Non-First Past the Post Electoral Systems and New Scenarios

Proportional Representation – I’ve recently been exploring the possibility of utilising the primary election proportional representation (PR) feature on President Infinity to create scenarios for countries that use PR, unfortunately to no avail. I think it would be great to see this feature made available for the general election, in addition to the primary elections, in order to allow for the creation of accurate PR election scenarios. Would be interested to see if anyone else feels the same!

In the current absence of this feature outside of the PI primaries, I’ve found two ways to work around it:

Firstly, when I’ve been working on a full PR election, such as British EU Parliamentary election scenarios for example (all were held using regional PR lists following 1999), instead of using FPTP seats, which would produce widely unrealistic results, I’ve instead set the scenario to a direct popular vote. While this means that no seats are allocated and regional differences are not accounted for, it does reflect the proportionality of the election somewhat. I’d be keen to hear what people think about this method and whether it makes for an interesting scenario or not.

Secondly, for mixed member proportional elections (some FPTP seats, some PR), I’ve instead envisioned making scenarios solely focused on the FPTP seats. The only issue with this is that it would produce unrealistic/simplistic results with nations like Wales or Scotland, where one party has a large advantage in terms of FPTP seats, or for nations like Italy, which have a greater number of PR list seats than FPTP seats. I’d also be keen to see if people would find these sorts of scenarios interesting, despite being somewhat incomplete.

Two Round Elections – Two round elections have been made somewhat more accessible with the onset of the ranked choice feature, which despite not providing for an actual second round, does whittle the number of candidates down to two. I’ve been experimenting with the possibility of creating French legislative election scenarios with this, something I would also be keen to receive feedback on the possibility of.

I would also like to make a French presidential election scenario, however, as the ranked choice feature only works for single regions, it would require a single, all-France region to work in this way, meaning that the only alternative to a two round national election scenario would be to have separate first and second round popular vote scenarios. I would be interested to know what people would think about either having two separate scenarios for each round, or indeed if just having a first round scenario would be more interesting.

Future Projects

I’d therefore be interested to hear feedback on some future projects I had in mind relating to the above, or any tips or ideas regarding the use of non-FPTP voting systems.

PR Elections:

• Welsh and Scottish devolved elections, 1999-2021 (focusing only on FPTP seats)
• British EU Elections, 1999-2019 (using popular vote)
• Italian general election, 2018 (focusing only on FPTP seats)
• German general election, 2017 and upcoming (focusing only on FPTP seats)
  

Two Round Elections:

• French legislative elections, 2017 (using ranked choice, instant run-off for the seats)
• French presidential election, 2017 (using two separate FPTP scenarios)

Miscellaneous (if there’s interest to make the scenarios):

• Scottish independence referendum, 2014
• Update the EU referendum 2016, Quebec referendum 1995 scenarios
• Quebec independence referendum, 1980
• Australian republic referendum, 1999

Would be very interested to hear everyone’s feedback and opinions on the voting systems (if you too would like to see a PR and second round feature added), as well as any feedback on the possible scenarios listed above or any other suggestions for future scenarios.

Thanks!

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