Rural-Urban Proportional Representation with 10% more MPs can work well

Fair Vote Canada’s new Rural-Urban model called for 15% top-up MPs. Can it be made to work well with only 10% top-up MPs? This lets us keep all the present riding boundaries, by adding 33 additional MPs.

Yes, and we will have 66 local single-member ridings for rural and small-urban communities across the ten provinces. We will need 269 MPs elected from 64 multi-member ridings.

Adding the 33 additional MPs to top-up the results in each province (plus the three MPs from the Territories) brings the House to 371 MPs, under this “Rural-Urban + 10% model.” (Adding 10% means 33 more MPs.)

Rural and small-urban communities can have 66 single local MPs

My previous simulation assumed 15% top-up seats, room for which would be created by making all existing ridings 17% bigger. This model included 74 single-MP ridings corresponding to about 88 single-member seats before reconfiguration. Avoiding the need for reconfiguration brings us back to 88 seats, but to keep the level of proportionality the same with only 10% top-up MPs, I have grouped 22 of these into two-member ridings, bringing the number down to 66.

Better regional representation

As with any PR model applied to the votes cast in 2015, it gives better regional representation.

Liberal voters will be fairly represented from all parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan, Vancouver Island and the BC Interior, Manitoba outside Winnipeg, and southwestern Ontario. So will Conservative voters in Atlantic Canada, the west half of Quebec, the Greater Toronto Area, Northern Ontario, Winnipeg, and Metropolitan Vancouver. So will NDP and Green voters everywhere. And voters will be able to vote for who they want, not just against who they don’t want.

Perfectly proportional

The result of my “Rural-Urban + 10%” simulation on the 2015 votes is almost perfectly proportional. If we had used province-wide perfect proportionality for 371 MPs, the results would have been: Liberal 152, Conservative 118, NDP 73, Bloc 17, Green 11. My simulation gives the Bloc 16 and the Conservatives 119, otherwise perfectly proportional. (Yes, in six provinces one party gets a one-seat bonus, but they mostly cancel out nationally.)

Where did this Rural-Urban model come from?

Where did this new Rural-Urban model come from? More details here.

What does it look like?

With this “Rural-Urban + 10%” model, the larger number of 2-MP ridings brings the average District Magnitude of the multi-MP ridings down to 4.2 MPs. That would not be very proportional, except that the 33 additional top-up MPs make the result proportional.

So here is my revised distribution:

Newfoundland & Labrador (3+4+1):

St. John's—Avalon 3 

Singles 4

Nova Scotia (6+5+1):

Halifax 4

Central Nova—Cumberland—Colchester 2

Singles 5

PEI (2+2+1)   

Charlottetown—Malpeque 2
Singles 2

New Brunswick (8+2+1):

Saint John—Fredericton 4 

Moncton—Beauséjour 2

Northern New Brunswick 2

Singles 2

Eastern Quebec—Mauricie—Centre-du-Québec—Estrie—Montérégie 45 (28+13+4)

Quebec City 7  

Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean 3

Lévis—Lotbinière 2 

Mauricie 3

Sherbrooke 2 

Longueuil 4
Richelieu 3

Vallée-du-Haut-Saint-Laurent 4 

Singles 13

Montreal-Laval-Lanaudière-Laurentides and west) 41 (34+3+4)

Montreal-est 6                                                         

Montreal-nord 5                                                       

Montreal West 7 

Laval 4 

Lanaudière 4

Laurentides 4

Outaouais 4                            

Singles 3

Eastern Ontario (26: 15+9+2)

Ottawa-East—Prescott-Russell—Cornwall 5 (the bilingual district)

Ottawa West 5 

Singles 9 (from Renfrew and Leeds—Grenville to Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes)

Durham Region 5

Greater Toronto Area 56 (51+5)

Toronto and East York 7

Etobicoke—York 6

North York 6

Scarborough 6

Markham—Aurora—Newmarket—Georgina 5

Vaughan—Richmond Hill 5

Brampton—Caledon 6

Mississauga 6

Halton 4
Southwestern Ontario 40 (34+2+4)

Hamilton—Brant—Haldimand—Norfolk 7                                  

Niagara Region 4

Waterloo Region 5

Guelph—Wellington—Halton Hills 2

Oxford—Perth—Wellington 2

Barrie—Simcoe 4

London—Elgin—Middlesex 4

Sarnia—Lambton—Kent—Middlesex 2

Windsor-Essex—Chatham-Kent 4

Singles 2

Northern Ontario 11 (6+4+1)

Sudbury—Sault Ste. Marie region 4                

Thunder Bay region 2                     

Singles (including Parry Sound—Muskoka): 4

Manitoba 15 (10+4+1)

Winnipeg 8

Provencher—Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman 2

Singles 4

Saskatchewan 15 (7+5+1)

Saskatoon 4

Regina 3

South East 2 (Yorkton—Melville—Souris—Moose Mountain)

Singles 5

Alberta 37 (27+7+3) 

Calgary South 5 & North 5
Lethbridge—Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner 2

Rocky View—Banff—Bow River 2

Red Deer 2
Metropolitan Edmonton North 6 & South 5

Singles 7

British Columbia 46 (38+4+4)

Vancouver and Vancouver North and West 8
Surrey—Richmond—Delta 8
Burnaby—Maple Ridge 6

Fraser Valley—Langley East 4
Kelowna—Okanagan 4

Victoria—Nanaimo 6

Singles 6

Territories 3 (no change)