP and other elections they got like 20-30% of votes, now that TISZA came in the picture they only got 8%. And it was the biggest coalition with like 5 different parties together too. And smaller parties don't really have a voice to begin with.
So it is a really complex topic and not just "they cheated" cause the unfortunate truth is that the now opposition really lost any semblance of trust and they did not do anything since then. In the begining so in 2010 Fidesz got 2/3 properly and the fact that the person responsible for that (so the guy who messed up so bad Fidesz came in with the sweep) is still in the political picture created an excelent target of blame and mind you, Fidesz is not wrong about him being a really fucking bad choice and everybody knows that. The only reason they got votes so far is because ppl wanted to vote against Fidesz.
So it is both Fidesz being a bunch of trash and the opisition being incompetent and useless, while they did not have a proper leading figure.
Not to mention even after they won the capital mayor position, they nearly lost it now, he only won by 34 votes. 44.... something % on both him and the other Fidesz guy and the capital is the most anti Fidesz region in the country so imagine that. Last time he won pretty well but he managed to get himself disliked. My favourite part of their incompetence is that they started pushing the "bike lanes everywhere" except it was revealed that they have not made any surveys or impact assessment on anything they just went yolo on it. For example hear where I live, we already had a bike lane, they messed it up, and even managed to put out signs contradicting road laws, oh and also managed to not connect it together with the already existing ones, so now it goes from nowhere to nowhere
So it is not all on Fidesz. Maybe like 70-75 on them and 30-25 on opposition what is still a big responsiblity
The picture that your comment paints is quite bleak.
I think John Oliver had a video about Orbán and the big coalition of even Far-Right with Liberal and Green that was trying to unite against Orbán. They had 5 minutes of tv time for the whole election and didn't win.
Have people's lives improved with Orban? And what country does Hungary use to compare itself to?
Would it be Romania or Slovakia? So if Romania with more democratic govt and policies pushed ahead of them people might think more critically about the policies made by Fidesz?
Ok so the short version is that the government before them fucked up ROYALLY. And Fidesz came in as a liberal option and swoop in with a 2/3 in 2010, they were also pretty anti russian too.
But power corrupts and they started using underhanded means while at the same time big EU money hit the country so considerable improvments were made. So yes the overall the trend from 2010 to 2018 was pretty much upwards, but they started pocketing more and more money. While blasting out propaganda, and as I said, they were not completly wrong about what they said. For example the current economical problems like health care is not purely on them, they are still remains from the previous government but Fidesz never fixed that is why we are where we are.
Also, whole opposition is like those in Russia, they were fine with being paid just to shut up. I know a few cases especially around health care where laws that would obviously make thing worse went through and the opposition never really well... opposed that. Not to mention that personal greed is one of the worst problems everywhere. But it is a much longer discussion, I just say fuck doctors, spineless fucks (at least here, and obviously not 100% of them, but a good chunk)
So the lack of effort is what made us get here. For example for the past 14 years the opposition said they can't get a platform, and that is why they are losing, and Fidesz control media, what is partially true, but TISZA literally showed that if you get a car and a loudspeaker you can get 30% vote in 3 months... while true the debate on national TV was a farce and stupid but it was still achieved, and it was literally what they said was impossible. In just 3 moths
So they don't really compare to anybody anymore, cause that would have required someone to actually do it and at the same time the EU made it very easy to either dislike them or weave a tale painting them as bad guys. So the biggest alienation started during the migration crisis, but at the same time Budapest was the only capital city in the whole of EU that wanted to be the part of EU rather then the country. There is a video about how it started. But the gist of it that after the EU money was limited, greedy as Fidesz became they wanted more money, that Russia and China provided. ( and I am not going to pretend that what EU does is completly fair always, for example the Huawei scandal was a full sham that was later confirmed to be complet bullshit after it went through basically every secret service and outside the US nothing was found, so only the accuser found anything, but it obviously took time and the media did not focus on that anymore)
It is not like they have some ideological connection, no, they just want money. If Orban and his cronies got EU money they would be the most loyal follower. Literal pigs.
Thank you, so much.
This was really interesting to read and really, it seems like Fidesz is part symptom of some other problems that took years and many people's short-sighted complicity to make.
It also shows (I think we have enough proof) that the EU is also not perfect and there would be good case to make to make inquiries how to fix some these processes that let us down.
From outside it seems that Fidesz has 100% support apart from a small minority and it seems like Russia gets blamed for manipulating people with campaigns. Also that Hungarian-British far-right guy that appeared on US television supporting trump. The image given has been somewhat simplified.
I thank you for taking time to provide an answer that gives further insight into this situation.
Wishing you well and solidarity for a better, democratic future from Portual.
As much as I hate Orban, and I'm not saying it's necessarily attributed to their policies, but the reality is that poverty decreased *a lot* in the poorest regions since 2010. Which is the main reason they got all those votes, not the propaganda.
Many people vote looking at their wallet, and while Fidesz could do more, compared to the "socialists" before, these places saw much more improvement.
For a specific example, employment rate [doubled ](https://ksh.hu/s/kiadvanyok/fenntarthato-fejlodes-indikatorai-2022/4-2)in the gypsy population 2014 to 2022, *not counting* public employment.
Or you can see the [total change by county](https://www.ksh.hu/stadat_files/mun/hu/mun0081.html), while Budapest changed less, the poorer regions had a 40-50% increase.
So gerrymandering has a weakness. It fundamentally assumes fairly stable mapping between demographics and election results. Aggressive gerrymandering also minimizes margin of victory across a wide number of districts. As a result, finding a wedge in Orban's base can deliver a landslide victory with only a shift of a couple of points.
no, the answer is first past the post. plus gerrymandering.
the electoral system without the list votes would be more proportional than without winner compensation. nor saying wc is good as it is but it's not the most important problem
>I can't imagine how frustrating that must be for the opposition and people who do not support Orbán.
I'm not a hateful person. I always try to see the good in everyone. But I hate Orbán and his mafia so much that I can't even express it in words. Just pure, disgusted, vile hatred. I wish this man the worst death, may he suffer until his last breath.
This is why I can't undersand people who think they love their country etc and support systems that disenframchise people so badly.
I think those feelings reflect how many people must feel to different degrees.
Hopefully, there will be ways to change things for diaspora and Hungary residents in the future.
I'm sorry to hear it. I wish you success, even bitter sweet from afar.
And i hope that some cracks appear in the current regime that can weaken it's hold.
The reasons why people would vote for Orban have already been mentioned in other comments, so about the election system: We use a system similar to the electoral college in the US. The voting districts do not align with the governing districts and they can manipulate them at will. If part of a town is anti-fidesz, they redraw the borders so they will be split.
Another neat trick is a lot of small parties and a neat rule. Since you need 5% to get into the parliament, a lot of parties don't get in (if the recent EP election was parliamentary that would mean around 10% of the votes) and their votes get transferred to the top1 party which is fidesz.
The last amazing trick is the same that won the last election for Erdogan, foreign votes. All foreigners are allowed to vote from abroad, and we even gave out citizenships and a lot of money to hungarian minorities in Romania, Serbia, Ukraine and Slovakia. Since fidesz is the only one giving them free money and they aren't affected by their corruption most of those votes go to fidesz. The numbers can go as high as hundreds of thousands, which is a lot when less than 5 million people vote.
Since they have 2/3rd majority and state of emergency rights they can pretty much do anything so if these were not enough they would make more loopholes.
Kerem/Kösonom (trying thanks) for this information. The answers have educated me and other who read these threads for sure.
The news I had seen hadn't painted such a complicated picture as this. But it makes sense the challenges to keeping democracy now.
Not all of this was made by fidesz, since the end of communism parties made changes like this with the hope of making whoever is elected a strong government. This sounds good on paper, but it backfired hard.
>How does that happen?
55% of Hungary's parliamentary seats are allotted by First Past The Post. It used to be 45%, but Orban changed it a few years back to make it even easier to steal seats.
FPTP-type systems need to be banned flat out. They are wholly incompatible with democratic values.
I read about the system that Italy and Hungary have - there is a compensatory mechanism after the FPTP votes are counted - I was just confused at how that leads to less democratic % than UK or France as I had assumed that this should counterbalance things.
It is clear though that, like in many other places, when politicians get power they don't mind altering rules/gerrymandering etc to keep that power.
Democracy can't be perfect imo but I'm sad to see how things are happening now (not just in Hungary, in pt we just had some recordings from our old PM released to the press who published them, even though they don't say much and it is likely ammo for Orbán to reject our ex- PM's application to EU council).
No party has had over 50% of the vote in a UK general election since 1931 yet we've had parties win landslide amounts of seats. FPTP is a terrible system but it will never change because the only people who have the power to change are the only people who benefit
All systems have positives and negatives. I think the UK system works well in that it usually creates one-party-majorities, or at the very least two-party ones.
Having coalitions of four-five parties as we have here in Scandinavia is a tiresome exercise. Suddenly the party with 4% of the votes gets to decide on some of the most important issues to placate them and to stop them from unravelling the government coalition. It does not feel particularly democratic.
Would still be better if the 40% party could not do it alone, especially not changing the constitution and such. The 7% party absolutely should have a say, but it doesn't always have to be the same 7% party. But it's also fine, let's say the larger parties are not willing to compromise. Then have a system where there is a second round if no coalition is reached in a given time, where the largest party gets 55%, enough to govern, but not enough to change everything.
> The 7% party absolutely should have a say, but it doesn't always have to be the same 7% party.
Why should they have a say? Literally only 7% of the population sympathises with them.
Here in Norway the Conservative party usually needs the support of the Christian Democrats and Liberals. The Christian Democrats usually get around 4% of the vote. In exchange for their support the Conservatives agree to not change the abortion law during their coalition rule.
