List_of_electoral_systems_by_country

List of electoral systems by country

List of electoral systems by country

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This is a list of electoral systems by country in alphabetical order. An electoral system is used to elect national legislatures and heads of state.

Maps

Head of state
Lower (or unicameral) house
Upper house

Electoral systems by country

More information Country, Body or office ...

Key

Type of system

Type of representation:

Number of winners in a contest—whether single or multiple (more than one)

single winner (single office at-large such as mayor, or chamber filled by single winner contests in districts dividing electorate. System used is usually one of FPTP, TRS, instant-runoff voting.

multiple winners (block voting, STV, limited voting)

Type of electoral method --

Type of elections

direct elections

indirect (by legislature(s) and/or electoral college),

no election (chosen by a single person, or other rules e.g. hereditary)

Winning formula:

majoritarian/plurality (body elected in winner-take-all districts e.g. FPTP, TRS, block voting),

majoritarian (Instant-runoff voting, TRS),

proportional (body elected by STV or party-list PR),

semi-proportional (e.g. SNTV, LV).

Mixed systems use two or more of these methods, and produce chamber where different members are elected through two or more different election methods. (Mixed Member Proportional elects members through both first past the post and proportional.) Parallel voting systems, such as used in Egypt, are examples of mixed systems.

Seats per district or contest
Some elections fill all the seats in the chamber (Netherlands, Israel). Most times the electorate is split into a number of electoral districts where all the district members are elected at one time. In some elections, there is one person elected per district. In others, there are many people elected per district (sometimes all districts have same number of seats; other systems use districts with varying number of seats.) (Proportional representation and STV depends on use of a contest that fills multiple seats at one time.) Electoral districts can have different names, see list of electoral districts by nation. Some election systems see half or a third of the members elected at one time (staggered terms).:

Election systems can use one or more layers.

First past the post elections use just one layer. : MMP (an example of a mixed system listed above) uses both district elections and overall pooling of votes, usually where voters cast both a district vote and a party vote. In Demark's mixed member system, a single vote is used both for election of the district member and of an at-large party seat.: Some city election systems, such as City of Thunder Bay (Canada) and Nelson (New Zealand), use both ward elections and at-large district to elect members of city council. At-large contests elect multiple members so make either list, PR, STV or block voting possible. As well, multi-member wards, such as used in Nelson, make either list PR, STV or block voting possible. Single-winner ward contests usually use the first past the post, instant-runoff voting or the two-round system.:
Total number of seats
the number of representatives elected to the body in total. (general rule is number of members in the lower house is the cube root of the total population.)[103]
Electoral threshold
see Electoral threshold

Type of vote used

First past the post uses single X voting.

Block voting uses multiple X voting, same as number of seats to fill.

STV and Instant-runoff voting use ranked votes.

List PR uses X voting.

Limited voting uses multiple X voting, not as many as number of seats to fill.

See also

Notes

  1. [N 1]
    For a round to be declared valid, the turnout must be at least 50% of voters in the electoral register.
  2. [N 2]
    California and Washington additionally utilize a nonpartisan blanket primary, and Louisiana uses a Louisiana primary, for their respective primary elections.
  3. [N 3]
    U.S. House and Senate general and special elections in Texas require majority votes.
  4. [N 4]
    Louisiana uses a variant of the blanket primary with the primary at the day of the general election, with a runoff if no candidate receives a majority, while California and Washington has a primary before the general election with the top-two candidates facing off in the general election regardless of whether one has a majority or not. Similarly, Alaska has a variant where instead of having two candidates being the finalists, it has four candidates to be its finalists to facing off. Several states use runoff voting in the partisan primaries.
  5. [N 5]
    Elections in the United States commonly feature partisan primary elections run by the state (as opposed to by the parties); see Primary election#Primaries in the United States.
  6. [N 6]
    The constitution specifies the extra 60 seats for women only for the two first parliaments. The first parliament elected with this constitution was in 2013[102]

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Much of the data on Bulgaria from Central electoral committee - "Methods for determining the number of mandates in constituencies and the results of the vote" (in Bulgarian); A mathematical analysis of the system

Much of the data regarding which voting system is used is drawn from this 2002 report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA).

Much of the data regarding the size of the parliaments comes from this 1997 report from the same Institute.

Some of the data has been updated since then.
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