How does the system work in practice in Australia? Do candidates have safe seats because they represent popular views, or are there other factors that stop them from being challenged?
One of the differences between the Australian system and the proposed UK system is they have compulsory voting and compulsory ranking of all candidates, neither of which would be in play in the UK.
This has lead to ‘above the line’ voting, where parties register what they want their supporters to put as their preferences, and then you can just mark a box for that party and you get assigned that party’s registered preferences. This gets rid of many of the advantages of AV (though not all, as people are free to express whatever preferences they want—it’s just that 95% of them don’t) in favour of backroom deals between parties for preference swaps.
How does the system work in practice in Australia? Do candidates have safe seats because they represent popular views, or are there other factors that stop them from being challenged?
What Andrew said. But basically, safe seats happen when a system is (IMO) too stable, such that the election is decided by marginal seats.
But this is getting towards my own political opinions, which somehow are boring even me to type on LW ;-)
One of the differences between the Australian system and the proposed UK system is they have compulsory voting and compulsory ranking of all candidates, neither of which would be in play in the UK. This has lead to ‘above the line’ voting, where parties register what they want their supporters to put as their preferences, and then you can just mark a box for that party and you get assigned that party’s registered preferences. This gets rid of many of the advantages of AV (though not all, as people are free to express whatever preferences they want—it’s just that 95% of them don’t) in favour of backroom deals between parties for preference swaps.