As Portugal heads to the polls – how do Portuguese elections work?Portugal is holding a snap election at the end of the month after parliament rejected the budget proposed by António Costa’s government last autumn.Posted 04 Jan 2022
Does First Past the Post stop extremists getting into parliaments?If you listen to supporters of first past the post, you might be forgiven for thinking that British voters are just itching to elect dozens of far-left and far-right MPs - with PR just waiting...Posted 15 Dec 2021
What is the ideal number of MPs per constituency in proportional representation?When choosing a proportional voting system, one of the most important decisions is the number of MPs each constituency elects – its ‘district magnitude.Posted 26 Nov 2021
What’s the difference between open and closed list proportional representation?When discussing proportional voting systems, or voting systems in general, we usually talk about how they allocate seats to political parties. But parliaments are more than parties and it also matters how they decide which...Posted 15 Nov 2021
Was there a referendum on proportional representation?Whenever a conversation online comes to proportional representation, you can set your watch by the appearance of someone claiming that ‘we had a referendum on that!’. Advocates of the way things are in Westminster argue...Posted 28 Oct 2021
Barriers to entry: How do electoral thresholds work?A common feature of many Party List PR systems is an electoral threshold – a pre-set bar that parties have to reach if they want to win seats.Posted 03 Sep 2021
Which votes get transferred with the Single Transferable Vote?The first meetings of the Electoral Reform Society, then known as the Proportional Representation Society, quickly settled on the Single Transferable Vote (STV) as the best option for electoral reform.Posted 17 Aug 2021
Hare vs Droop: How to set the quota under STVThe first meetings of the Proportional Representation Society quickly attracted many leading lights of the Victorian age – including Lewis Carroll, CP Scott (editor of what is now The Guardian) and Thomas Hare (the inventor...Posted 10 Aug 2021
What is the difference between D’hondt and Sainte-Laguë?Looking at just Party List systems in western Europe, there is a lot of variation.Posted 27 Jul 2021
What would the party system look like if the UK had proportional representation?By looking at the experiences of similar countries and the devolved governments, we can see which kinds of party system are most probable given the sorts of voting system that are most likely to be...Posted 09 Jun 2021