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Personally, I only know about one democracy where the popular vote is used to determine the outcome of elections. The others I know all use something moderately

• mytailorisrich 2y ago
  Off the top of my head I can't think of another democracy in which the executive can be appointed with fewer votes that the other parties/candidates, either systemically or realistically. In the US this has happened several times in living memory. But that's not the point. The point is that in general and in terms of democracy and democratic mandate obviously the popular vote is the most important metric. That's the point of democratic elections.
  • Arnt 2y ago
    I agree that the popular vote is a key metric, extremely important, perhaps even more than maintaining a close relationship between those elected and the voters, which is often the goal of the balancing rules. As for an example, look at Germany before 2011 or Britain even now. (If you're not familiar with Germany, it used to allocate about half of the Bundestag seats in a manner like the British, and the Bundestag elects the government. In 2011 the system was modified to keep the distorting effects small. I glanced at a random wikipedia page now, for 1994, and the winning coalition got 47.5% of the votes and 51.1% of the seats.)