QUOTA NOTES
Newsletter of Proportional Representation Society of Australia Inc.

QN2025A           March 2025 www.prsa.org.au

Western Australia's's 2025 general
election for both the State's houses

Deterioration in Australian schools'
results in civics education reported

Early election for Germany's Bundestag

List of Issues of Quota Notes

Western Australia’s 2025 general
election for both the State’s houses

The State of Western Australia held general elections for both houses of its Parliament on Saturday, 08 March 2025.

WA’s 2021 elections: These prior elections for WA’s Legislative Assembly gave the most recent very pronounced demonstration of the marked disproportionality that an inherently “winner-take-all” single-member electoral system can produce, compared with the much fairer PR-STV system.

Candidates of WA’s Labor Party, with 59.9% of the first preference votes, won 53 of the 59 seats (89.8%) State-wide, leaving only six seats for candidates of the conservative parties, the Nationals and the Liberals, and none for other candidates. The ratio of those percentages was 150%.

The result was almost as skewed as in Queensland’s 2012 election where Campbell Newman’s Liberal National Party candidates won 87.6% of the Lower House seats with only 49.7% of the vote Queensland-wide. The ratio of those two Queensland percentages was 176%.

Moreover in Western Australia, candidates of the National Party won four of those six Assembly seats with 4.0% of the first preference vote, leaving only two seats won by Liberals’ candidates, despite their 21.3% of that vote. That gross disparity between votes and seats resulted quite unfairly - for the first time ever in Western Australia - in the Nationals MLAs alone becoming the official Opposition despite their candidates’ total votes being only 18.8% of that cast for the Liberal candidates.

WA’s 2025 elections: Four years after the above major losses for the Coalition at the 2021 Assembly elections, its number of MLAs elected in 2025 was one short of double the number in 2021. As Table 1 below shows, that was the result of the candidates of the Liberal and National Coalition together receiving 33.2% of the State-wide first preference vote. That was a 31% increase in the Coalition’s first preference vote from WA’s 2021 elections.

Party	1st pref. votes (%)	Seats
		(%)	(single-member)	PR-STV
Labor	41.4	78.0	46	24
Liberal	28.0	11.9	7	17
Greens	11.1	0.0	0	7
National	5.2	10.2	6	3
Others	14.3	0.0	0	8
TOTALS	100.0		59	59

Table 1: Votes versus seats after WA Assembly 2025 polls

Following the Parliament’s changes in December 2021 to Western Australia’s Constitution, the 2025 election for its Legislative Council marked the first time ever that the Council’s members were elected without malapportioned electoral districts.

Those changes had removed the possibility, and the temptation, for malapportionment of electoral districts by requiring all the MLCs to be elected from a single State-wide electoral district. Prior to those changes, WA was notorious for the malapportionment of its Upper House in favour of its non-metropolitan regions, whose very low population densities were the main reason given by Coalition MLCs for always having voted against ending that arrangement.

It was the very low vote for Coalition candidates at WA’s 2021 elections that led to Coalition MLCs finally losing their blocking majority in the Council, after which Labor’s 22 MLCs, in a Council of 36 MLCs, easily helped to enact an end to Western Australia’s flagrant malapportionment of its Upper House regions. That followed the recommendations of the WA Government’s Expert Committee on Electoral Reform, chaired by a former WA Governor. The PRSA made a submission to the Committee, stressing the value of ending WA’s provision for Group Voting Tickets, and instituting instead a Hare-Clark system.

The total number of MLCs was increased by one so that it is now an odd number, 37, which has the great benefit of reducing the chance of tied votes in the House. Having an odd number of MLCs also ensures that an absolute majority of votes always elects an absolute majority of MLCs, which was not ensured with the previous even number of MLCs.

The changes also included discontinuing Group Voting Tickets. Unfortunately, WA’s above-the-line voting option was retained, and Robson Rotation was not adopted, thus depriving voters of the full benefits of the Hare-Clark system.

The single State-wide electoral district has led to Australia’s lowest-ever percentage quota of 3.63% of the vote, so 96.37% of ballots cast contribute to the election of MLCs, with only 3.63% of the State-wide vote electing no-one. Table 2 below summarizes the results for WA’s Legislative Council election.