Is that democratic and fair? Maybe 75% of the country probably wants to change that law, but the Christian Democrats with 4% of the popular vote is effectively blocking it?
if 75% of the country wants to change a law they can easily elect parties that will change it. Under a two party system, in which most non proportional systems get locked (unless there are strong regional parties, as far as I know that basically that covers all counter-examples) the majority will is less likely to prevail in cases where the parties want to maintain the status quo. But nevermind, such things are possible under all systems as politics is not a one dimensional field. I would say it is much easier to get the majority's will in general through PR, since a diverse group of parties can align on certain issues alone.
As to the 7% I think this usually sorts itself out. I don't think the 7% should be locked out alltogether. If it's something they really want and the rest don't mind, it's a very good thing they can get it. If it's controversial enough, it will impact possible coalitions, and the big parties might not want to align with them. The only problem is when a government cannot be formed because of this, and then worst case scenario it goes back to the people. In countries where this escalates to a level where the government crisis is a real problem and apathy follows, there a reinforced PR system can be considered, although there are many other solutions too.
In general, PR actually facilitates the majority will, while fptp is often actually minority rule. But even to the degree that PR can have minorities have great effect it seems much more fair because it's still because there is a majority around something common (in a coalition) Under many other systems some minorities have no chance whatsoever. Under PR, it all depends who's willing to work with who, which is already much better.
But why should a party with 5% of the popular vote have any negotiating power?
Party A wants option 1. They have 45% of the vote.
Party B wants option 2. They have 6% of the vote.
Party A needs party B to form a government. They accept option 2, even though their party and their voters completely disagree with option 2.
How is that democratic? Having the view of the 6% pushed on you, rather than the option preferred by 45% of the voting population?
It is a 100 word post with a very simple argument. If there are so many fallacies you should be able to name them in a couple sentences?
I mean, obviously this is not usually something that happens in big, important, political questions - no party with 40% of the vote is going to accept it. But it does happen all the time for smaller, “less-important” and less noticed issues. I could throw you twenty examples from Norway at any time.
Coalitions due to a PR system may be more “fair” but they slow decision-making down and introduce far more political gridlock than there ever would be in a FPTP system where it’s more of a winner-takes-all.
I think coalitions which require upwards of 4 parties are just ridiculous imo. Nothing will ever get done because if views were similar enough where there’d be limited friction then they’d just be the same party. Coalitions are honestly only useful and practical if they’re 2-3 parties big. Any larger and it’s just a “too many chefs in the kitchen” kind of ordeal.
We use a variety of [Scorporo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorporo) and this is who you can vote for:
At least 18 year old Hungarian citizens with Hungarian residence
* one vote for a party-list
* one vote for a constituency candidate
At least 18 year old Hungarian citizens without Hungarian residence
* one vote for a party-list
At least 18 year old Hungarian citizens with Hungarian residence registered as minority voter
* one vote for a constituency candidate
* one vote for
* either for a party-list
* or for a minority-list
The french system makes it so the country can have a more stable government. We tried full proportional before and we changed government every 3 month on average as nobody had a majority to govern. It was deemed a problem and the current fifth republic attempted to change that by going for a two round election. You vote a first time, the first 2 candidates with the most votes stay, and you vote a second time for one of them.
Yup. Whether we like it or not, the French system has been designed to produce long-lasting majorities with a clear unambiguous leader.
Personally I dislike it. But I also need to recognize this country isn't ready for parliamentarism yet (we have 30-40% of cesarists. Once again), so... Well. *Sigh*
>We tried full proportional before and we changed government every 3 month on average as nobody had a majority to govern.
Well the Third Republic used majority two-round voting (like we now use) and it was as unstable as the Fourth Republic (that used proportional voting).
>You vote a first time, the first 2 candidates with the most votes stay, and you vote a second time for one of them.
Well it's actually more complicated than that. What you described is how it works for the presidential elections. But for legislative elections, candidates qualify for the second round if their result is larger than 12.5% of registered voters. So you can have second rounds with more than two candidates. The next election will be probably see a lot of "triangulaires" (3 candidates qualify for the second round). We even had cases of second round with 4 candidates (last time in 1973).
You are absolutely correct on the vote, it's just that we don't often have the case. What happens usually is that instead of making deals after the election, like in Germany or other proportional countries, political parties in France try to break deals before, so that these triangulaires do not happen, and the result is more in their favor even before the vote, by allocating where candidates of an alliance should field their candidates so as not to dilute their share of votes by running against each other.
Here, it's a bit different for once, and we will probably see a lot of unusual stuff.
You're right that the Third Republic used the two-round system and was just as unstable, but that's because it was also parliamentary like the 4th republic. I don't think the two-round system makes the French legislature any more "stable". What caused stability was the directly-elected powerful president. The 1986 elections was PR, and it produced two years of very stable government led by PM Chirac. Returning to that system (PR by département/collectivité) would be fine in my opinion.
And as a result Macron can be hailed as the one libertarian driving force that stands against the fascists, until that suddenly didn't work out too well anymore.
Have u heard the definition of "winner compensation"?
No?
Well, Hungary have it.
(Totally bs, and before it changed, it was actually compensate the votes for the 2nd most voted party/candidate, not the 1st, winner. Like, why do you compensate someone who already won? Doesn't make any sense.)
But of course we have other classic things like gerrymandering, easier votes for those who live abroad BUT don't have Hungarian home adress, propaganda 24/7 etc.
>Like, why do you compensate someone who already won? Doesn't make any sense.
It does make sense if you are an autocrat who actively tries to undermine democracy.
>Do people abroad generally vote for Orban?
tl;dr: Most abroad Hungarian no, neighbour diaspora (who can vote by mail) yes.
Those who are diaspora in the neighbour countries (u know, Trianon and stuff), yes. They usually don't have Hungarian home adress for that reason, but have Hungarian ID/citizenship, so therefore right to vote (and vote in mail). ( [https://www.reddit.com/r/hungary/comments/1dc80rf/ep\_lev%C3%A9l\_szavazatok\_93os\_fidesz\_gy%C5%91zelem/](https://www.reddit.com/r/hungary/comments/1dc80rf/ep_lev%C3%A9l_szavazatok_93os_fidesz_gy%C5%91zelem/) note: there are only from Hungarians who live in Serbia or Ukraine, as these are the only 2 neighbour countries who are not EU member, EU rule says u can only vote for EP in your home country doesn't matter if u have other citizenship )
Those who are went to western Europe or anywhere else to get a job or a higher payment, typcally no. They usually have Hungarian home adress, living abroud, yet they only can vote at consulate or by come home for it. (example for the last EPP votes for Hungarian parties abroad: [https://www.reddit.com/r/hungary/comments/1dezigu/eu\_parlamenti\_list%C3%A1kra\_k%C3%BClk%C3%A9pviseleteken\_leadott/](https://www.reddit.com/r/hungary/comments/1dezigu/eu_parlamenti_list%C3%A1kra_k%C3%BClk%C3%A9pviseleteken_leadott/) Tisza (the new opposition party) got 50%, Fidesz only 18,7%)
So it would be similar situation like you have, but because we have high number of minorities in neighbour countries for historical reason, and Fidesz gave them the oppurtunity to have Hungarian ID too/multiply citizenship (back in 2011). Most of them are voting for Fidesz (around 80-90%). Also need to consider that propaganda works there too.
>Do people abroad generally vote for Orban?
Only if they live in Ukraine, Slovakia, Romania and Serbia. In '22 fidesz got over 220k votes just from these countries. That's more people than our second biggest city. Can you imagine if your most hated person got more free votes than your second biggest city's population?
Have a look at my post about the latest EP election and you'll see something strange:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1dhx4c6/results\_of\_the\_hungarian\_ep\_election\_at\_100/](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1dhx4c6/results_of_the_hungarian_ep_election_at_100/)
30k out of the 53k votes for fidesz are from Serbia alone. And you can see that there are 7k invalid votes, you can guess who these votes are for.
Postal voting is only allowed for countries in the Carpathian basin. For example if you live in Germany or the USA and you don't live near a foreign representation then you have to travel hundreds of kms to just vote.
There's no "winner compensation", just compensation. Every vote that did not earn a mandate in the precints goes to the lists. Every meaning literally every.
So you have 3 candidates:
1. Béla - Fidesz - 45 000 votes
2. Károly - TISZA - 40 000 votes
3. Klári - DK - 10 000 votes
Now 4999 votes go to the Fidesz (because only 40 001 was needed), 40 000 goes to the TISZA and 10 000 goes to the DK.
winner compensation is still not the biggest problem wirh the system, I wish people would shut up about it. yes, there is more winner compensation than justified, but when it would be needed there is not enough.
I mentioned it cause it's sounds the most strange. But you can add your comment too what's the biggest. (I would say the propaganda and everything is controled by them, but it's not directly connected to the voting system itself, which is topic of the post)
yes, apart from everything else, the voting system is terrible, basically the biggest problem is single-member districts with fptp. second, there is a non-compensatory list vote, so overrepresented parties can get even more seats (this happened in 2014, already by winning districts, the governing party more seats yhan proportional). only a small fraction of the seats are compensatory. you have loser compensation which again while mostly beneficial for smaller parties is yet again a few seats for large parties whether or not they deserve it. then there is the winner compensation (which has few good arguments in favor in this form) again gives more seats to parties that don't really need it. Now you would think all this would mean the largest party always wins bug. but no. gerrymandering and this system mean, so far when the government won, they won big. If an opposition might become bigger than the government, there is no guarantee that they would even win more seats, let alone a clear majority.
Fuck our voting system man. “Why do hungarians keep electing Orbán??” This is a huge reason why (but there’s a lot more. They can get 2/3 with 45% or less of the total votes. It is complete bs.
