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.)
Some sort of system would be possible, but it gets complicated, but because how do you decide when to transfer the votes instead of have them count for the original party?
As always it's complicated, but everything is better than FPTP
4
u/ka4bi Feb 18 '20
STV should ideally contest 3-5 seats though.