With Sri Lanka's ranked ballots, they didn't need consolidation. Working-class voters could have had this, at any time, with no risk.

Ah, you're talking about SLFP voters second-preferencing the JVP. (I thought you meant UNP voters supporting the SJB.) That is more plausible, except the SLPP leaders and hardliners would attack it tooth and nail, fearmonger that it would split the vote and help the UNP win, and so on. No one wants to let go of power.

this new plurality-winning party is going to trounce the split alternatives, until one of them disappears, or both of them disappear.

Hard to predict. Depending on how many seats his coalition gets in Parliament, Dissanayake might have to get support from one of the other blocs to get bills passed. But if he can get a majority, he has a great chance to destroy both the established parties simply by appointing an honest auditor and letting them loose on the previous government's files.

When voters only get (or only use) one choice, and there's two parties on the same side of a divide, one of them has to utterly dominate the other, to stand any chance against a popular third party.

What the new party did was to challenge the old poor Sinhala vs Tamil+Muslim+rich divide, and turn it into more of a common people vs political / business class divide. Obviously, there aren't enough businessmen or politicians to form a party by themselves, so we'll have to see what they do. Maybe they'll negotiate with the new powers, or maybe they'll run smear campaigns, or maybe they'll wait for it to get corrupt and unpopular.

Either these voters start using their ranked ballots properly - or they're going to keep getting a two-party system.

The other possibility is a de-facto one-party state, like Mexico or Japan. I really don't see hardline Sinhala nationalists and hardline Tamil separatists co-operating.

Sir this is a meme.

Jokes aside, I'm Indian. Sri Lanka has a much better education system than we do.

The best course of action for India is to remain neutral and trade with everyone. Whatever mistakes the current government is making, they have fortunately understood this principle.

I think the concern is that some group will launch a dirty bomb at Israel, Israel will retaliate with nukes, and then the best case scenario is 'only' thousands dying. Oh, and did I mention that a dirty bomb can make a pretty large area uninhabitable for decades?

But as you point out, they're acting like they have America's elections, where this schmuck who got 17% is now a massive liability to the runner-up who got 33%. If those two presumably-liberal blocs got together, they could handily oppose the leftist bloc.

It would be useful if you tried to understand Sri Lanka's political system before you made such comments. The SLFP / SLPP was historically supported by working class Sinhala people. The UNP was supported by Tamils, Muslims and richer / more urban Sinhalas. In 2022, the SLPP collapsed due to an economic crisis and widespread corruption. The SJB was an attempt by a section of the UNP to win over former SLPP voters by adopting centre-left economic policies and Sinhala nationalist rhetoric. The UNP base - largely Tamil and Muslim - are not going to vote for them! This is why the JVP was able to win - they consolidated the working class Sinhala vote, while not threatening Tamils and Muslims.

Their voters just aren't using it, for some goddamn reason.

The reason being that, for many people, there is only one choice that is acceptable.

Every single person who wanted him, last time, could have listed him... also. They sure didn't. His support was three percent. That's not a viable path to power, that's a punchline.

That's a viable path to getting your face in the public consciousness, so you can win next time. As you said, losing a prior election isn't a pre-requisite. But the posters you printed, the speeches you made, and the fact that one in thirty people took you seriously enough to vote for you, are a pretty strong boost when you run again.

Anyone who voted for only him, "last election," was a fool.

Or they were the people who made this year's result possible.

If you can't rally a shitload of people behind your guy... you lose.

Yes, but you show that so-and-so's platform has x amount of support, putting them in a better position next time around.

The winner of this election was not decided by everyone seeing through The Matrix or whatever and deciding to defeat a broken electoral system. It sounds like 95% of them are functionally unaware of which electoral system they have.

It's incredible how one can see some piece of evidence that contradicts their pet theory with their own eyes and say, no, the reality is wrong and my theory is right. I mean, it makes sense sometimes - the discovery of Neptune is a famous example - but in general, it is better to adjust theory to fit the facts, rather than the other way around.

