Do the vots actually get a say in who become the Australian Prime Minister?
Question by mm: Do the vots really get a say in who become the Australian Prime Minister?
Tony Abbott and his party got 700,000 more votes than Julia Gillard and her party, yet she becomes the Prime Minister. Like that’s democratic.
Best answer:
Answer by MarcThyme
You must have been out of school the day they clarified how your nation’s political system works!
Australia (and NO “Western-style” democracy on Earth) is not a “direct democracy” because that would just be Mob rule, and that doesn’t work terribly well!
http://www.international.mq.edu.au/macquarie/australia/political
What do you reckon? Answer below!
You evidently don’t know how the Australian electoral system works.
In a country that has preferential voting, the number of first preference votes is absolutely irrelevant. Two Party Preferred is a better (though still not ideal) measure and Labor will win the 2PP vote for this election.
In any case, what did you have to say when John Howard became Prime Minister in 1998 with the Coalition receiving fewer first preferences than Labor? Labor also won the 2PP in that election. Labor voters didn’t scream ‘foul’ then and Coalition voters shouldn’t scream ‘foul’ now.