How Much Can Electoral Reform Change Things In Yukon?

This fall, alongside its territorial election, Yukon will be holding a plebiscite on electoral reform. Yukoners will be asked whether they want to continue using First Past The Post for territorial elections, or whether to switch to Ranked Vote.

Ranked Vote was the recommendation of last year’s Citizen’s Assembly on Electoral Reform. Under the system, voters would rank the candidates running in their riding, starting with their first choice and, optionally, a second, third, and subsequent choice. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the first choice vote, then the last place candidate will be eliminated, and those voters’ second choices will be taken into account.

If Yukoners vote to change their electoral system, and if the next Yukon government decides to implement that result, it will be the first province or territory in Canada to vote to move away from First Past The Post. But how many seats could change hands once preferences are distributed?

Recap of the 2021 Election

The last election saw the two largest parties, the Liberal Party and the Yukon Party, each finish with eight seats in the Legislative Assembly. The NDP, with three seats, held the balance of power, and entered into a confidence-and-supply agreement with the Liberals to form government.

How each party performed in the 2021 territorial election

Of the 19 seats contested at the last election, only six were won with more than 50% of the vote, which means they would have had just a single count under RV. Five of those seats were won by the Yukon Party, and the sixth was won by the NDP. The Liberals didn’t win any riding with more than 50% of the vote, meaning all of their seats would require a second round of counting under RV.

If the last election were contested under RV, then each party would have advanced to the second count in four seats where they came second. That would have been enough to give the Liberals and Yukon Party a chance at winning a majority government. The NDP, however, would only have been able to win a maximum of seven seats, which would not have been enough for a majority government.

Where Preferences Go

Polling on first preferences in Yukon is scarce enough, never mind second preferences. So rather than trying to work out what the result of the last election would have been under this proposed system, I’ll look instead at how much preference flow would be required for any particular party to win a majority.

Under this version of RV, voters would not be required to indicate a second choice. In last year’s Congressional election in Alaska, around 55% of voters for eliminated candidates put at least one of the final two down as a choice, and that’s in line with similar electoral systems I’ve seen elsewhere. Fewer voters indicating a second choice will make it harder for a second-place candidate to get the transfers needed to flip a seat.

How NDP preferences would need to flow for seats to flip between the Liberals and the Yukon Party

You would naturally expect that the NDP’s preferences would be more likely to flow to the Liberals than to the Yukon Party. But in order to flip enough seats for a majority government, the Liberals would need to take more than 92% of NDP preferences, plus match whatever preferences go to the Yukon Party. Even in Australia, where ranking all candidates is mandatory, it doesn’t reach that level. If we assume that only half of voters will mark a second preference, and that those preferences are more likely to go Liberal than Yukon Party, then only the seat of Porter Creek Centre would be in play for the Liberals to take.

On the other hand, if NDP voters make their second choice based on anti-incumbency rather than ideology, it could put two seats in play for the Yukon Party to take. But for the Yukon Party to win a majority, they’d need to get 56% more of the NDP preferences than the Liberals. I don’t think that’s particularly likely either.

How Yukon Party preferences would need to flow for seats to flip between the NDP and Liberals

There aren’t any seats that would flip between the NDP and Yukon Party as a result of Liberal preferences. There are, on the other hand, a handful of seats in play between the NDP and Liberals. The only one of those seats won by the NDP, Whitehorse Centre, isn’t in play; it would require the Liberals to have a 75% advantage on Yukon Party preferences. There are, however, four Liberal seats which the NDP may be able to take with a much more modest share of Yukon Party preferences. I wouldn’t normally expect Yukon Party preferences to flow to the NDP over the Liberals, but if they had, then it could have resulted the NDP forming government rather than the Liberals.

So how much can RV really change Yukon politics?

The RV electoral system has the ability to flip seats that are three-way marginals, where the winning candidate got less than 40% of the first-choice vote. As the Liberals won the majority of these at the last election, that wouldn’t have given them as much upside potential as the other two parties. We can see that the flow of preferences could, in theory at least, have been enough to put any of the three party leaders in the Premier’s seat at the last election. If Yukon does make this move to RV, it could make the 2029 election more unpredictable than usual.

Yukon’s next territorial election must be held on or before November 3, 2025. The plebiscite on changing the electoral system will be held on the same date as the election.