Hydrogen.

You can't generate helium unless you have a fusion reactor.

Actually, nuclear powered flying T. rex sounds cool, so let's go with it.

It's always great when politicians who think their jobs are secure get a reminder that voters really do get to decide who will represent them.

Right. It's also a reminder to the newly elected guy that he, too, can be replaced if he does not serve the people.

Sri Lanka has a form of ranked choice voting.

While this is technically true, only ~2% of voters seem to have put a second preference. So for practical purposes, it behaved like a plurality election.

If you're trapped in America like me, then I definitely recommend agitating and organizing for voting reform

The sad thing is that my country has a parliamentary system, and local parties have repeatedly crushed the national parties in state elections. And yet the media and pundits ignore them under the excuse that if people don't support the crook of their choice, 'the wrong lizard would win'. In reality, their bosses are probably worried that if any half-competent and honest leader comes to power, (s)he can easily find enough evidence of corruption to throw them and their friends in jail.

Then there'd be one really deep print as they kicked off.

Given the system you're voting under - you should vote for someone who has a chance of winning.

The problem is that who 'has a chance of winning' is decided by who people vote for.

Voting for a third party with single-digit support is not much better.

Uh, that's what the Sri Lankan voters just did? The winner this time had 3% of the vote-share in the last election.

There are two types of laws in science - absolute and statistical. Absolute laws always apply, at least within the framework in which they work. For example, the laws of thermodynamics. Statistical laws, on the other hand, are trends observed in nature. For example, Allen's rule. I do not question the fact that Duverger's law, in the form I quoted, is a statistical pattern. But a great deal of damage is caused by people who treat it as a law of nature, and try to metagame the electoral process.

Sri Lanka has ranked ballots! What the fuck? They're not even using Plurality, they're doing RCV!

In theory, yes, but so few (~2%) people use it that in practice it is first past the post.

Duverger's Law is structural

Or maybe it's bullshit, designed to scare people into voting for bad candidates.

Even Duverger himself did not consider it some universal law, merely as a statistical trend. A better formulation would be 'under these conditions, a third party has difficulty forming and attracting voters, and an established party can survive longer than it should, purely based on merit'. Says the exact same thing, but cannot be misinterpreted as easily.

Duverger's law is about how there tend to be two parties.

Emphasis on the 'tends'. It's a probabilistic observation, not a law of nature. Treating it as the latter leads to people acting against their best interests.

Sri Lanka has ranked ballots. It's not a Plurality voting system.

You are right, in theory, but please check how many additional votes the winner (or the runner-up) got as second-prefrence votes. It was around 2% of their totals. This is because in practice, most voyers didn't bother putting second and third preferences.

Instead of calculating who they hate more, the Sri Lankan people voted for the candidate they liked - an anti-corruption activist who got ~3% of the vote last time and was supported by a fringe left-wing party - and he won the presidency over the candidates of the two established parties.

The new guy won despite winning <5% of votes in the last election. If people vote for the candidate they like instead of trying to game the system by calculating who they'd rather not win the most, then maybe we can kick out corrupt incumbents and get in fresh faces (they'll get corrupted over time too, at which point you rinse and repeat).

I'm guessing the destroyers are doing something beyond just than praying they don't get hit.

In this context, I guess the self-employed would be an intermediate 'middle class'. A doctor or accountant with her own practice, a master tradesman who can pick and choose his clients, a programmer who does contract work for companies - none of them are propertied enough to have their own workers, but neither are they employed by a boss who takes a cut of their pay. But I agree that a lot of people who call themselves middle class are actually either upper class or working class.

In India, you might throw gazillion-dollar weddings for your children.

If throwing lavish parties was all our oligarchs did, I'd be happy. I know Indira Gandhi did a lot of horrible things, but sometimes I wish we elect someone like her again, to once again put the fear of nationalisation into these leeches.

Wouldn't this violate the EU's DMA?