In the US context who would get voted in using the Australian Senate model is an interesting thought.
GOP and Dems would obviously pick up the majority, but I could imagine a fishing/hunting coalition (with possible NRA support) picking up a few seats, a few religious groups similar to Family First doing the same, and a whole lot of others. The scary thought would be a QAnon supported candidate gaining enough votes for a seat.
The point with Bandt and for other 3rd party candidates is that these models give them a chance as it removes the issue of split/spoiler votes and people are free to vote how they want but fall back on who they would prefer from a major party.
> The point with Bandt and for other 3rd party candidates is that these models give them a chance as it removes the issue of split/spoiler votes and people are free to vote how they want but fall back on who they would prefer from a major party.
Multi-member electorates are still preferential voting systems (just like our Senate elections are a preferential voting system) and thus still have that property.
The point I was making is that winner-takes-all elections result in smaller parties being unrepresented because a party needs to get the majority of votes in an electorate in order to get any representation. If you had 10 representatives per electorate and chose them using the Hare-Clarke system (which is used in Tassie and the ACT for the state government elections -- though their districts have 5 members) you would expect at least one representative to be a Green on average (since they poll around 10% nationally). Right now, the Greens have only 0.6% representation (1/150) in the House of Representatives despite having a 10% first-preference rate across the nation.
As for the more general point about spoilers, that is true but a lot of people (about 80%) still vote for the two major parties as their first preference -- possibly because they were never told how preferential voting works (I learned about it in primary school, but I don't know how common of an experience that is -- and it was never mentioned while I was at high school.)
I've been voting 3rd party in the Senate since I first got to vote (originally the Democrats and lately Greens) but probably got that notion from my parents who would have instilled Don Chipp's "Keep the bastards honest" in me. I was hoping Turnbull might have taken up Fraser's manifesto for a new party but that seems to have gone nowhere now.
Interesting to read about the Unity2020 movement who are trying to chart a similar path of taking the centre but are likely doomed to fail unless someone pumps a few billion into their advertising. The lack of preferential voting also doesn't help their cause.
I personally find the calculation of the redistribution and weightings in the Senate to be fascinating - but the math probably goes over the head of a lot of people.
GOP and Dems would obviously pick up the majority, but I could imagine a fishing/hunting coalition (with possible NRA support) picking up a few seats, a few religious groups similar to Family First doing the same, and a whole lot of others. The scary thought would be a QAnon supported candidate gaining enough votes for a seat.
The point with Bandt and for other 3rd party candidates is that these models give them a chance as it removes the issue of split/spoiler votes and people are free to vote how they want but fall back on who they would prefer from a major party.