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05 - How the Greek Parliament would have been with simple proportional representation system #289

Open kellykiki opened 6 years ago

kellykiki commented 6 years ago

Please complete all of the following sections, or the ghost of Joseph Pulitzer will spookily dance around your issue! A completed version of this template can be found at https://github.com/jsoma/data-studio-projects/issues/1

Pitch

Summary

You probably know: Greeks have too many elections. To be more specific, according to the Constitution, parliament members are elected for a four-year term. That means Greeks were supposed to vote for their representatives about 11 times, from 1974 onwards (1974 is a milestone year thanks to the establishment of the Third Hellenic Republic, after The Seven Years of Dictatorship). However, Greece counts 17 national elections from 1974 to 2015; five out of these 17 national election rounds were during the crisis years, from 2009 to 2015.

To understand further the extent of recent political instability, take into account that Greece uses the "reinforced proportionality" electoral system, which is a form of semi-proportional representation with a majority bonus: Parties need to reach an electoral threshold of 3% in order to be represented in the Parliament. The party that wins the majority of people's votes is awarded 50 out of 300 seats in the Parliament and it starts with an advantage in terms of representation. The rest of the 250 seats are shared proportionally to the parties which reach the electoral threshold.

The "reinforced proportionality" electoral system is one of the reasons that Greece has not been familiar with coalition governments until recently. The possible change to "simple proportionality" has been a hot, debatable topic in the public dialogue for years. Syriza, the current government major party, used to refer to it as part of its major political communication agenda while being on the side of opposition; but they didn't regulate any kind of "simple proportionality" in 2015, when they were firstly elected as the government force. After having receiving a lot of criticism on that, they introduced a law to regulate "simple proportionality" electoral system in 2016. The majority of the Greek Parliament Members voted for that law, which didn't receive the necessary 200 out of 300 votes, so that it can be applied to the next national elections in 2019. The law will be in effect in the future, if the next Parliament does not withdraw it.

I am interested in using historical data to see: a) how the Greek Parliament would look like over the years, if the country used "simple proportionality" system, b) when Greece would have started having coalition governments.

Details

Possible headline(s):

Data set(s): Scraping electoral results from 1974 to 2015, as they are published on the Greek Parliament website: https://www.hellenicparliament.gr/Vouli-ton-Ellinon/To-Politevma/Ekloges/Eklogika-apotelesmata-New/

Code repository: https://github.com/kellykiki/data-studio/tree/master/code/05-greek_parliament

Possible problems/fears/questions: There are many approaches for a "simple proportionality" electoral system. In order to calculate how seats would have been shared if Greece had not been using "reinforced proportionality" system, I am using the approach that the current government proposed and passed as law in potential effect. This is: *valid votes each party received300/total valid votes**

I might need to do further background reading so as not to super-simplify things.

Work so far

The current Greek Parliament after the last elections in 2015 and with the "reinforced proportionality system" in use

2015_reinforced

How the Parliament would currently look like, if "simple proportionality" was in use

2015_simple

NOTES:

  1. Apologies that I have not translated data displayed; I will do it soon
  2. Colors are very, very wrong in terms of consistency with the Greek political scene: I will change matplotlib default colors using Illustrator

Checklist

This checklist must be completed before you submit your draft.

kellykiki commented 6 years ago

Update

Content

Legend for everything

legend

Graph 1

The current parliament after last national elections in September 2015

current-parliament

Graph 2

How the current parliament would look like if simple proportional representation system was in use

parliament-what-if

Graph 3

How many seats SYRIZA, the major government force, would lose and how many more seats each other party would win in the Parliament, if simple proportional representation system was in use

seats-change

Coalition scenarios, if simple proportional representation system was in use

Scenario 1: Tsipras decides that's the moment for a historical collaboration with the grand opposition party, New Democracy

1_syriza-nd

Scenario 2: SYRIZA collaborates with the "neo-Nazi" Golden Dawn party and PASOK, which had been in government for years and led the country to the bailout program in 2010

2-syriza-gd-pasok

Scenario 3: SYRIZA collaborates with Golden Dawn and the Communist Party of Greece

