elections in fptp systems with coalition governments

[rob in cal]

Fairly shortly, with the upcoming election on in Thirston I believe it is, we will see two candidates , a Conservative and a Lib Dem, running against each other, and both will be from government parties.  How many examples of this in other countries are there.   Come to think of it, a coalition government in a pure fptp system seems pretty rare. In Canada minority government usually occurs instead, and I'm not sure what New Zealand did before it went to PR.  In Britain during the 1930's National government, I don't believe the National Liberals, or National Labour ran against Conservative candidates. 
   In most European countries with coalitions the PR mechanism allows parties to avoid running in head to head conflict, and in France the runoff system allows parties in the government to unify for the second ballot.  In Australia and Ireland, the transfer system allows for electoral cooperation among coalition parties.  Anyway, I just can't think of examples of two parties united in government fighting each other for seats in a fptp system.

[Smid]

In Australia and Ireland, the transfer system allows for electoral cooperation among coalition parties. 

Technically true, but in Queensland we have Optional Preferential Voting and Labor ran a pretty strong "just vote 1" campaign and so preferences didn't flow as well as they should have (effectively making it a FPTP election and not dissimilar to your point that under that system coalition partners shouldn't run against each other). As a result, there was a "no three-corned contests" rule agreed to in the coalition agreement, and the Liberals and the Nationals didn't contest any seats against each other - instead agreeing beforehand which party will contest which seat. With the merger of the two parties, that's less of an issue anyway. Federally, being compulsory IRV (and therefore preferences flowing), the parties didn't challenge each other's incumbents and only went head-to-head in seats not held by one of the two parties or in which the incumbent was retiring. That said, I believe I heard somewhere that the Nationals in WA are planning on challenging the incumbent Liberal in Kalgoorlie. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I think your hypothesis tends to hold true in IRV coalitions as well as FPTP (although to a lesser extent).

[ag]

You forgot the biggest of them all! The World Series of Elections, and it is FPTP: India!

[Verily]

There are so few FPTP systems that it's hard to generalize. Britain and Canada are the only "typical" FPTP systems; Britain has had coalitions, but Canada has not. The US is Presidential, which makes coalitions irrelevant, and India's politics are too regional to be easily comparable to other countries.

New Zealand never had a party win less than half of the seats while it used FPTP, so whether it would have had coalitions cannot be known. (Prior to 1914, parties had won less than half of the seats as NZ moved from a no-party system to a party system, but the country had used the French system of runoffs before 1914.)

[minionofmidas]

You forgot the biggest of them all! The World Series of Elections, and it is FPTP: India!

...and where they parties in coalitions (or just proposed coalitions) usually have electoral agreements... but sometimes don't.

[Peter]

The special circumstances surrounding the Thirston delayed general election and the changes under the Electoral Administration Act 2006 make it legally impossible for the Lib Dem candidate to withdraw. They choose to run against one another before their coalition not after it.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

There are so few FPTP systems that it's hard to generalize. Britain and Canada are the only "typical" FPTP systems; Britain has had coalitions, but Canada has not. The US is Presidential, which makes coalitions irrelevant, and India's politics are too regional to be easily comparable to other countries.

If the US had a multi-party system though, coalitions would be needed to govern the House and Senate. Actually the US has such a coalition in the Senate now, Democrats + Lieberman and Sanders. And from 2007-2009 Lieberman and Sanders were needed to keep the Senate under Dem control. And the Democrats did run a candidate against Lieberman. Not the best example for obvious reasons but it is one. And Sanders is proof of such an agreement as the Democrats never ran serious candidates against him and basically agreed to support him.

The Alaska Senate might provide a valid example though as there a coalition of Democrats and some Republicans govern it, effectively resulting in three parties, Democrats, Coalition Republicans and Opposition Republicans. If the Democrats are running candidates against Coalition Republicans, well there's a straight example.

Also in the case of PR, one must also note grand coalitions. The SPD and CDU may have been coalition partners in Germany until last election, but that doesn't mean they exactly cooperated during the election. Since the Tory/Lib Dem coalition is just as friendly and out of convenience, it serves as a good example in comparison.

And have any Canadian provinces had coalition governments?

[Hash]

And have any Canadian provinces had coalition governments?

Most famous is the anti-CCF coalition formed between Tories and Liberals in BC in 1941, though both parties pratically merged and ran together in 1945 and 1949. They adopted a IRV system in 1952, with the aim of having Tories second pref Liberals and vice versa, but it allowed the SoCreds to come in on second prefs. FTR, the Liberals and Tories ran common 'coalition' candidates in both elections and by-elections between 1941 and 1952.

There was a deal between Liberals and NDP in Ontario in 1985 and 1987, and although it was a signed two-year contract, the NDP was not in government and ran in by-elections, according to Wikipedia (elections Ontario is useless).

Perhaps the best example is the four-party (Liberal, Tory, CCF, SoCred) Manitoban coalition in 1940, which won the 1941 elections. Wikipedia says that in some constituencies the coalition parties ran different candidates, but there was usually one two candidates in single-member seats (apparently Winnipeg was a massive STV constituency)