POLSCI 202
UMASS Boston
Prof. Shuai Jin
Electoral Systems
What is the electoral system?
The rules that translate citizens’ votes into legislative seats and/or control of a directly elected executive.
· Plurality
· Majority
· Proportional Representation
· Mixed system
Plurality Rule
· First past the post system (FPTP)
· Single-member districts
· Vote for candidates
· Plurality formula: The candidate who receives the largest share of the votes in the electoral district wins the seat, even if that share is less than a majority of 50 percent +1 of the votes
· Geographical representation
· Winner-take-all
· Favors big parties, punishes small parties except when small parties concentrate in confined geographic regions
· Favors majority control of the legislature and effective government
Majority Rule
· Requires that candidates obtain an actual majority of 50 percent +1 of the votes in an electoral district to win
· Single-member districts
· Vote for candidates
· Instant-runoff voting (Australia): If no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the first round, the second preferences of the lowest-ranked candidate are then added to the totals.
· Two-round system (France): a second round of elections that pit the top two candidates from the first round against each other.
· Rewards larger parties, penalizes smaller parties
Districts
· Single – member district
· Each district elects ONE legislator.
· Multi – member district
· District constituencies have more than one representative.
Proportional Representation
· Distributes seats proportionally to the vote each party receives
· Fewer districts but multi-member districts
· Different formulas are used to achieve the proportionality
· Thresholds: the minimum percentage of votes a party must obtain to win seats
· Party representation
Varieties of PR System
· Party list system
· Voters vote for parties, not individual candidates. Parties control the list of candidates.
· Parties rank the candidates on the list. The higher up on a list a party member is, the more likely that member is to get a seat.
· Albania, Argentina, Turkey, Israel
· Open-list PR
· Voters choose a candidate but votes are aggregated by political party to determine the allocation of seats across parties.
· Brazil, Finland, the Netherlands
· Disperse political power, does not discriminate smaller parties
Mixed System
· An effort to combine the other two systems
· Use a plurality or majority rule to elect some members of the national legislature
· Use a PR electoral rule to elect the remainder
· Voters have two votes also have the option to split their votes (vote for a candidate from a big party under plurality rule, but vote for a small party under PR)
· Combine geographical and party representation
· Balancing effective gov. and limited gov.
· Results tend to resemble elections under PR
Why does electoral system matter?
· Elections are central to the functioning of democratic systems.
· The design of electoral systems is a crucial choice in building democracy.
· The electoral system has important effects on the party system and real world of politics.