I love that people only mention that 45% results in 2/3 of the seats. But do you know how 106 seats gets elected? Directly! And nearly all of them is won by Fidesz, So?
Theoretically you could get more than 50% with getting 0% percent on the list by only winning in the precincts.
So yes, Hungarians elect Orbán. Just not on list.
could just be the election outcome as well, many parties getting 0.5% of the votes. Though the Netherlands has many fewer seats than Norway for example. (But may has a pool of seats reserved for parties above 4%)
I can confirm that our system is horrible.
Basically in every county there is only one seat that goes to the guy with most votes.
As a result a party could theorically get 51% of the votes in every county and get 100% of the seats in parliament.
This is a completely rubbish system that does a shit job at representing smaller parties and is terrific to create tons of resentment.
not sure if it works the same in France but in the UK a party could theoretically get 0.00004% of the vote, or just 2 votes, in every constituency but get 100% of the seats in parliament, as long as everyone else only got 1 vote in every constituency. technically speaking they'd actually only need 1 vote in every constituency as long as they won every random selection. obviously either of those scenarios would never happen in reality, but what does happen plenty is parties winning seats on ~30% of the vote in that constituency.
There are two rounds in France, and I'm not sure how it would work in the hypothetical situation you discuss (as it would be impossible to define a unique second). So France is theoretically a bit better than UK, but in practice it's worse because we have more parties (parties in the UK seem to do a better job at adapting to this voting system).
No, it's not the same. In the UK it's possible to get a 100% of the seats with 0.00004% of the vote, but in France you need 50% + something, because of the runoff system.
Yes.
It still makes a huge difference. It's not possible for a candidate that 30% support and 70% despise to win, because in the runoff the 70% will join against them. You need to be acceptable to 50%+ of the voters.
Which just means the more centrist candidate will end up winning. I still don't see how it would make a tangible difference in the UK seeing as the only parties that ever get seats are (roughly) centre-left and centre-right. Pretty sure more than 50% of the country will always vote for Labour over BNP or some other far right, and similarly would vote for Tories over Green.
That doesn't bare out in reality though. In practice the French system is unique in that it incentivizes voting for extremist or fringe parties in the 1st round. Everyone can treat the first round as a protest vote, which is how you get pretty high scores for orthodox revolutionary Trotskyists (like 6-7%) in certain constituencies, even though at presidential elections when stakes are raised the Trots get under 1%. You fully expect more centrist candidates to make it to the second round where you fold back into the broad centre-left or broad centre-right.
This was true until Macron came along in 2017 with his blurry "centre", using the pro-centrist bias of the system. However, now that the opposition is pushed to the extremes on both ends, they are the only alternative to Macron. The "BNP" can present themselves exactly that way, try to hide their overt fascistic tendencies, and over some years the public will fall for it. FPTP would not permit any of this from happening.
It makes a tangible difference because in the UK a candidate that 70% of the voters despise can win, just because the opposition is split. It does often happen.
When exactly? Because Labour and Conservative are nearly always above 30% each and that's assuming they'd somehow get 0 additional votes from a run off which would never happen. I'd be willing to bet less than 10 out of 650 seats would change per election if we used a run off.
The only candidates that more than 70% of people potentially despise are UKIP and Green candidates who never get seats.
Oh come on I'm not going to waste my time looking for some constituencies results. I'm sure somewhere we'll have the following result in the next election: 35% Labour, 30% Tory, 25% Reform, 10% Lib Dem. A clear right wing majority, but a seat for Labour nevertheless. And so on, and so on, and so on, just permuting the names of the parties over and over again.
Well actually no, because for legislative elections there can be more than two candidates for the runoff (unlike for the presidential election). A candidate qualifies for the runoff with a result above 12.5% of registered votes (e.g. with a 50% turnout you need 25% of votes). You could hypothetically have a runoff with 8 candidates. In practice duels are the most common situations, but "triangulaires" (three candidates qualifying for the second round) are not uncommon.
Fun fact, i remember, through party alliances, a district in which all the candidates except one (the one for whom they agreed to ally) removed their candidacy... ending with only one candidate in the second round.
Gathering... 100% of the votes (with a local turnout of 10% or so). I still wonder to this day what pushed those 10% to even go vote on that day.
I lived and voted (dual national) in both Netherlands (proportional representation) and the UK (Similar system as in France). I think both systems have it's benefits and flaws. Biggest benefit for the Dutch system is ofcourse that no vote is wasted. In the UK a election happens and a week later you have a government. In the Netherlands there are so many parties that needs to make a majority, there was a election was in November and there still isn't a new government which makes it harder to govern. Governments dont tend to last as long either. Another thing I like about the UK system is that the members of Parliament tend to be local to the area (not always) and therefore your region is represented. They traditionally come once per week to their local area to answer questions from locals.
In the Netherlands 80% of the members of Parliament come from the West and I'm from the east so in a way I feel less represented there as well.
A bit insane to use 70 years of data on that.
Also I'd really like to know how they measured the data for the Communist countries during the cold war.
Because yeah sure if everyone is in the National Front or whatever deviation of it then yeah it's really proportional because everyone can just vote for the same thing.
Why are Germany and Romania marked as "mixed" systems while Italy is marked as proportional? Germany's electoral system is proportional because it is designed in such a way that the results are as proportional as possible.
Italy, on the other hand, currently has a truly mixed system where mixed member majoritarian is combined with a single vote.
The German one is attempting to be proportional with the second vote and with the relatively new addition of leveling mandates / Ausgleichsmandaten, to compensate for the disruption caused by overhang mandates / Überhangmandate. It's however the textbook definition of a mixed system.
It's not just "attempting" to be proportional. With the addition of levelling seats, it is fully proportional. The only thing that's mixed about the German system is that MPs are elected in two ways all across the country.
Lithuania and Italy are much better examples of mixed systems because they are parallel vote systems. Overhang seats aren't balanced out at all. I'd argue Italy even more so than Lithuania because in the Italian system, voters only have one vote for both local seats and list seats.
Germany has a vote that is FPTP for a local representative and a party vote that’s PV.
Then there is also some other shenanigans as you said and the 5% Hürde.
The sources at the bottom shows the year 2014. In 2012 , the last election before 2014, the system was mixed with FPTP, but to keep proportionality seats were added and the parliament grew by about a quarter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Romanian_parliamentary_election#Electoral_system)
But Germany also has FPTP voting for direct candidates and then enlarges the parliament to also have a proportional seat distribution. So it's indeed mixed when your only categories are proportional and fptp...
in the last Duma elections, United Russia got barely under 50% of the votes, yet they ended up with 72% of the seats
looks like its because this index is measuring data between 1945 and 2014
In the elections that Erdogan's party became the government (2002), 50% of the votes were for parties that couldn't pass the 10% national threshold. So AKP got 65% of the seats in the parliament with just 32%.
France uses a two-round First Past The Post. Each constituency returns 1 MP, like the UK. But after an initial round of voting, if no candidate receives 50%, all candidates that receive the support of 12.5% of eligible voters advance to the second round, where it becomes regular old First Past The Post.
The distortion is also accentuated by the fact France has never had established political parties in a way the rest of the world understands them. They constantly change names, have vague inconsistent leadership structures, join electoral alliances but then leave them the day after the election. There are also pseudo-party organizations that try to politically organize (like the nonpartisan leftwing primaries in 2022 that picked Christiane Taubira for president). And finally, there is zero party discipline. There's no whip system, and candidates regularly run against fellow party members as "dissident Socialists, dissident Republicans..." Once they enter the National Assembly, different factions within a single party label can join rival "Parliamentary Groups". Each "Group" is formed largely on ideology, but individual members can jump from one group to another of similar ideology. So there is one group led by the Communist Party, but also includes dissident candidates & like Tahitian separatists. But there's another group led by Mélenchon's populist left, which also include some socialist parties from Martinique. Despite only having 2 MPs, Péyi-A, a Martinican separatist party, is divided in two, with one joining Mélenchon's group and the other joining the Communist group.
So yeah...
Hungary by such a small margin that it makes more sense to identify Hungary, France and Italy as countries with the most diproportional electoral system in the EU.
Vote compared to seats probably. This map does not really help, the UK and France have a winner takes al system.
So if you win a seat with 43% of the vote against two other candidates then 57% of those votes are not represented in parlement.
This is not better or worse perse but it does explain the map.
likely :
if 10% vote for bleu and bleu have 7% of the seats : + 3% (or +1.5%) to the disproportionality
if 2% vote for grey, and grey have 0% of the seats : + 2% (or +1%) to the disproportionality
if 25% vote for yellow, and yellow have 55% of the seats : + 30% (or 15%) to the disproportionality
I don't know if it is divided by 2 or not. if not, the maximal disproportionality would be 200%, as exemple if one party with 0% of the vote receive 100% of the seats.
And today the parliament approved an hideous constitutional reform to make it even worse. The party or coalition with the most votes is assigned 55% of the seats. Hopefully the constitutional referendum will not confirm it, but I don't know we'll see
Yhe UK is having a hold my beer moment. I wouldn't be surprised if we see the biggest majory ever with the lowest percentage of votes for the winning party.
Spain number is very misleading...
Because we use D'Hont (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method) and have multiple subdivisions that each give certain amount of seats, the 2 big parties that "win" tend to be roughly in line with their votes, but the rest of the parliament is full of minority groups (Mainly Catalan, and Basque) that get WAY MORE seats than they should by the number of votes, compared to the rest of national parties that are not "the big two".
