Proportional Representation: How the Dutch Electoral System Works (and the Pros & Cons) - TLDR News

Proportional Representation is an electoral system favoured by many, with its clear link between votes & winners and encouragement of compromise. However, not everyone's as convinced. So in this video we take a look at the way the system works in reality, how the Dutch electoral system works as well as the advantages & disadvantages of the system.

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[unusedTV]

Dutchman here: those who are less involved just vote for the top candidate of their preferred party. In fact, that's what the vast majority of people do.

[wtw]

As a dutch person I do have to note that local representation isn't really a thing due to the size of the country and the fact that (most) people don't care where our representitive lives. It is kind of more a relief that one can vote for someone from another town/province, because they do have the same political beliefs

[MrNathanael]

I find it very interesting that "compromise", in the Anglo way of thinking, is a bad thing. If many different people believe many different things (which they will, because people are different from each other), there will have to be compromises between their views. And *that* is democracy. Not choosing from two extremes because "compromises are bad". But this thinking seems to be so deeply seated in Anglo culture that the words "to compromise" and "compromised" in English have a negative meaning even outside politics.

[Crick]

American living in the Netherlands here.
From what I've seen proportional voting is ideal for parlimentary systems. It encourages equal representation and coalitions and compromise between voting blocs. Since there's so many parties it actually also prevents the kind of tribalism like I see in my home country of the US.
With few exceptions you won't see or hear the kind of demonization that is prevelent in FPP.

As to the extremism argument, that's not how it usually turns out. Instead of swinging from left or right, it's primarily a centrist coalition with left and right parties coming and going as they gain/lose support.

[jurrenkroon]

I am Dutch and feel represented by the party I choose. I think that the 80% plus turnout for years means that other people feel the same.

[rikstan]

I think having smaller parties for every political niche is a good thing, as citizens can vote for what they really believe in, instead of compromising their voting behavior to keep their political rivals out of power. Leave the compromising to the politicians and let the people have their views without compromise.

[Adderkleet]

The line "your vote might not count" feel really out of place, especially without mentioning that in a majoritarian system a large amount of votes cast (40+%) do not result in an individual getting elected. In the last UK election, the 'misrepresentation error' (difference between %-vote and %-seats a party gets) was over 47% nationally and each local seat gets a much worse result - the median being about 100% error (49.7% of votes in The Werkin resulted in 100% of the seats going to one party {because there's only one seat}).

[moramento]

As a person raised in Poland with the same system as in Netherlands, I can say it's not perfect. But since I moved to UK I can tell you FPTP is MUCH worse.

[BlackbBirdthst]

The fact that you never hear countries with proportional systems talk about switching to majority systems but hear a lot the other way around says enough

[nomadMik]

The argument about extreme parties having too much power in a proportional system is ridiculous, because those parties don't have many seats. If their views are extreme, few other parties will agree with them, and their extreme views will never pass. This ridiculous argument is frequently resuscitated by mainstream parties in Australia, and I wish people would think it through more. It's sad to see it propped up again on this channel.

[Roanmonster]

Honestly, I can tell where you're coming from, but what I don't like about this video is the fact that you imply that it's only important to end up in the government. It's not. Our system allows for a strong influence of the opposition. The fact that coalition parties throw away their own values to easily isn't inherent to this system of representation, it's just... idk why they even do this haha. They are in no way obliged to make an extremely detailed governing accord. In my view a governing accord based on main lines that everyone in the coalition can get behind should suffice, and coalition parties should be free to oppose things they really can't get behind (for which the government should find a different majority).
Finally, nowadays with internet it's super easy to find a candidate that represents you as a person / your values, which is something you can look up whilst queuing for the vote, so the amount of candidates really isn't an excuse.

[TheAnoniemo]

"Let's say party A got 40M votes" In a country with 17M people total...

[kalizec]

There's a couple of errors in this video.

TLDR asks, in a PR system who represents me? The person you voted for. That we have lists doesn't mean you don't have names of actual persons on that list, you must select a person to vote, so you do have a person who represents you.