Party	1st pref. votes (%)	Seats
		(%)	No.
Labor	40.9	43.2	16
Liberal	27.2	27.0	10
Greens	10.9	11.0	4
National	5.4	5.4	2
One Nation	3.8	5.4	2
Legalise Cannabis	2.9	2.7	1
Australian Christians	2.7	2.7	1
Animal Justice Party	1.2	2.7	1
Others	5.0	0.0	0
TOTALS	100.0		37

Table 2: Votes versus seats after WA Leg. Council 2025 polls

Deterioration in Australian schools’
results in civics education reported

A recent Australian Broadcasting Corporation news item reported on a noticeable worsening of Australian school students’ understanding of civics studies that is feared bodes ill for young adults’ awareness of the principles and systems needed for the success of a democratic society.

The 2024 test results for civics show that just 28% of Year 10 students and 43% of Year 6 students are proficient in civics. It appeared that electoral systems were not included in the tests, although there was one question on donkey voting.

It is the worst result on record since the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) began testing in 2004.

Early election for Germany's Bundestag

The Federal Republic of Germany held a general election for its Lower House of parliament, the Bundestag, on Sunday, 23 February 2025. The Bundestag’s seats are filled using its hybrid Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system. The members of its Upper House, the Bundesrat, are not directly elected by the German people, but are appointed by the governments of each of the 16 States that constitute the Federal Republic.

German voters elected candidates of eight different parties to the Lower House of Germany’s federal legislature, the Bundestag. After recent reforms, the Lower House will henceforth have a total of 630 members. In 2025 there were 276 members elected - like Canada’s, from single-member districts, using plurality (so-called first-past-the-post counting) - and 354 others from a second, PR party-list vote, where the actual number depends on complex calculations.

Party	Constituency seats		PR party-list seats		Total seats (%)
	Votes (%)	Seats (%)	Votes (%)	Seats (%)
Christian Democratic Union	25.5	46.4	22.6	10.2	26.0
Alternative for Germany	20.6	15.2	20.8	31.1	24.1
Social Democratic Party	20.1	15.9	16.4	21.5	19.0
Greens	11.0	4.3	11.6	20.6	13.5
The Left	8.0	2.2	8.8	16.4	10.2
Christian Social Union	6.6	15.9	6.0	0.0	7.0
S Schleswig Voters Assoc.	0.1	0.0	0.2	0.0	0.2
Others	8.1	0.0	13.6	0.0	0.0
TOTALS	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0

           Table 3: Votes vs. seats in Germany’s 2-vote MMP system in 2025

Notes: (1) The percentages shown in bold red type above show the close comparison between percentages of votes for the PR party-list seats and the percentages of total seats for the various parties, although neither very small parties nor independents tend to win seats under MMP, with 13.6% of the vote being wasted, as it elects nobody.

(2) A useful aspect of the MMP results table above is its revealing the great discrepancy between the percentages of votes for single-member constituency seats and the resulting percentages of such seats. The percentage of such seats for Christian Democratic candidates was nearly doubled, whereas the next largest vote-winner, the Alternative for Germany, won only 75% of the constituency seats that its 20.1% share of the vote would have given it in a purely proportional system.

A significant problem with MMP is that the elaborate calculations of the St Laguë method - which ensure that the number of members of the parties are represented in the Bundestag at close to the level of the non-transferable PR party list votes they receive - do not enable voters to control which particular candidates are elected from the closed party lists that voters are presented with; and it is something of a matter of luck, outside voters’ control, as to which individual candidates are elected.

The overall level of representation of voters, at least in party terms, in Germany’s Bundestag does more closely correspond to voters’ indications than it usually does in single-member electorate systems.

The challenge for advocates of  PR-STV electoral systems is to more clearly explain the problem raised in the previous paragraphs to show that although MMP meets two of the requirements of a good electoral system:

    •    that parties are represented by candidates at the percentages that people vote for          candidates of those parties and

    •    that the ballots of a greater percentage of the voters also count towards the                    election of candidates in party terms,

its lack of direct election of party list candidates unfortunately fails to give voters control over which particular PR party list candidates are elected.

Germany, which is the third largest economy in the world, is the nation with the largest Gross Domestic Product to use a form of proportional representation (MMP) for the Lower House seats in its national elections that gives a broadly proportional result, at least in party terms. The two larger economies, those of the U.S.A, which has - unlike the UK - always used single-member electoral districts, and the People’s Republic of China, which is a one-party State, has yet to employ any proper proportional representation in its national “elections”.

The next six nations in descending order of GDP each eschew any form of proportionality, except for Japan, which has a minority of its Lower House seats elected by a party list form of PR. In sharp contrast, a ranking in GDP per capita places Germany very much lower - at nineteenth - and shows a majority of PR users in the top nine nations.

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ABN 31 010 090 247    A0048538N Victoria

National President: Dr Jeremy Lawrence   pre@prsa.org.au