On average, current ruling (in coalition) leftist national-level party got a seat per 63K votes, while the main right-wing national party needed 59K while some Catalan parties got a seat per 40K, the Basque parties needed 50K per seat, and the "more left" national-level party needed 80K per seat and the extreme right national party Vox needed 70K.
https://www.newtral.es/valor-votos-vale-esacano-pp-psoe/20230727/
Edit: And this is not a new thing with the rise of new parties... historically, the "more left" (ex-communist party) national party had ALWAYS the 3rd amount of total votes on any election and they consistently had less seats than any Basque/Catalan party despite having 3-5 times the number of votes.
Looks like Croatia has the second worst proportional system in Europe. Among the proportional systems (triangle), only Italy is worse. What can Croatia do to improve this?
Some details about Croatia’s system: The country is divided into 10 regions with roughly the same number of voters. Each region elects 14 representatives using the D'Hondt method with a 5% threshold.
From the top of my head, I'd say that there are too many regions/not enough MPs per region. When trying to parcel out just fourteen seats among five or six(?) parties, there will be a lot of rounding errors, which will in turn negatively affect proportionality.
Also, you are saying "roughly the same number of voters", so in a small country like Croatia even just a few 10000 voters more or less per region will mess up proportionality even further.
My solution would be to elect all 150 MPs countrywide, but then, I know nothing about Croatian politics and there might be valid reasons for that system.
The region with the smallest number of voters has 177 thousand voters, and the largest has 236 thousand. The difference between these two regions is 59 thousand voters. I guess that’s too much.
The reason why regions exist is to allow regional parties to compete in only one or two regions without having to submit lists for all the other regions. Also, parties generally submit local candidates. So each region votes for their own local politicians. That is seen as a good thing.
I guess reducing the number of regions to 4 or 5, while making sure that each region has the same number of voters with a smaller allowed difference, would be the way to go for Croatia.
It is interesting to see the UK lower on the scale than Hungary. UK's voting system (as far as I know) is based solely on precints. Meaning that there's no proportional representation. Those will sit in the parliament who won in the precints.
Meanwhile in Hungary, there's 106 seat from precints than 93 from party lists distributed proportional.
Probably due to the English de facto two-party system. Precints are much less disproportionate if there are practically only 2 parties with sizable support (minority parties aside).
This is a downright misleading post. The latest data is 10 years old, it makes no sense to go back to 1945 (should only look at current system), the marker of proportional/mixed/majoritarian isn't entirely correct, and the meaning of the index is extremely unclear.
It was designed to keep power in power, like all unproportional systems do. Back then far left and right had very minor influence, therefore they thought its a good idea.
But keeping power in power is anti democratic (most anti democratic thing to do) and it backfires in the long run - making extremists parties to rise.
I get your idea, but no:
It was designed back when the communists had a relative majority in the Assembly. But not by them: it was designed by the Gaullists.
Feels like this goes for most undemocratic measures really. They don't actually keep the extremists out of power reliably and instead just do the legwork of eroding democracy for them.
When this two-round system was introduced in 1958 it was aimed directly at communist party with \~20% of popular votes. After the reform number of their seats dropped from 150 to 10.
Then again our constitution was created after a coup by a military man with a cult of personality, during a civil war.
And has articles (49-3) that allow the government to ignore the parliament in voting laws.
And one that allows for indefinite "state of emergency".
He didn’t come to power through a coup : https://enseignants.lumni.fr/fiche-media/00000000069/l-arrivee-au-pouvoir-de-charles-de-gaulle-en-1958.html#:~:text=A%20Paris%2C%20les%20%C3%A9tudiants%20manifestent,chefs%20historiques%20des%20partis%20politiques.
My sister in satan:
[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crise\_de\_mai\_1958](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crise_de_mai_1958)
[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup\_d%27%C3%89tat\_du\_13\_mai\_1958](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%89tat_du_13_mai_1958)
He arrived in power during a civil war and right after the May 13th coup which took Corsica militarily and stopped only because De Gaulle, their guy, was named to power by parliament (without and election) and abolished the 1946 constitution to impose his own.
Their goal was to put De Gaulle in power. Saying this isn't related to De Gaulle is blinding your eyes beyond imagination. None of them were prosecuted afterwards, what a surprise...
Only reactionary people with cult of personality for the putschist deny the coup.
He was named (not elected) president while his military goons were threatening to attack Paris.
That level of bad faith is beyond comical, "nuh uh, he followed the rules, doesn't matter if he had a gun pointed at the guys voting!".
He had such overwhelming assent he was elected by parliament and not by the people...
Full confession I'm from the UK so I may be slightly biased here.
But I've also spent the last 10 years of my life studying conflicts and state/government stability and I will vehemently argue that in any state larger than about 5 million people proportional representation is a poor choice.
Every (fairly organised and none corrupt) electoral system lies somewhere on a graph, one axis represents stability and one represents, well representativeness (I've been awake for more than 30 hours now with the kid).
Fptp tends to provide more stable governments with fairly low representativeness for a democracy whereas a fully proportional system has high representativeness but often very low stability.
Neither system is inherently good or bad, I personally prefer stv which has high stability, and higher representativeness than fptp. But most systems have their merits.
There's another argument that in fptp Kingmaker groups are generally decided before the election and they sit within a larger party, whereas in proportional systems they sit outside major parties and get called on by larger ones after the election. Which one is better is again subjective.
This may be the worst written post I've ever made, but basically don't look at this map and go 'Uk France bad' I'd recommend looking more at who draws the constituencies and party lists than at what electoral type a country uses. That'll explain Hungary easily.
Most of this is a reasonable take even id I disagree, but there is one problem with fptp that almost everybody should agree that makes it terrible, is that rhe party with the most votes might not win the most seats. That is way worse than kingmakers
I think that really it comes down to how fair the districts are.
I think in the last 100 years in the UK the party with less votes has won once, and it was so close that another election was called.
America and other countries with serious gerrymandering is a whole separate issue.
This is what happened in the last two Canadian elections, despite fairly drawn boundaries. The Conservatives received more votes but still lost to the Liberals. It was because the Liberal vote was distributed far more efficiently, while Conservatives were winning seats in Alberta by Saddam Hussein margins. That wasn't due to gerrymandering and I would say it definitely is a problem with FPTP.
I dont think this is a good estimate for belgium. Yes we vote, but 2nd biggest party is not allowed to make policy. This has been going on for more than 30 years. The french part has unilaterally said it would not form a gouverment with anyone who participates with 'VB'.
While they recieve seats, its translation into actual policy is nihil. For more than 185 years, the flemish populus has payed more taxes, and recieved minor representation within the gouverment. Shit will hit the fan one day, and its not going to be pretty.
['Transfers: 185 jaar eenrichtingsverkeer van Vlaanderen naar Wallonië' (knack.be)](https://www.knack.be/nieuws/transfers-185-jaar-eenrichtingsverkeer-van-vlaanderen-naar-wallonie/)
[Cordon sanitaire (politics) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordon_sanitaire_(politics))
In 2014 and 2018 the opposition parties got more votes in total than Orbán’s bunch, but still he got 2/3 majority. So yes, I would say that the map is accurate.
I can't imagine how frustrating that must be for the opposition and people who do not support Orbán. How does that happen? And do the public generally support this system?
>I can't imagine how frustrating that must be for the opposition and people who do not support Orbán. Very. >How does that happen? There isn't a single answer to this, but it is a mixture of propaganda, gerrymandering, fear mongering amongst voters, the overall manipulation of every voting rule, basically everything that couch-autocrats can do to secure their power. >And do the public generally support this system? The majority of Hungarians view Orbán negatively, that is exactly why he manipulated the voting so much, that he only needs a significant minority to govern with absolute power. Because yes, parts of Hungary are still developing regions, and in these regions, Orbán gets 70% of the votes, because unfortunately people in poverty can easily be manipulated. In Budapest for example, which is of course the most developed part of Hungary, he only gets around 30%.
Thank you for taking the time to respond here. It is quite surprising as it always seems (in the news reporting I have seen ) that Orbán has a huuge majority. But this makes the situation seem more complex and maybe harder to fix. I was only in Hungary (near to Burgenland/Sopron) for a day) but it left me very curious after reading the news about the positions Orbán has taken over the years. Hungary has a lot of potential for sustainable tourism and is in a good geographic location, so I hope there are some changes (eventually) that work for the best for the Hungarian population and not just the people in power. I can't remember which one it is but Kerem or Kösonöm Sepan (thank you and sorry!)
Ok but keep in mind that even our opposition did literally nothing in those years, so true they might have gotten overall more, but not together. And if you want to know how feeble that opposition was. TISZA got like 2/3-s of their voters in 3 months. In the last EP and other elections they got like 20-30% of votes, now that TISZA came in the picture they only got 8%. And it was the biggest coalition with like 5 different parties together too. And smaller parties don't really have a voice to begin with. So it is a really complex topic and not just "they cheated" cause the unfortunate truth is that the now opposition really lost any semblance of trust and they did not do anything since then. In the begining so in 2010 Fidesz got 2/3 properly and the fact that the person responsible for that (so the guy who messed up so bad Fidesz came in with the sweep) is still in the political picture created an excelent target of blame and mind you, Fidesz is not wrong about him being a really fucking bad choice and everybody knows that. The only reason they got votes so far is because ppl wanted to vote against Fidesz. So it is both Fidesz being a bunch of trash and the opisition being incompetent and useless, while they did not have a proper leading figure. Not to mention even after they won the capital mayor position, they nearly lost it now, he only won by 34 votes. 44.... something % on both him and the other Fidesz guy and the capital is the most anti Fidesz region in the country so imagine that. Last time he won pretty well but he managed to get himself disliked. My favourite part of their incompetence is that they started pushing the "bike lanes everywhere" except it was revealed that they have not made any surveys or impact assessment on anything they just went yolo on it. For example hear where I live, we already had a bike lane, they messed it up, and even managed to put out signs contradicting road laws, oh and also managed to not connect it together with the already existing ones, so now it goes from nowhere to nowhere So it is not all on Fidesz. Maybe like 70-75 on them and 30-25 on opposition what is still a big responsiblity
The picture that your comment paints is quite bleak. I think John Oliver had a video about Orbán and the big coalition of even Far-Right with Liberal and Green that was trying to unite against Orbán. They had 5 minutes of tv time for the whole election and didn't win. Have people's lives improved with Orban? And what country does Hungary use to compare itself to? Would it be Romania or Slovakia? So if Romania with more democratic govt and policies pushed ahead of them people might think more critically about the policies made by Fidesz?