TLDR makes it seem that the ministers not being voted for is PR thing, but for a MR system this ia also true, US secretaries are not voted into office. Additionally, most politicians are inept at governing and vice versa.

Finally TLDR states that in PR system you don't know what coalition will be formed, thus you don't know what the government will do, but this also applies in every other system, where political promises are non-binding (which ia everywhere) in a PR system you at least have the option of not voting for that party again, unlike in a MR system where the default number of parties ia 2.

[Lordblow]

I find it interesting that I heavily disagree with just about every negative side effect stated.
Firstly I often find that in many constituencies most people don't know who exactly represents them even when that is the point of not just having one national constituency. Funnily enough this is also a point of contention in the Netherlands as multiple parties want mayors to be directly elected. Something many people in the nation oppose, myself included. Most people vote for a party not the people in them. And as stated in this video that is not a problem because parties in the Netherlands are relatively uniform in their beliefs.

Secondly, in regard to the coalition forming. I think this is the best part of the whole system. Because every party needs to compromise on their most contentious points there are simply things that will never be turned into binding legislation. I like this because 90% of the time it is exactly those points that turn me and many others off from specific parties (I never agree with more than 70% of a party's ideas). This thus let's you vote for parties you agree with most closely. On top of this you can get the same effect as in the UK where a vote for smaller parties shows to the larger ones what points they need to focus on to get more votes. Given that we have so many parties you can get a much more accurate picture what people pick a specific party for. We currently have 3 social liberal parties which are varying degrees of left and have a vary different mix of conservative or progressive policies. a vote for Left-Green isn't the same as a vote for our version of Labour.

Thirdly, That ungodly ballot is not that bad. Given how are parties form most within a party have roughly the same ideas and opinions, they are not the same person but a vote for a different person on the list is not majorly different than a vote for anyone else in that party. In reality you pick a party to vote for and then pick whomever in that party you most agree with. Though to be fair, most just vote for the party leader.

Fourthly, the statement that parties in a majority system is more moderate, because they need to have broad appeal, while true is deceptive.
In a majority system the parties just represent the coalitions in a proportional system, just made in advance.
As such it doesn't really count as a con against the system.
(Note: copied this one from the comment from Yannick, was just a rly good point.)

Finally, in regard to the scandal currently going on. It is not as though having a different voting system would have actually solved that. I kinda expect that would have happened regardless or might have even been worse if the system was less stable. Just look at teh exert budget problems the NHS has due to the shifts between a labour and Torry government.

[yannickgullentops]

The statement that parties in a majority system is more moderate, because they need to have broad appeal, while true is deceptive.
In a majority system the parties just represent the coalitions in a proportional system, just made in advance.
As such i don't think it really counts as a con against the system.

[nielshendriks]

Needing to have a "local" representative seems a bit outdated... this is the difference between thinking on a local level, province level, country level or even an EU level.
People in the Netherlands think mainly on a country wide level, or even on an EU level. This is why the Netherlands won't leave the EU, the more "local" the politics are, the higher the chance for leaving the EU will be and vice-versa. (This is one of the explanations why the UK brexitted).

[fernbedek]

“PR systems let extremist parties survive!” -> mhm, unlike FPTP big parties where... extremist can get elected as party leader with a massive built in base loyal to party regardless of leader and therefore get way more power.

[markusnyland]

in Norway (and the rest of Scandinavia) we use a proportional system, but we also have a rule that if you are too small (4% in Norway and Sweden 2% in Denmark) then you will not go to parliament. This is to prevent the parliament from being filled with a bunch of small parties

[eratonysiad]

Just because UK consituencies send just 1 person to represent the local tories to London, doesn't mean that that guy will actually care about their constituency.
If we got the same system in the Netherlands, Twente will still be a far from my bed show in the Hague. The local representation system only works on paper.

[Corvi]

"when partys have to cooperate they become more stabile"
*Laugh and cry in italian*