Each winner is assigned a “territory” which includes their district and possibly others, so that each district is in the territory of exactly one winner per winning party. Thus, even if your favorite party did not win in your district, you will have a representative from your party who’s responsible to you.
What’s the incentive of a representative to care about his assigned territories besides the one in which he’s running?
Formally speaking, nothing. Indirectly speaking: the candidate is a Schelling point for voters in those districts, especially if they are not excited by the that-party candidate in their own district. So those voters are a potential source of direct votes for that candidate, which help win not just directly, but also by moving the candidate up in the preference order that gets filled in on ballots cast for other candidates.
Why would voters in those districts want to gather around a Schelling point?
I think both in US elections and in German elections, the primary reason of why it’s valuable for a politician to be a good represenative of his districts is not about votes in the main election. In the US a candidate that does badly at local represenation risks getting primaried.
This is do to the combination of for example a major of a city having a lot of insight into whether the interests of their city are well-represented at the national stage by the local representative while at the same time the major has local political power that can be used to draft primary opponents.
Given that being primaried is one of the ways a congressman fails to be reelected it’s valuable for them to not antagonize their local political power players and represent them in parliament.
It seems like the assignment has very little power in your system I find it unlikely that representation of a district will work better then in FPTP as you claim.
PLACE is compatible with primaries; primaries would still be used in the US.
Thus, PLACE has all the same (weak) incentives for the local winner to represent any nonpartisan interests of the local district, along with strong incentives to represent the interests of their party X district combo. The extra (weaker) incentives for those other winners who have the district in their territory to represent the interests of their different party X district combos, to fill out the matrix, make PLACE’s representation strictly better.
What’s the incentive of a representative to care about his assigned territories besides the one in which he’s running?
Formally speaking, nothing. Indirectly speaking: the candidate is a Schelling point for voters in those districts, especially if they are not excited by the that-party candidate in their own district. So those voters are a potential source of direct votes for that candidate, which help win not just directly, but also by moving the candidate up in the preference order that gets filled in on ballots cast for other candidates.
Why would voters in those districts want to gather around a Schelling point?
I think both in US elections and in German elections, the primary reason of why it’s valuable for a politician to be a good represenative of his districts is not about votes in the main election. In the US a candidate that does badly at local represenation risks getting primaried.
This is do to the combination of for example a major of a city having a lot of insight into whether the interests of their city are well-represented at the national stage by the local representative while at the same time the major has local political power that can be used to draft primary opponents.
Given that being primaried is one of the ways a congressman fails to be reelected it’s valuable for them to not antagonize their local political power players and represent them in parliament.
It seems like the assignment has very little power in your system I find it unlikely that representation of a district will work better then in FPTP as you claim.
PLACE is compatible with primaries; primaries would still be used in the US.
Thus, PLACE has all the same (weak) incentives for the local winner to represent any nonpartisan interests of the local district, along with strong incentives to represent the interests of their party X district combo. The extra (weaker) incentives for those other winners who have the district in their territory to represent the interests of their different party X district combos, to fill out the matrix, make PLACE’s representation strictly better.