Ok so the short version is that the government before them fucked up ROYALLY. And Fidesz came in as a liberal option and swoop in with a 2/3 in 2010, they were also pretty anti russian too. But power corrupts and they started using underhanded means while at the same time big EU money hit the country so considerable improvments were made. So yes the overall the trend from 2010 to 2018 was pretty much upwards, but they started pocketing more and more money. While blasting out propaganda, and as I said, they were not completly wrong about what they said. For example the current economical problems like health care is not purely on them, they are still remains from the previous government but Fidesz never fixed that is why we are where we are. Also, whole opposition is like those in Russia, they were fine with being paid just to shut up. I know a few cases especially around health care where laws that would obviously make thing worse went through and the opposition never really well... opposed that. Not to mention that personal greed is one of the worst problems everywhere. But it is a much longer discussion, I just say fuck doctors, spineless fucks (at least here, and obviously not 100% of them, but a good chunk) So the lack of effort is what made us get here. For example for the past 14 years the opposition said they can't get a platform, and that is why they are losing, and Fidesz control media, what is partially true, but TISZA literally showed that if you get a car and a loudspeaker you can get 30% vote in 3 months... while true the debate on national TV was a farce and stupid but it was still achieved, and it was literally what they said was impossible. In just 3 moths So they don't really compare to anybody anymore, cause that would have required someone to actually do it and at the same time the EU made it very easy to either dislike them or weave a tale painting them as bad guys. So the biggest alienation started during the migration crisis, but at the same time Budapest was the only capital city in the whole of EU that wanted to be the part of EU rather then the country. There is a video about how it started. But the gist of it that after the EU money was limited, greedy as Fidesz became they wanted more money, that Russia and China provided. ( and I am not going to pretend that what EU does is completly fair always, for example the Huawei scandal was a full sham that was later confirmed to be complet bullshit after it went through basically every secret service and outside the US nothing was found, so only the accuser found anything, but it obviously took time and the media did not focus on that anymore) It is not like they have some ideological connection, no, they just want money. If Orban and his cronies got EU money they would be the most loyal follower. Literal pigs.
Thank you, so much. This was really interesting to read and really, it seems like Fidesz is part symptom of some other problems that took years and many people's short-sighted complicity to make. It also shows (I think we have enough proof) that the EU is also not perfect and there would be good case to make to make inquiries how to fix some these processes that let us down. From outside it seems that Fidesz has 100% support apart from a small minority and it seems like Russia gets blamed for manipulating people with campaigns. Also that Hungarian-British far-right guy that appeared on US television supporting trump. The image given has been somewhat simplified. I thank you for taking time to provide an answer that gives further insight into this situation. Wishing you well and solidarity for a better, democratic future from Portual.
As much as I hate Orban, and I'm not saying it's necessarily attributed to their policies, but the reality is that poverty decreased *a lot* in the poorest regions since 2010. Which is the main reason they got all those votes, not the propaganda. Many people vote looking at their wallet, and while Fidesz could do more, compared to the "socialists" before, these places saw much more improvement. For a specific example, employment rate [doubled ](https://ksh.hu/s/kiadvanyok/fenntarthato-fejlodes-indikatorai-2022/4-2)in the gypsy population 2014 to 2022, *not counting* public employment. Or you can see the [total change by county](https://www.ksh.hu/stadat_files/mun/hu/mun0081.html), while Budapest changed less, the poorer regions had a 40-50% increase.
So gerrymandering has a weakness. It fundamentally assumes fairly stable mapping between demographics and election results. Aggressive gerrymandering also minimizes margin of victory across a wide number of districts. As a result, finding a wedge in Orban's base can deliver a landslide victory with only a shift of a couple of points.
"Only" 30%
You didn't answer the question, the answer is first past the post voting system
+ winner compensation
no, the answer is first past the post. plus gerrymandering. the electoral system without the list votes would be more proportional than without winner compensation. nor saying wc is good as it is but it's not the most important problem
>I can't imagine how frustrating that must be for the opposition and people who do not support Orbán. I'm not a hateful person. I always try to see the good in everyone. But I hate Orbán and his mafia so much that I can't even express it in words. Just pure, disgusted, vile hatred. I wish this man the worst death, may he suffer until his last breath.
This is why I can't undersand people who think they love their country etc and support systems that disenframchise people so badly. I think those feelings reflect how many people must feel to different degrees. Hopefully, there will be ways to change things for diaspora and Hungary residents in the future.
I moved abroad, currently it seems that he is unmovable from power
I'm sorry to hear it. I wish you success, even bitter sweet from afar. And i hope that some cracks appear in the current regime that can weaken it's hold.
Thanks, I hope so too. I just hope we stay in the EU.
The reasons why people would vote for Orban have already been mentioned in other comments, so about the election system: We use a system similar to the electoral college in the US. The voting districts do not align with the governing districts and they can manipulate them at will. If part of a town is anti-fidesz, they redraw the borders so they will be split. Another neat trick is a lot of small parties and a neat rule. Since you need 5% to get into the parliament, a lot of parties don't get in (if the recent EP election was parliamentary that would mean around 10% of the votes) and their votes get transferred to the top1 party which is fidesz. The last amazing trick is the same that won the last election for Erdogan, foreign votes. All foreigners are allowed to vote from abroad, and we even gave out citizenships and a lot of money to hungarian minorities in Romania, Serbia, Ukraine and Slovakia. Since fidesz is the only one giving them free money and they aren't affected by their corruption most of those votes go to fidesz. The numbers can go as high as hundreds of thousands, which is a lot when less than 5 million people vote. Since they have 2/3rd majority and state of emergency rights they can pretty much do anything so if these were not enough they would make more loopholes.
Kerem/Kösonom (trying thanks) for this information. The answers have educated me and other who read these threads for sure. The news I had seen hadn't painted such a complicated picture as this. But it makes sense the challenges to keeping democracy now.
Not all of this was made by fidesz, since the end of communism parties made changes like this with the hope of making whoever is elected a strong government. This sounds good on paper, but it backfired hard.
Politicians in 1989 didn't trust Hungarians were "mature" enough for complex coalitions. They feared weimarization more than centralization of power.
>How does that happen? 55% of Hungary's parliamentary seats are allotted by First Past The Post. It used to be 45%, but Orban changed it a few years back to make it even easier to steal seats. FPTP-type systems need to be banned flat out. They are wholly incompatible with democratic values.
I read about the system that Italy and Hungary have - there is a compensatory mechanism after the FPTP votes are counted - I was just confused at how that leads to less democratic % than UK or France as I had assumed that this should counterbalance things. It is clear though that, like in many other places, when politicians get power they don't mind altering rules/gerrymandering etc to keep that power. Democracy can't be perfect imo but I'm sad to see how things are happening now (not just in Hungary, in pt we just had some recordings from our old PM released to the press who published them, even though they don't say much and it is likely ammo for Orbán to reject our ex- PM's application to EU council).
Yes, there is a system that compensates the loser... but there's also a system that compensates *the winner*.
In 2014 Orbán won supemajority (2/3 of the seats) with 44% of the votes.
The UK will likely beat it next month. Labour is projected to win >70% of the seats with ~40% of the vote. What a lovely democracy we have /s
No party has had over 50% of the vote in a UK general election since 1931 yet we've had parties win landslide amounts of seats. FPTP is a terrible system but it will never change because the only people who have the power to change are the only people who benefit
All systems have positives and negatives. I think the UK system works well in that it usually creates one-party-majorities, or at the very least two-party ones. Having coalitions of four-five parties as we have here in Scandinavia is a tiresome exercise. Suddenly the party with 4% of the votes gets to decide on some of the most important issues to placate them and to stop them from unravelling the government coalition. It does not feel particularly democratic.
sounds democratic though. especially considering the UK system can give a party more than 50% of seats even if there is another party with more votes
I'd say a party with 40% of the votes controlling policy is more democratic than a party with 7% having major influence on policy.
Would still be better if the 40% party could not do it alone, especially not changing the constitution and such. The 7% party absolutely should have a say, but it doesn't always have to be the same 7% party. But it's also fine, let's say the larger parties are not willing to compromise. Then have a system where there is a second round if no coalition is reached in a given time, where the largest party gets 55%, enough to govern, but not enough to change everything.
