Electoral reform in Germany and Canada

The voter turnout of 60.9% in the 2004 Canadian general election has been the lowest ever in Canadian electoral history. The election resulted in a minority government for Paul Martin’s Liberals that lost votes after an infamous sponsorship scandal. This scandal undermined Liberal credibility as “sums of money were paid illicitly, supposedly to promote national feeling in Quebec.”1 The Liberals could only win 135 seats with 36.7% of the popular vote, and more than half of their seats (75) came from Ontario. The newly formed Conservatives won 99 districts with 29.6% of the popular vote; 45 of those seats came from their western basis in Alberta, British Columbia and Manitoba. The Bloc Quebecois won all its 54 seats in Quebec and became the third strongest party in the House of Commons. The New Democrats could increase their seats by 46.2%, leaving them with 19 seats and a total 15.7% of the popular vote.2 As a result neither party won the majority of the seats in the House of Commons. A party must hold 155 seats to form a majority government. The combined seats count of the Liberals and the NDP was merely 154.

This resulted in a minority government of Paul Martin’s Liberals that still exists today. Canada’s regional cleavages, i.e. its highly regionalized nature, are the origin of such a development. The electoral system, the single-member plurality, deteriorates this situation as it favors parties with a regional basis and leaves out parties with a small nationwide electorate.

In contrast to Canada, German voters are familiar with elections where neither party can win the majority of seats in the German parliament, the Bundestag. The German electoral system favors coalitions, which is unknown to Canadian voters. The 2005 German election was held one year before its usual date which became necessary after an unsuccessful motion of confidence in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on July 1. Schroeder triggered this federal election after his Social Democrats lost the important state election in North Rhine-Westphalia. In the aftermath of the 2005 election, the Social Democrats lost this election by 1%.3 The German Conservatives, a combined union of the Christian Democratic Union and the Bavarian Christian Social Union, won the election with a total popular vote of 35.2% which was transformed into 226 of 614 total seats in the German parliament. The Social Democrats won 34.2% of the popular vote and 222 seats in the parliament. Both parties lost seats compared to 2002, as did the Greens – the former coalition partner of the Social Democrats in a so-called “red-green-coalition”.