Referendums in Australia are only for changes to the Constitution, plebiscites would be the method of gauging the voters preferences for issues. In any election a party has to win a majority of seats, that can be 51% or 75% in a particular seat , if a losing party had huge % votes in a number of seats but still fell short of the necessary number of seats , that party could say it won more votes , as was the situation in the USA, where California had a larger population that some other states, but not in the right seats. Preferential or first past the post , the latter means you can be elected on under 40% or even less of the vote , hardly a majority of voters in a seat if there are a number of candidates standing in that seat. It would seem that no system is perfect other than the variety of democratic representative systems are far superior to the alternative .... one party permanent rule.