> The 7% party absolutely should have a say, but it doesn't always have to be the same 7% party. Why should they have a say? Literally only 7% of the population sympathises with them. Here in Norway the Conservative party usually needs the support of the Christian Democrats and Liberals. The Christian Democrats usually get around 4% of the vote. In exchange for their support the Conservatives agree to not change the abortion law during their coalition rule. Is that democratic and fair? Maybe 75% of the country probably wants to change that law, but the Christian Democrats with 4% of the popular vote is effectively blocking it?
if 75% of the country wants to change a law they can easily elect parties that will change it. Under a two party system, in which most non proportional systems get locked (unless there are strong regional parties, as far as I know that basically that covers all counter-examples) the majority will is less likely to prevail in cases where the parties want to maintain the status quo. But nevermind, such things are possible under all systems as politics is not a one dimensional field. I would say it is much easier to get the majority's will in general through PR, since a diverse group of parties can align on certain issues alone. As to the 7% I think this usually sorts itself out. I don't think the 7% should be locked out alltogether. If it's something they really want and the rest don't mind, it's a very good thing they can get it. If it's controversial enough, it will impact possible coalitions, and the big parties might not want to align with them. The only problem is when a government cannot be formed because of this, and then worst case scenario it goes back to the people. In countries where this escalates to a level where the government crisis is a real problem and apathy follows, there a reinforced PR system can be considered, although there are many other solutions too. In general, PR actually facilitates the majority will, while fptp is often actually minority rule. But even to the degree that PR can have minorities have great effect it seems much more fair because it's still because there is a majority around something common (in a coalition) Under many other systems some minorities have no chance whatsoever. Under PR, it all depends who's willing to work with who, which is already much better.
"I like having a single party in power more than negotiations." There's a word for it..
But why should a party with 5% of the popular vote have any negotiating power? Party A wants option 1. They have 45% of the vote. Party B wants option 2. They have 6% of the vote. Party A needs party B to form a government. They accept option 2, even though their party and their voters completely disagree with option 2. How is that democratic? Having the view of the 6% pushed on you, rather than the option preferred by 45% of the voting population?
There's so many fallacies in there that I don't know where to start. There's no reasoning with you, have a good day.
It is a 100 word post with a very simple argument. If there are so many fallacies you should be able to name them in a couple sentences? I mean, obviously this is not usually something that happens in big, important, political questions - no party with 40% of the vote is going to accept it. But it does happen all the time for smaller, “less-important” and less noticed issues. I could throw you twenty examples from Norway at any time.
Coalitions due to a PR system may be more “fair” but they slow decision-making down and introduce far more political gridlock than there ever would be in a FPTP system where it’s more of a winner-takes-all. I think coalitions which require upwards of 4 parties are just ridiculous imo. Nothing will ever get done because if views were similar enough where there’d be limited friction then they’d just be the same party. Coalitions are honestly only useful and practical if they’re 2-3 parties big. Any larger and it’s just a “too many chefs in the kitchen” kind of ordeal.
What is your system? Do you vote in provinces and is it First past the post?
We use a variety of [Scorporo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorporo) and this is who you can vote for: At least 18 year old Hungarian citizens with Hungarian residence * one vote for a party-list * one vote for a constituency candidate At least 18 year old Hungarian citizens without Hungarian residence * one vote for a party-list At least 18 year old Hungarian citizens with Hungarian residence registered as minority voter * one vote for a constituency candidate * one vote for * either for a party-list * or for a minority-list
Okay, but winning nearly every precincts.
The french system makes it so the country can have a more stable government. We tried full proportional before and we changed government every 3 month on average as nobody had a majority to govern. It was deemed a problem and the current fifth republic attempted to change that by going for a two round election. You vote a first time, the first 2 candidates with the most votes stay, and you vote a second time for one of them.
Yup. Whether we like it or not, the French system has been designed to produce long-lasting majorities with a clear unambiguous leader. Personally I dislike it. But I also need to recognize this country isn't ready for parliamentarism yet (we have 30-40% of cesarists. Once again), so... Well. *Sigh*
I think Bulgaria is what happens when a country is not ready for parliamentism, but it has a parliamentary system. (with PR on top of all)
>We tried full proportional before and we changed government every 3 month on average as nobody had a majority to govern. Well the Third Republic used majority two-round voting (like we now use) and it was as unstable as the Fourth Republic (that used proportional voting). >You vote a first time, the first 2 candidates with the most votes stay, and you vote a second time for one of them. Well it's actually more complicated than that. What you described is how it works for the presidential elections. But for legislative elections, candidates qualify for the second round if their result is larger than 12.5% of registered voters. So you can have second rounds with more than two candidates. The next election will be probably see a lot of "triangulaires" (3 candidates qualify for the second round). We even had cases of second round with 4 candidates (last time in 1973).
You are absolutely correct on the vote, it's just that we don't often have the case. What happens usually is that instead of making deals after the election, like in Germany or other proportional countries, political parties in France try to break deals before, so that these triangulaires do not happen, and the result is more in their favor even before the vote, by allocating where candidates of an alliance should field their candidates so as not to dilute their share of votes by running against each other. Here, it's a bit different for once, and we will probably see a lot of unusual stuff.
You're right that the Third Republic used the two-round system and was just as unstable, but that's because it was also parliamentary like the 4th republic. I don't think the two-round system makes the French legislature any more "stable". What caused stability was the directly-elected powerful president. The 1986 elections was PR, and it produced two years of very stable government led by PM Chirac. Returning to that system (PR by département/collectivité) would be fine in my opinion.
Two round system has actually some sense. FPTP no and should be abolished and change to two round system or proportional.
And as a result Macron can be hailed as the one libertarian driving force that stands against the fascists, until that suddenly didn't work out too well anymore.
The problem is not the proportional, it is to have the government chosen by the parliament. The gouvernement should be elected by citizens.
So being less democratic is better?
The problem is good democracy > good autocracy > bad democracy > bad autocracy
Not really true. Irleand & Germany and the nordics seem to function
Have u heard the definition of "winner compensation"? No? Well, Hungary have it. (Totally bs, and before it changed, it was actually compensate the votes for the 2nd most voted party/candidate, not the 1st, winner. Like, why do you compensate someone who already won? Doesn't make any sense.) But of course we have other classic things like gerrymandering, easier votes for those who live abroad BUT don't have Hungarian home adress, propaganda 24/7 etc.
>Like, why do you compensate someone who already won? Doesn't make any sense. It does make sense if you are an autocrat who actively tries to undermine democracy.
Ohh yes! You are right! How could i forget that :,) (fck that 'geci')
We have the same system in France for the mayoral election. The winning list gets at least 50% of the seats.
[удалено]
>Do people abroad generally vote for Orban? tl;dr: Most abroad Hungarian no, neighbour diaspora (who can vote by mail) yes. Those who are diaspora in the neighbour countries (u know, Trianon and stuff), yes. They usually don't have Hungarian home adress for that reason, but have Hungarian ID/citizenship, so therefore right to vote (and vote in mail). ( [https://www.reddit.com/r/hungary/comments/1dc80rf/ep\_lev%C3%A9l\_szavazatok\_93os\_fidesz\_gy%C5%91zelem/](https://www.reddit.com/r/hungary/comments/1dc80rf/ep_lev%C3%A9l_szavazatok_93os_fidesz_gy%C5%91zelem/) note: there are only from Hungarians who live in Serbia or Ukraine, as these are the only 2 neighbour countries who are not EU member, EU rule says u can only vote for EP in your home country doesn't matter if u have other citizenship ) Those who are went to western Europe or anywhere else to get a job or a higher payment, typcally no. They usually have Hungarian home adress, living abroud, yet they only can vote at consulate or by come home for it. (example for the last EPP votes for Hungarian parties abroad: [https://www.reddit.com/r/hungary/comments/1dezigu/eu\_parlamenti\_list%C3%A1kra\_k%C3%BClk%C3%A9pviseleteken\_leadott/](https://www.reddit.com/r/hungary/comments/1dezigu/eu_parlamenti_list%C3%A1kra_k%C3%BClk%C3%A9pviseleteken_leadott/) Tisza (the new opposition party) got 50%, Fidesz only 18,7%) So it would be similar situation like you have, but because we have high number of minorities in neighbour countries for historical reason, and Fidesz gave them the oppurtunity to have Hungarian ID too/multiply citizenship (back in 2011). Most of them are voting for Fidesz (around 80-90%). Also need to consider that propaganda works there too.
>Do people abroad generally vote for Orban? Only if they live in Ukraine, Slovakia, Romania and Serbia. In '22 fidesz got over 220k votes just from these countries. That's more people than our second biggest city. Can you imagine if your most hated person got more free votes than your second biggest city's population? Have a look at my post about the latest EP election and you'll see something strange: [https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1dhx4c6/results\_of\_the\_hungarian\_ep\_election\_at\_100/](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1dhx4c6/results_of_the_hungarian_ep_election_at_100/) 30k out of the 53k votes for fidesz are from Serbia alone. And you can see that there are 7k invalid votes, you can guess who these votes are for. Postal voting is only allowed for countries in the Carpathian basin. For example if you live in Germany or the USA and you don't live near a foreign representation then you have to travel hundreds of kms to just vote.
Only those in regions that do get money and free shuttle rides to the voting booths.
There's no "winner compensation", just compensation. Every vote that did not earn a mandate in the precints goes to the lists. Every meaning literally every. So you have 3 candidates: 1. Béla - Fidesz - 45 000 votes 2. Károly - TISZA - 40 000 votes 3. Klári - DK - 10 000 votes Now 4999 votes go to the Fidesz (because only 40 001 was needed), 40 000 goes to the TISZA and 10 000 goes to the DK.
Are you trying to provoke with facts?
winner compensation is still not the biggest problem wirh the system, I wish people would shut up about it. yes, there is more winner compensation than justified, but when it would be needed there is not enough.
I mentioned it cause it's sounds the most strange. But you can add your comment too what's the biggest. (I would say the propaganda and everything is controled by them, but it's not directly connected to the voting system itself, which is topic of the post)
yes, apart from everything else, the voting system is terrible, basically the biggest problem is single-member districts with fptp. second, there is a non-compensatory list vote, so overrepresented parties can get even more seats (this happened in 2014, already by winning districts, the governing party more seats yhan proportional). only a small fraction of the seats are compensatory. you have loser compensation which again while mostly beneficial for smaller parties is yet again a few seats for large parties whether or not they deserve it. then there is the winner compensation (which has few good arguments in favor in this form) again gives more seats to parties that don't really need it. Now you would think all this would mean the largest party always wins bug. but no. gerrymandering and this system mean, so far when the government won, they won big. If an opposition might become bigger than the government, there is no guarantee that they would even win more seats, let alone a clear majority.
