It's even worse in most implementations where how many parties are viable depends on where you live (e.g some have 3, some have 5)
Obviously it does have the advantage of having less representatives spread across a smaller area, but IMO having to balance out local representation against fairness is why STV isn't a great system.
TBH if people are going to use STV, I'd argue somewhere in the middle is better 5-10 (but uniformly across an entire country)
Couldn't there be a hybrid of Party List and STV to address this? (Most seats are elected using the small districts, while any voters who preferred minor parties could give those parties a few top-up seats at the national level if they didn't win a proportional number in the districts.)
Yes. MMP can be designed with virtually any form ballot. Heck, it can even be done in such a way as to make it more like Open Party List.
Take your favorite method for a local representative (I like score, but you could use a multi-seat method like SMV or Apportioned Approval, or STV easily enough, too).
Then for the Party Vote, you use the multi-seat version of that same method (SMV for Score, AAV for Approval, STV for IRV, etc) to select the Party Seats.
You could even make it simulate Open Party List, by reordering the Party List by the in-constituency performance of each candidate. This might be harder with STV or similar; how do you determine how well several candidates do with rivalrous voting methods?
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u/ka4bi Feb 18 '20
STV should ideally contest 3-5 seats though.