Further Vindication of “First Past the Post”
Germany’s proportional representation system stifled democracy last Sunday.
After Great Britain’s disastrous general election, I argued that, contrary to superficial complaints, the British (and American) “first-past-the-post” (“FPTP”) system (the candidate with the most votes in each constituency is elected, even without majority support) performed better than a hypothetical “proportional representation” (“PR”) alternative in carrying out the two main desiderata of a democratic election: reflecting the will of the voters and putting into place a government that can actually govern.
The grave flaw in Proportional Representation is that it tends to produce –
a minority government that can be little more than a caretaker, or
a minority government that descends to dubiously democratic means to push through its program, or
a coalition in which niche minority parties whose positions are popular with only a narrow slice of the electorate have disproportionate influence, or
a coalition of incompatible parties that follows no clear policy at all. The German “traffic light coalition” that was just ousted illustrates that outcome.
Germany, which boasts an electoral system that only philosophes can adore, is the latest demonstration of the inanity of PR. Each voter casts two ballots: one for a candidate (the “Erststimme”, “first ballot”) and one for a party (the “Zweitstimme”, “second ballot”). Seats in the Bundestag are divided in proportion to the total number of Zweitstimmen cast for each party that gains at least five percent of the total. The candidate with the most Erststimmen in each of the 299 constituencies gains a seat in the Bundestag (usually, but there are complications and nuances). The precise details of the system, probably the most opaque in the democratic world, are beyond the scope of this post (and if they weren’t, I wouldn’t be able to explain them).
In last Sunday’s election, the Zweitstimmen percentages and resulting seat allocations1 were –
Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (“CDU/CSU”) (a permanent coalition of two right-of-center parties that have returned to their conservative roots after the feckless leadership of Angela Merkel): 28.52%, 208 seats
Alternative für Deutschland (“AfD”) (conventionally labeled “far right” and shunned by all the other major parties, which have vowed not to enter into any coalition that includes it): 20.80%, 152 seats
Social Democratic Party (“SPD”) (somewhat moderate leftists whose ex-leaders have a penchant for taking comfy jobs in the service of Russia): 16.41%, 120 seats (the party’s worst showing since the 19th Century)
Die Grüne (“The Greens”) (climate change socialists): 11.61%, 85 seats
Die Linke (“The Left”) (the remnant of the East German communists): 8.77%, 64 seats
Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (“BSW”) (far left party of not-so-former communists, named after its leader and distinguished from the rest of the left by its support of immigration restrictions and opposition to a “green transition”): 4.97%, no seats
Free Democratic Party (“FDP”) (classically liberal pro-business but part of the coalition with the SPD and the Greens that the voters decisively rejected): 4.33%, no seats
Südschleswigscher Wählerverband (“SSW”) (“South Schleswig Voters’ Association”): 0.15%, one seat2
Everybody else (21 minor parties and some independent candidates): 4.44%, no seats
Since the CDU/CSU won’t break bread with the AfD (not entirely irrationally, as the latter includes some very dicey characters) and has nothing in common with the Greens or the Left, a coalition with the SPD is the inevitable sequel. The Scroll’s headline succinctly summarizes what that means: “Germans Vote For – But Won’t Get – Change”.
Despite what would seem to be a decisive popular rebuke to the political status quo, Germans are likely to continue receiving a version of it. CDU leader Friedrich Merz, a businessman and committed Atlanticist who now looks set to become Germany’s next chancellor, has promised to toughen Germany’s immigration laws, slash regulations to promote economic growth, and assume a leading role in Europe’s efforts to resist the Trump administration. But he has ruled out the possibility of forming a coalition with the AfD, which means his only viable option is to form a “grand coalition” with the SPD, which will likely force the CDU to moderate on some or all of these issues. Indeed, the German establishment’s strategy of perpetually forming grand coalitions of the center to keep the “far right” out of government – the country has been ruled by a CDU-SPD coalition for 12 of the past 20 years – has itself contributed to the rise of the extremes. As Jeremy Stern explained for Tablet last March, the grand coalition pushes the CDU to the left and the SPD to the right, barring them from offering anything other than the “centrist compromise politics” that voters are increasingly rejecting. [link added]
The Erststimmen results, the direct votes for candidates in each constituency, were very different from the Zweitstimmen verdict:3
CDU: 143
CSU: 47
AfD: 46
SPD: 45
The Greens: 12
The Left: 6
A first-past-the-post election would have given the CDU/CSU a solid 190-109 majority. The parties on the Right (CDU/CSU, AfD and FDP), which agree much more than they disagree, had a combined 53.65 percent of the vote. A CDU/CSU government would certainly have satisfied the voters’ policy preferences far better than will the prospective Grand Coalition.
Once again, the putatively ultra-democratic fantasy embodied in Proportional Representation leads to an outcome that smothers the will of the voters.
This party represents ethnic Danish and Frisian voters in Schleswig-Holstein. A special dispensation exempts it from the five percent threshold.
The “first ballot” results were hard to find. I had to resort to hand counting the variously colored constituencies on a map furnished by The Guardian, which I wouldn’t trust to report the score of a cricket match, but one takes what one can get.