Pros

  • Highly proportionate - seats in parliament broadly match how many votes each party receives
  • With a lower barrier to entry, new parties can start and be successful if the larger parties do not understand new social issues
  • Voters get to choose which MP they want to interact with, and can choose according to subject specialism, party affiliation etc
  • For UK closed list system for EU elections:
  • The system was simple to use. Voters mark one X for their first-choice party
  • Easy to count on a regional scale and it was relatively easy for voters to understand how votes convert to seats
  • Number of members can vary between constituencies to better fit geographic or administrative boundaries.

Cons

  • Encourages the formation of lots of parties (many countries use legal thresholds, generally 4 or 5% to stop parties with very low support winning seats)
  • Independent candidates have to create a ‘party list’ of one. If they win more votes than they need to get elected these votes are wasted. Surplus votes for party candidates are also wasted - they may have enough votes for 2.5 seats, so the extras are wasted.
  • The larger the regions the less strong is the constituency link (Israel and Netherlands have one national constituency)
  • The smaller the region is the weaker the proportionality is (Finland and Spain use existing provinces)
  • Party lists are based on political parties, so independent candidates have to create a ‘party list’ of one. If they win more votes than they need to get elected these votes are wasted.
  • [Closed lists] Voter has no choice or influence over individual MPs elected and MPs may not be local - often a weaker constituency link
  • [Open lists] Higher level of voter choice - voters can choose between candidates of the same party
  • [Semi-open lists]  Most voters take the easy option and tick the party box – as a result the party ordering of the list is very rarely overturned.
  • Allocating seats by the d’Hondt method somewhat favours the larger parties
  • The smallest regions can only give seats to the top parties. 
  • Different size constituencies can create inequalities in share thresholds needed to win (easier to win seats in large cities than sparsely populated rural areas) source

> List systems: more detail      > Back to voting systems homepage