If your states' House delegation was elected at large by PR ?

[Polkergeist]

What minor parties would be able to win a seat ?

For some states there couldn't be a Proportional Representation election as there would be only one representative to send back. But for other states especially the larger ones minor parties could win seats.

As a guide a party could win a seat under statewide Proportional Representation if its statewide vote was equal to the following percentages:

California   1.89
Texas   3.13
New York   3.45
Florida   4
Illinois   5.26
Pennsylvania 5.26
Ohio   5.56
Michigan   6.67
Georgia   7.69
New Jersey 7.69
North Carolina 7.69
Virginia   9.09
Massachusetts 10
Indiana   11.11
Missouri   11.11
Tennessee 11.11
Washington 11.11
Arizona   12.5
Maryland   12.5
Minnesota12.5
Wisconsin   12.5
Alabama   14.29
Colorado   14.29
Louisiana   14.29
Kentucky   16.67
South Carolina 16.67
Connecticut 20
Iowa   20
Oklahoma   20
Oregon   20
Arkansas   25
Kansas   25
Mississippi 25
Nebraska   33.33
Nevada   33.33
New Mexico 33.33
Utah   33.33
West Virginia 33.33

The remaining states only have 1 or 2 reps. hence they would be for the former first past the post contests or would return one GOP and Dem each.

[muon2]

In IL the answer would be zero. Third parties do very poorly above the local level. There are ballot access difficulties, and voters shy away from casting votes for anything other than two major parties.

To be successful in IL a candidate would have to have huge name recognition, lots of money, and still might have problems without a party slate to draw attention to the representation.

[John Dibble]

The Libertarian Party would do quite well in Georgia under proportional representation. There's enough libertarian minded people here to do it, but not to do it under the current system.

Even with that said, I don't support proportional representation. I would rather we use approval voting as our system.

[Gabu]

I'll do mine with regards to the British Columbia Members of Parliament, which is basically the same thing as a state's House delegation.

Going off of the fact that you'd need 2.78% to get a seat in Parliament in BC, and given that the results in our last election were as follows:

Conservative: 36.3%
Liberal: 28.6%
NDP: 26.5%
Green: 6.3%
Independent: 2.5%

...we get the following breakdown:

Conservative: 13 seats
Liberal: 10 seats
NDP: 10 seats
Green: 2 seats
Independent: 1 seat

I added one seat to the NDP and gave the independent his seat to make the numbers add up to 36, the number of seats we have.  The NDP was the most screwed by roundoff errors and I figured the Independent was close enough.

For viewer's interests, here are the gains or losses that would result if we switched to PR:

Conservative: -9
Liberal: +2
NDP: +5
Green: +2
Independent: ±0

[Jake]

In PA, the Constitution Party might win one seat in a good year. Also, I could see the Libertarians winning a seat once in awhile.

The GOP would be hurt badly by this.  We, right now, have 12 seats to the Democrats 7.

[A18]

Here's the 2002 federal House of Representatives based on PR (which I hate, but it's still interesting):

Libertarians get 6 seats, Greens get 2 seats, Republicans get 216 seats, Democrats get 196 seats, Constitutionalists get 1 seat, and the rest is 'Other'

Interesting how Libertarians typically break 1% of the vote in the HOR. In this case, they got 1.38%.

[Jake]

PA Totals

1,947,713 Democrats     42.4%   8

2,531,317 Republicans   55.1% 11

   53,504 Libertarians       1.2%

   60,000 Other                 1.3%

4,592,534 Total

GOP loses 1 seat

This is without results for PA-12 & PA-14 which were uncontested Democratic victories. If we estimate 200,000 Democrat votes and 100,000 Republican votes in those areas we get:

2,347,713 Democrats     45.2%   9

2,731,317 Republicans   52.6% 10

   53,504 Libertarians       1.0%   

   60,000 Other                 1.1%

5,192,534 Total

GOP loses 2 seats

[Blerpiez]

In MA, all reps are Democratic and benefit from incumbency. That factor would be removed when the reps would put up better candidates.  The vote would probably be about
Dem-65%
GOP-30%
Other-5% at first, and the GOP would increase to about 60-37 after a while. 
The composition would be Dem - 6 or 7, GOP - 3 or 4

[John Dibble]

You need to take into account that using proportional representation, people would vote differently than they do now. People would be more willing to vote third party, since they would have a higher chance of getting someone in that party into office.

[Jake]

You need to take into account that using proportional representation, people would vote differently than they do now. People would be more willing to vote third party, since they would have a higher chance of getting someone in that party into office.

You're right.  In PA, maybe 3% will defect from the GOP to the Consitution.  Maybe 3% will go Libertarian and 2% Green.

My predictions if there was PR in 2004

Republicans 47% 10
Democrats   44%   9
Libertarians   3%
Constitution   3%
Greens           2%
Other             1%

I'm assuming a 5% cutoff to get seats.  If not, then both the Constitutionalists and the Libertarians would get 1 seat and subtract 1 from the other parties.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

There would be 2-3 CA Greens

[WalterMitty]

There would be 2-3 CA Greens

that would be an improvement!

aside from loretta sanchez and a few others, the ca delegation is just horrible.

[JohnFKennedy]

You need to take into account that using proportional representation, people would vote differently than they do now. People would be more willing to vote third party, since they would have a higher chance of getting someone in that party into office.

^^ Also this all depends on the method of PR used, whether it is a list system (if so whether it is open or closed) or whether they use Single Transferable Vote etc.

Note also that there is often a threshold in the system required to be achieved before you can get someone elected set at anywhere between 5 and 15 percent normally.

[bgwah]

Results from WA
58.9-DEM
40.1-REP
00.7-LIB
00.2-GRN

Looks like Republicans might gain a seat. Libertarians would've doen better but they only ran in 3 out of the 9 districts. Greens only ran in one, and that wasn't the 7th which they've gotten 20% in before.