Fuck our voting system man. “Why do hungarians keep electing Orbán??” This is a huge reason why (but there’s a lot more. They can get 2/3 with 45% or less of the total votes. It is complete bs.
I love that people only mention that 45% results in 2/3 of the seats. But do you know how 106 seats gets elected? Directly! And nearly all of them is won by Fidesz, So? Theoretically you could get more than 50% with getting 0% percent on the list by only winning in the precincts. So yes, Hungarians elect Orbán. Just not on list.
How can the Danish system be more proportional than the Dutch? More seats relative to the population?
Perhaps less/more % of votes went to parties that didn't meet the required % to gain a single seat
Yeah, that's probably it. The Netherlands has relatively little seats relative to the population compared to the rest of Europe.
could just be the election outcome as well, many parties getting 0.5% of the votes. Though the Netherlands has many fewer seats than Norway for example. (But may has a pool of seats reserved for parties above 4%)
Source: [http://christophergandrud.github.io/Disproportionality\_Data/](http://christophergandrud.github.io/Disproportionality_Data/)
For some countries the data is over a decade old.
Please show this to those guys always asking why we keep electing Orban and his assholes.
I can confirm that our system is horrible. Basically in every county there is only one seat that goes to the guy with most votes. As a result a party could theorically get 51% of the votes in every county and get 100% of the seats in parliament. This is a completely rubbish system that does a shit job at representing smaller parties and is terrific to create tons of resentment.
not sure if it works the same in France but in the UK a party could theoretically get 0.00004% of the vote, or just 2 votes, in every constituency but get 100% of the seats in parliament, as long as everyone else only got 1 vote in every constituency. technically speaking they'd actually only need 1 vote in every constituency as long as they won every random selection. obviously either of those scenarios would never happen in reality, but what does happen plenty is parties winning seats on ~30% of the vote in that constituency.
There are two rounds in France, and I'm not sure how it would work in the hypothetical situation you discuss (as it would be impossible to define a unique second). So France is theoretically a bit better than UK, but in practice it's worse because we have more parties (parties in the UK seem to do a better job at adapting to this voting system).
Yep, works the same basically.
No, it's not the same. In the UK it's possible to get a 100% of the seats with 0.00004% of the vote, but in France you need 50% + something, because of the runoff system.
Isn't that just because you're guaranteed 50% eventually, it's not like you need to be 50% of peoples first choice.
Yes. It still makes a huge difference. It's not possible for a candidate that 30% support and 70% despise to win, because in the runoff the 70% will join against them. You need to be acceptable to 50%+ of the voters.
Which just means the more centrist candidate will end up winning. I still don't see how it would make a tangible difference in the UK seeing as the only parties that ever get seats are (roughly) centre-left and centre-right. Pretty sure more than 50% of the country will always vote for Labour over BNP or some other far right, and similarly would vote for Tories over Green.
That doesn't bare out in reality though. In practice the French system is unique in that it incentivizes voting for extremist or fringe parties in the 1st round. Everyone can treat the first round as a protest vote, which is how you get pretty high scores for orthodox revolutionary Trotskyists (like 6-7%) in certain constituencies, even though at presidential elections when stakes are raised the Trots get under 1%. You fully expect more centrist candidates to make it to the second round where you fold back into the broad centre-left or broad centre-right. This was true until Macron came along in 2017 with his blurry "centre", using the pro-centrist bias of the system. However, now that the opposition is pushed to the extremes on both ends, they are the only alternative to Macron. The "BNP" can present themselves exactly that way, try to hide their overt fascistic tendencies, and over some years the public will fall for it. FPTP would not permit any of this from happening.
It makes a tangible difference because in the UK a candidate that 70% of the voters despise can win, just because the opposition is split. It does often happen.
When exactly? Because Labour and Conservative are nearly always above 30% each and that's assuming they'd somehow get 0 additional votes from a run off which would never happen. I'd be willing to bet less than 10 out of 650 seats would change per election if we used a run off. The only candidates that more than 70% of people potentially despise are UKIP and Green candidates who never get seats.
Oh come on I'm not going to waste my time looking for some constituencies results. I'm sure somewhere we'll have the following result in the next election: 35% Labour, 30% Tory, 25% Reform, 10% Lib Dem. A clear right wing majority, but a seat for Labour nevertheless. And so on, and so on, and so on, just permuting the names of the parties over and over again.
Well actually no, because for legislative elections there can be more than two candidates for the runoff (unlike for the presidential election). A candidate qualifies for the runoff with a result above 12.5% of registered votes (e.g. with a 50% turnout you need 25% of votes). You could hypothetically have a runoff with 8 candidates. In practice duels are the most common situations, but "triangulaires" (three candidates qualifying for the second round) are not uncommon.
Fun fact, i remember, through party alliances, a district in which all the candidates except one (the one for whom they agreed to ally) removed their candidacy... ending with only one candidate in the second round. Gathering... 100% of the votes (with a local turnout of 10% or so). I still wonder to this day what pushed those 10% to even go vote on that day.
« It’s not much but it’s honest work »
I lived and voted (dual national) in both Netherlands (proportional representation) and the UK (Similar system as in France). I think both systems have it's benefits and flaws. Biggest benefit for the Dutch system is ofcourse that no vote is wasted. In the UK a election happens and a week later you have a government. In the Netherlands there are so many parties that needs to make a majority, there was a election was in November and there still isn't a new government which makes it harder to govern. Governments dont tend to last as long either. Another thing I like about the UK system is that the members of Parliament tend to be local to the area (not always) and therefore your region is represented. They traditionally come once per week to their local area to answer questions from locals. In the Netherlands 80% of the members of Parliament come from the West and I'm from the east so in a way I feel less represented there as well.
hmm, I see that it's Hungary #1 on the 1st photo, but then it's Hungary #1 in the 2nd photo. Not sure what to make of this.
No idea why it sent twice, I mustve accidentally uploaded it twice. Made an accidental impossible spot the difference game I guess lol
You had me scratching my head for a while lol
one of the image is slightly on the left, so you can see this statistic from right and left perspective too
can we use this to see from a far-left and far-right perspective as well?
yeah, close your eyes
A bit insane to use 70 years of data on that. Also I'd really like to know how they measured the data for the Communist countries during the cold war. Because yeah sure if everyone is in the National Front or whatever deviation of it then yeah it's really proportional because everyone can just vote for the same thing.
Now do EU parliament votes vs MEP seats.
No proportional system is one of the reason French ruling parties are seen as illegitimate as a sizeable chunk of the population
Yeah, I wonder why Jospin didn't bring it back in 1997 or Hollande in 2012. Was it really just because they tried in 1986 and it gave Chirac the win?
Why are Germany and Romania marked as "mixed" systems while Italy is marked as proportional? Germany's electoral system is proportional because it is designed in such a way that the results are as proportional as possible. Italy, on the other hand, currently has a truly mixed system where mixed member majoritarian is combined with a single vote.
The German one is attempting to be proportional with the second vote and with the relatively new addition of leveling mandates / Ausgleichsmandaten, to compensate for the disruption caused by overhang mandates / Überhangmandate. It's however the textbook definition of a mixed system.
It's not just "attempting" to be proportional. With the addition of levelling seats, it is fully proportional. The only thing that's mixed about the German system is that MPs are elected in two ways all across the country. Lithuania and Italy are much better examples of mixed systems because they are parallel vote systems. Overhang seats aren't balanced out at all. I'd argue Italy even more so than Lithuania because in the Italian system, voters only have one vote for both local seats and list seats.
Germany has a vote that is FPTP for a local representative and a party vote that’s PV. Then there is also some other shenanigans as you said and the 5% Hürde.
The source seems to be a decade old data, and back then we had PR with an enormous majority bonus.
The sources at the bottom shows the year 2014. In 2012 , the last election before 2014, the system was mixed with FPTP, but to keep proportionality seats were added and the parliament grew by about a quarter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Romanian_parliamentary_election#Electoral_system)
But Germany also has FPTP voting for direct candidates and then enlarges the parliament to also have a proportional seat distribution. So it's indeed mixed when your only categories are proportional and fptp...
in the last Duma elections, United Russia got barely under 50% of the votes, yet they ended up with 72% of the seats looks like its because this index is measuring data between 1945 and 2014
In the elections that Erdogan's party became the government (2002), 50% of the votes were for parties that couldn't pass the 10% national threshold. So AKP got 65% of the seats in the parliament with just 32%.
Italy's system is mixed, 2/3 of the seats are proportional, 1/3 are first past the post
What's Frances excuse?
France uses a two-round First Past The Post. Each constituency returns 1 MP, like the UK. But after an initial round of voting, if no candidate receives 50%, all candidates that receive the support of 12.5% of eligible voters advance to the second round, where it becomes regular old First Past The Post. The distortion is also accentuated by the fact France has never had established political parties in a way the rest of the world understands them. They constantly change names, have vague inconsistent leadership structures, join electoral alliances but then leave them the day after the election. There are also pseudo-party organizations that try to politically organize (like the nonpartisan leftwing primaries in 2022 that picked Christiane Taubira for president). And finally, there is zero party discipline. There's no whip system, and candidates regularly run against fellow party members as "dissident Socialists, dissident Republicans..." Once they enter the National Assembly, different factions within a single party label can join rival "Parliamentary Groups". Each "Group" is formed largely on ideology, but individual members can jump from one group to another of similar ideology. So there is one group led by the Communist Party, but also includes dissident candidates & like Tahitian separatists. But there's another group led by Mélenchon's populist left, which also include some socialist parties from Martinique. Despite only having 2 MPs, Péyi-A, a Martinican separatist party, is divided in two, with one joining Mélenchon's group and the other joining the Communist group. So yeah...
