Since 1999, the European Parliament elections have used a proportional voting system, but some systems are more proportional than others.
The system the UK uses is commonly known as the D’Hondt method. It’s a simple way of allocating seats: essentially you count a series of first-past-the-post elections but each time you do you divide each party’s vote by the number of seats they’ve had elected thus far, plus 1.
So, in the first round, all the parties’ votes are divided by 1 and the winner is allocated a seat. In the second round, the winner of the first round has its total votes divided by half and the winner of that round is allocated a seat, and so on.
This gives you a broadly proportional result (see first graphic for the 2014 elections). However, it tends to favour the larger parties.
The Saint-Laguë method works in the same way, except that you divide each party’s vote by the number of seats they’ve won thus far times 2, plus 1. In this case, the party that won the first round has their votes divided by 3 in the following round. A party with two seats allocated will have their vote divided by 5 in the subsequent round, then 7, and so on.
The second image shows how that would have changed this year’s election results. Ukip would have got 3 fewer MEPs, Labour and the Conservatives one fewer MEP each, the Greens would have got 3 more and the Lib Dems would have got 2 more.
Note that it still slightly favours the larger parties, but it does make it easier for smaller parties to get representation. In 2008, the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany forced that country to adopt the Saint-Laguë so that its electoral system better represented minorities (Wikipedia).
This isn’t the only change we might want to make to our system for electing MEPs. Currently, MEPs are elected using a system of closed lists. Voters have no say whatsoever what order those lists should be put in. Candidates who are popular with the party stay at the top no matter how unpopular they may be with the public; if you don’t like who is at the top of your favoured party’s list you must either lump it or vote for a different party entirely.
There are many ways available to give voters more say over the order of these lists. Several countries use open lists, in which voters choose individual candidates and decide the order themselves.
When the proportional voting system was being introduced in 1998/1999, the House of Lords repeatedly attempted to persuade the government to adopt a more open system, but was thwarted by the Labour government who feared it would lead to more party infighting. But shouldn’t it be our choice?
Of course, the voting system to elect MPs and councillors in England and Wales is even worse…
Raw data on Google sheets.
titsay
tangentwithtanner
gummygunk
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