3-syriza-kke-gd

Scenario 4: SYRIZA collaborates with Golden Dawn, the Independent Greeks party (ANEL), which is its current ally in government and Greek new Potami party ("The River")

4-syriza-gd-potami-anel

Scenario 5: SYRIZA collaborates with PASOK and the Communist Party

5-syriza-pasok-kke

Scenario 6: SYRIZA collaborates with PASOK, the "Potami" party and their current partner "ANEL"

6-syriza-pasok-potami-anel

Scenario 7: SYRIZA collaborates with PASOK, "Potami" and the Union of Centrists, which finally succeeds the necessary votes threshold (3%) to be represented in the Parliament in September 2015

7-syriza-pasok-potami-enosi

Scenario 8: SYRIZA collaborates with PASOK, ANEL and the Union of Centrists

8-syriza-pasok-enosi-anel

Scenario 9: SYRIZA collaborates with the Communist Party, the "Potami" party and "ANEL"

9-syriza-kke-potami-anel

Scenario 10: SYRIZA collaborates with the Communist Party, the "Potami" party and the Union of Centrists

10-syriza-kke-potami-enosi

Scenario 11: SYRIZA collaborates with the Communist Party, ANEL and the Union of Centrists

11-syriza-kke-enosi-anel

Any changes in direction or topic?

At first, I was thinking to display how many seats each party represented in the parliament would have after each national election round, going back to 1974. Since Greece voted 17 times from 1974 onwards, I would present 34 waffle charts: one for the actual parliament each time and one for the "what-if" each time. Probably it would have been too boring for you.

Instead, I decided to calculate and display what coalitions would sum at least 151 seats in the parliament (the threshold for a government to be in force) after last national elections in September 2015. Mind that the 11 scenarios are the 11 scenarios are based on numerical calculations, but the majority of them are not considered as politically realistic. That is the point, though: Does it mean that the recently legislated simple proportionality system is a stupidity in terms of political realism or that it could bring changes that the political system didn't dare until now?

Problems/Questions

No particular problem

Checklist

kellykiki commented 6 years ago

Update

Additional Content

I used historical data and I calculated how many seats each first party would capture, if simple proportional system was in use. The finding is that Greece would need coalition governments from 1985 onwards.

Actual vs "What if": How many seats first parties captured over the years and how many representatives they would have, if simple proportionality was in effect

Greece would need coalition governments from 1985

historical-01

Any changes in direction or topic?

Not really

Problems/Questions

No particular problems

Checklist

sarahslo commented 6 years ago

Nicely done, from thought process to end. With the color, can you make all the far left warm colors like red, yellow and orange and all the far right, blues, greens? and something neutral for the middle? i want to see this division more, it's how you organized your data. you can reinforce it by having the color reflect where on the spectrum the color is. the green currently throws me off. is that a very different party? and is the brown? if so, maybe they both can be browns.

in illustrator, you can load swatch libraries that will help you with color...!

kellykiki commented 6 years ago

@sarahslo, thank you for your feedback! I' ll check out the swatch libraries. Unfortunately, for this specific project, I am not sure that I can change colors, as they are the colors of the parties I speak about. I mean, the colors are taken from their logos and people recognize these parties by the specific colors for decades. I can think about another left-right color grouping though targeting specifically international audience.

kellykiki commented 6 years ago

Final version comment template

Final

Project visuals/text

For the final version of this project, I made reviewed headlines and I made the website. Please find visuals and texts directly on the webpage.

Details

Headline: Greece would need coalition governments from 1985 onwards

Published website version: https://kellykiki.github.io/greek-parliament/

Code repository: https://github.com/kellykiki/data-studio/blob/master/code/05-greek_parliament/Greek%20Elections%20-%20Historical%20Data.ipynb

Final data set(s): Scraped election results data, Greek Parliament website

What did you find to be the most difficult part of this project?

I didn't have any special difficulties with that project. I thought about the process though and about what it could be less boring for an international audience to see.

Are you satisfied with what you produced? Is there anything you would like to change or improve?

I am happy about the concept and the fact that I practiced Illustrator. I am happy because I know that it could be an interesting topic in Greece, especially if I update texts on the website.

Checklist