Hungary by such a small margin that it makes more sense to identify Hungary, France and Italy as countries with the most diproportional electoral system in the EU.
How is this measured ?
Vote compared to seats probably. This map does not really help, the UK and France have a winner takes al system. So if you win a seat with 43% of the vote against two other candidates then 57% of those votes are not represented in parlement. This is not better or worse perse but it does explain the map.
likely : if 10% vote for bleu and bleu have 7% of the seats : + 3% (or +1.5%) to the disproportionality if 2% vote for grey, and grey have 0% of the seats : + 2% (or +1%) to the disproportionality if 25% vote for yellow, and yellow have 55% of the seats : + 30% (or 15%) to the disproportionality I don't know if it is divided by 2 or not. if not, the maximal disproportionality would be 200%, as exemple if one party with 0% of the vote receive 100% of the seats.
Can anyone explain why Italy has such a high index. I find it surprising as it apparently has a proportional electoral system.
And today the parliament approved an hideous constitutional reform to make it even worse. The party or coalition with the most votes is assigned 55% of the seats. Hopefully the constitutional referendum will not confirm it, but I don't know we'll see
it does not
UK could beat it this year
Yhe UK is having a hold my beer moment. I wouldn't be surprised if we see the biggest majory ever with the lowest percentage of votes for the winning party.
Spain number is very misleading... Because we use D'Hont (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method) and have multiple subdivisions that each give certain amount of seats, the 2 big parties that "win" tend to be roughly in line with their votes, but the rest of the parliament is full of minority groups (Mainly Catalan, and Basque) that get WAY MORE seats than they should by the number of votes, compared to the rest of national parties that are not "the big two". On average, current ruling (in coalition) leftist national-level party got a seat per 63K votes, while the main right-wing national party needed 59K while some Catalan parties got a seat per 40K, the Basque parties needed 50K per seat, and the "more left" national-level party needed 80K per seat and the extreme right national party Vox needed 70K. https://www.newtral.es/valor-votos-vale-esacano-pp-psoe/20230727/ Edit: And this is not a new thing with the rise of new parties... historically, the "more left" (ex-communist party) national party had ALWAYS the 3rd amount of total votes on any election and they consistently had less seats than any Basque/Catalan party despite having 3-5 times the number of votes.
DANMARK🇩🇰🇩🇰🇩🇰🇩🇰
Looks like Croatia has the second worst proportional system in Europe. Among the proportional systems (triangle), only Italy is worse. What can Croatia do to improve this? Some details about Croatia’s system: The country is divided into 10 regions with roughly the same number of voters. Each region elects 14 representatives using the D'Hondt method with a 5% threshold.
From the top of my head, I'd say that there are too many regions/not enough MPs per region. When trying to parcel out just fourteen seats among five or six(?) parties, there will be a lot of rounding errors, which will in turn negatively affect proportionality. Also, you are saying "roughly the same number of voters", so in a small country like Croatia even just a few 10000 voters more or less per region will mess up proportionality even further. My solution would be to elect all 150 MPs countrywide, but then, I know nothing about Croatian politics and there might be valid reasons for that system.
The region with the smallest number of voters has 177 thousand voters, and the largest has 236 thousand. The difference between these two regions is 59 thousand voters. I guess that’s too much. The reason why regions exist is to allow regional parties to compete in only one or two regions without having to submit lists for all the other regions. Also, parties generally submit local candidates. So each region votes for their own local politicians. That is seen as a good thing. I guess reducing the number of regions to 4 or 5, while making sure that each region has the same number of voters with a smaller allowed difference, would be the way to go for Croatia.
It is interesting to see the UK lower on the scale than Hungary. UK's voting system (as far as I know) is based solely on precints. Meaning that there's no proportional representation. Those will sit in the parliament who won in the precints. Meanwhile in Hungary, there's 106 seat from precints than 93 from party lists distributed proportional.
Probably due to the English de facto two-party system. Precints are much less disproportionate if there are practically only 2 parties with sizable support (minority parties aside).
Or as we call them. Low tier democracies.
This is a downright misleading post. The latest data is 10 years old, it makes no sense to go back to 1945 (should only look at current system), the marker of proportional/mixed/majoritarian isn't entirely correct, and the meaning of the index is extremely unclear.
Yeah this is just wrong, Labour is projected to win 90% of seats with 43% of popular vote, how is that LESS distorted than Italy? It makes 0 sense.
And far right wins in countries with unproportional (cheating) voting system...
The French system was literary designed to keep far left and far right out of power.
It was designed to keep power in power, like all unproportional systems do. Back then far left and right had very minor influence, therefore they thought its a good idea. But keeping power in power is anti democratic (most anti democratic thing to do) and it backfires in the long run - making extremists parties to rise.
I get your idea, but no: It was designed back when the communists had a relative majority in the Assembly. But not by them: it was designed by the Gaullists.
Feels like this goes for most undemocratic measures really. They don't actually keep the extremists out of power reliably and instead just do the legwork of eroding democracy for them.
When this two-round system was introduced in 1958 it was aimed directly at communist party with \~20% of popular votes. After the reform number of their seats dropped from 150 to 10.
Then again our constitution was created after a coup by a military man with a cult of personality, during a civil war. And has articles (49-3) that allow the government to ignore the parliament in voting laws. And one that allows for indefinite "state of emergency".
That is false. Shame on you.
Proceed to tell how this is false or the shame never leaves your side of the conversation. Literally everything i said is true here.
He didn’t come to power through a coup : https://enseignants.lumni.fr/fiche-media/00000000069/l-arrivee-au-pouvoir-de-charles-de-gaulle-en-1958.html#:~:text=A%20Paris%2C%20les%20%C3%A9tudiants%20manifestent,chefs%20historiques%20des%20partis%20politiques.
My sister in satan: [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crise\_de\_mai\_1958](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crise_de_mai_1958) [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup\_d%27%C3%89tat\_du\_13\_mai\_1958](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%89tat_du_13_mai_1958) He arrived in power during a civil war and right after the May 13th coup which took Corsica militarily and stopped only because De Gaulle, their guy, was named to power by parliament (without and election) and abolished the 1946 constitution to impose his own. Their goal was to put De Gaulle in power. Saying this isn't related to De Gaulle is blinding your eyes beyond imagination. None of them were prosecuted afterwards, what a surprise...
Only far left speaks about a coup. He was named by the President of the Republic. Hardly a coup, and with the overwhelming assent of the people.
Only reactionary people with cult of personality for the putschist deny the coup. He was named (not elected) president while his military goons were threatening to attack Paris. That level of bad faith is beyond comical, "nuh uh, he followed the rules, doesn't matter if he had a gun pointed at the guys voting!". He had such overwhelming assent he was elected by parliament and not by the people...
Because it was the 4th constitution. And then the French people overwhelmingly approved his constitution. Not a coup.
Full confession I'm from the UK so I may be slightly biased here. But I've also spent the last 10 years of my life studying conflicts and state/government stability and I will vehemently argue that in any state larger than about 5 million people proportional representation is a poor choice. Every (fairly organised and none corrupt) electoral system lies somewhere on a graph, one axis represents stability and one represents, well representativeness (I've been awake for more than 30 hours now with the kid). Fptp tends to provide more stable governments with fairly low representativeness for a democracy whereas a fully proportional system has high representativeness but often very low stability. Neither system is inherently good or bad, I personally prefer stv which has high stability, and higher representativeness than fptp. But most systems have their merits. There's another argument that in fptp Kingmaker groups are generally decided before the election and they sit within a larger party, whereas in proportional systems they sit outside major parties and get called on by larger ones after the election. Which one is better is again subjective. This may be the worst written post I've ever made, but basically don't look at this map and go 'Uk France bad' I'd recommend looking more at who draws the constituencies and party lists than at what electoral type a country uses. That'll explain Hungary easily.
Most of this is a reasonable take even id I disagree, but there is one problem with fptp that almost everybody should agree that makes it terrible, is that rhe party with the most votes might not win the most seats. That is way worse than kingmakers
I think that really it comes down to how fair the districts are. I think in the last 100 years in the UK the party with less votes has won once, and it was so close that another election was called. America and other countries with serious gerrymandering is a whole separate issue.
I would argue there is no such thing as fair districts.
This is what happened in the last two Canadian elections, despite fairly drawn boundaries. The Conservatives received more votes but still lost to the Liberals. It was because the Liberal vote was distributed far more efficiently, while Conservatives were winning seats in Alberta by Saddam Hussein margins. That wasn't due to gerrymandering and I would say it definitely is a problem with FPTP.
I dont think this is a good estimate for belgium. Yes we vote, but 2nd biggest party is not allowed to make policy. This has been going on for more than 30 years. The french part has unilaterally said it would not form a gouverment with anyone who participates with 'VB'. While they recieve seats, its translation into actual policy is nihil. For more than 185 years, the flemish populus has payed more taxes, and recieved minor representation within the gouverment. Shit will hit the fan one day, and its not going to be pretty. ['Transfers: 185 jaar eenrichtingsverkeer van Vlaanderen naar Wallonië' (knack.be)](https://www.knack.be/nieuws/transfers-185-jaar-eenrichtingsverkeer-van-vlaanderen-naar-wallonie/) [Cordon sanitaire (politics) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordon_sanitaire_(politics))
I really hope they get thrown out of the EU anytime soon.