Raph Frank > Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 12:13 AM > I had a look at the 2008 House election results, and there > are a reasonable number of districts where one candidate got > more than 2/3, so maybe it isn't as big an issue as I > thought. OTOH, maybe it was that in those districts, the > minority knew that they had no chance, so didn't bother > turning out. Maybe the minority in that district would be > able to manage 1/3 of the votes.
You should bear in mind that the results of such FPTP elections in the USA are anomalous in relation to FPTP elections elsewhere because the US elections are affected by successful incumbent gerrymandering and by the effect of primary elections. I suspect that if these two "distorting" effects were removed, you would see a very different picture, much like that from FPTP elections in Canada or in the UK. James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.733 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2734 - Release Date: 03/10/10 07:33:00 ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
