> t takes just over 1/2 the seats in a congress to control legislation, and ~1/2 the voters in those locations. 1/2 * ~1/2 ~= 1/4
I don't follow. I assume turnout would have to be taken into account? Also, I was specifically saying "voters", not "population" (more by luck, though) ;-)
> The US senate is even more extreme.
Yeah that's very true. Weren't some of the sates basically only created to give a certain party the majority? Forgot where I read or heard that though.
Suppose there are 100 seats in parliament. To gain political power, you need to win 51 seats. So in theory you could get (50+epsilon)% of the votes in each of 51 seats, and 0 votes in any of the other 49 seats and hold power, despite only getting ~25% of the overall vote (assuming the population is evenly distributed among the seats).
Actually you don't even need to get that many votes. Depending on the electoral system you might not need to win a majority of the votes in any constituency, you just need more votes than anyone else, which could be a very low percentage if the opposition is split enough ways.
The current governing party in the UK holds a comfortable majority of seats despite only winning 43% of the vote in the last election. And in fact, this was the highest vote share received by any party in decades. Labour in 1997 won more seats on a lower vote share.
> Weren't some of the sates basically only created to give a certain party the majority?
I've read that the reason Dakota Territory was split in two (North and South) upon statehood was mainly as a cynical ploy to get two extra senate seats for the favoured party.
> So in theory you could get (50+epsilon)% of the votes in each of 51 seats, and 0 votes in any of the other 49 seats and hold power, despite only getting ~25% of the overall vote
Ah ok, got it. However, probably an unlikely scenario even in a "segregated" (republicans vs democrats) country as the US. But yeah - the reality right now that 40, 45% of the votes are enough for - in the case of the US - the republicans to win is pretty bad already.
> Depending on the electoral system you might not need to win a majority of the votes in any constituency,
In Germany we have two ways to get into the Bundestag (national parliament) - the one is a "Direktmandat" (the candidate with the most votes in one county county gets the seat), the other is via the party ticket. The parties have lists of candidates, and depending on their percentage of the total vote, the first X candidates get a seat.
That system tries to balance between each county getting the representative in they favor, but also representing the relative votes via the party ticket.
I don't follow. I assume turnout would have to be taken into account? Also, I was specifically saying "voters", not "population" (more by luck, though) ;-)
> The US senate is even more extreme.
Yeah that's very true. Weren't some of the sates basically only created to give a certain party the majority? Forgot where I read or heard that though.