Lessons from Ireland: How the country’s electoral system would strengthen Canadian democracy

Justin Trudeau’s biggest regret, he said at his resignation news conference, is failing to achieve electoral reform in Canada — even though he’d promised to do so, and had the opportunity during his first majority government, and didn’t go through with it.

But as a federal election looms this year, it’s a good time to take a closer look at Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system, examine why it’s seen by many as unfair and to think about how an alternative system, like Ireland’s proportional representation model, could better serve Canadians.

Canada has what’s known as a single-member plurality electoral system, commonly referred to as first-past-the-post. The country is divided into electoral districts called ridings, each of which has one representative.

The winning candidate in each riding is the one who receives the most votes, although not necessarily the majority of votes. The system is “winner-takes-all” because only those candidates who come first in each riding gain a seat in Parliament.

Proportional represention

Ireland has a proportional representation system that’s very different from first-past-the-post. Each voter has a single transferable vote, and each constituency elects several candidates. Voters can rank all the candidates on the ballot in order of their preference.

To be successful, a candidate must reach the constituency’s quota, which is calculated based on the total number of votes and the number of seats. When a candidate reaches or exceeds the quota on the first count, they are elected, and their surplus votes are distributed among the other candidates, based on voters’ second or lower preferences.

If nobody reaches the quota on the first count, as often happens, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and their votes are distributed among the other candidates. The process continues until all seats are filled.

Risks to Canadian democracy

Canada’s system poses two major challenges to democracy.

The first is voter disengagement. Under the first-past-the-post system, a candidate does not need to win more than 50 per cent of the votes; they just need to win more than their opponents. All the votes cast in favour of other candidates are discounted.

This can result in a significant disparity between a party’s share of votes and its share of seats in Parliament.

A party with less than 50 per cent of the vote share can form a majority government and dominate the parliamentary agenda until the next election.

This happened in the United Kingdom’s 2024 election (also a first-past-the-post system) — Labour received only 34 per cent of the popular vote, but took 63 per cent of the seats in British Parliament and formed a majority government. The 2019 election in Canada also illustrates the distortion produced by this system — the Conservatives won the popular vote, but the Liberals took 36 more seats and won a minority government.

From the voter’s point of view, it’s easy to see how the system causes disillusionment. If they vote for anyone other than the winning candidate, they may feel their vote is discounted and will have no bearing on the makeup of Parliament, and wonder what’s the point of casting a ballot.

The second challenge exacerbated by the first-past-the-post system is increasing polarization in politics. In a winner-takes-all system, there is no incentive for candidates to try to appeal to voters to become their second or third choice. This leads to a much more adversarial style of politics.

Malaise, polarization reduced

The Irish system mitigates against both democratic malaise and political polarization.

Under proportional representation, the voter’s first preference is always counted. But in contrast to the Canadian system, even if their first-choice candidate is eliminated — or elected on the first count with a surplus — their vote is not wasted. Instead, it’s transferred to their next choice of candidate.

These transfers often determine the outcome of the election. Elections in Ireland tend to produce parliaments that correlate much more closely to the proportion of votes a party has received than under first-past-the-post systems in Canada and the U.K.

In addition, the Irish system helps combat polarization, because candidates’ success or failure often hinges on their ability to attract transfers from supporters of other parties. Centrist candidates will be more likely to appeal to a broader base of voters and attract more transfers than candidates that seek to motivate a base of voters with extremist rhetoric.

The recent Irish general election shows how this system helps avoid excessive polarization. Research has found that countries with proportional representation systems tend to have lower levels of polarization.

Local focus?

It’s sometimes argued that proportional representation encourages parliamentarians to focus on issues in their constituency rather than national issues.

The system greatly facilitates the election of independent candidates. The incoming Irish government, for example, will consist of a coalition of the two main centrist parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, with the support of a group of independents, some of whom make no secret that their priority is their own constituency.

It can be argued, however, that responsiveness to local issues isn’t a negative — and it’s not prevented Ireland from playing an outsize role on the international stage in recent years.

Confronting Trump

Supporters of first-past-the-post argue that it produces stronger, more stable majority governments.

Even though Ireland’s party system has undoubtedly become more fragmented over the past decade, however, coalition governments have proved capable of staying the course.

Of course, Irish politics has its share of challenges. The recent election of Micheál Martin as Taoiseach (prime minister) was delayed a day after rancorous exchanges in Irish Parliament around opposition speaking time, and the country still has a stubbornly low proportion of female parliamentarians (only three women were appointed to the new cabinet as senior ministers, out of 15).

But this doesn’t change the fact that a proportional representation system still produces a parliament more reflective of voter’s choices than first-past-the-post.

Politically disengaged and polarized voters in Canada and an unrepresentative Parliament won’t help the country respond to the challenges posed by the next four years of a second Donald Trump presidency.

A new system with an element of proportionality could help curb polarization, ensure fairer representation for Canadians and transform Canadian democracy for the better.