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If Canada had an electoral system where a party’s Canada-wide votes translated into how many seats it fills in Parliament, Justin Trudeau would still be prime minister, but there would be no Liberal landslide with proportional representation.

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The party captured 184 of the 338 seats, a clear majority, though it won 40 per cent of the vote. An election based on proportional representation in its broadest form would have spread the power more thinly among the parties: the Liberals would drop to 135 seats, while the Conservatives would inch up from 99 to 108 and the NDP would have a much higher profile with 68 seats instead of its current 44. (Numbers are based on preliminary results and rounded.)

The Greens and the NDP were the most explicit about doing away with first past the post and replacing it with some form of proportional representation during the campaign. In their party platform, the NDP suggested mixed-member proportional representation, a system currently used in New Zealand and Germany, where a voter casts a ballot for their local MP as well as the party as a whole.

In their platform, the Liberal party name-checked proportional representation as an option for democratic reform, stating it “was committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system.