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53-667: Chemnitz–Zwickau was one of the 35 electoral districts ( German : Wahlkreise ) used to elect members to the Reichstag during the Weimar Republic . It sent members to the Reichstag in nine democratic elections between 1919 and 1933. It existed nominally in the show elections to the Nazi Reichstag until 1938. Its boundaries corresponded to the contemporary Kreishauptmannschaft of Chemnitz and Zwickau within

106-535: A candidate can often be elected with the support of only a minority of votes, leaving the majority of votes cast wasted, and thus a moderate winning vote of say just 34 percent repeated in several swing seats can be enough to create a landslide increase in seats won by a government. The district-by-district basis of ' First past the post voting ' elections means that parties will usually categorise and target various districts by whether they are likely to be held with ease, or winnable by extra campaigning, or written off as

159-484: A decisive stance on the slavery issue , effectively splitting the party along the Mason–Dixon line . Southern rural planters, initially attracted by the prospect of federal infrastructure and schools, aligned with the pro-slavery Democrats, while urban laborers and professionals in the northern states, threatened by the sudden shift in political and economic power and losing faith in the failing Whig candidates, flocked to

212-411: A foregone loss hardly worth fighting for. A safe seat is one that is regarded as very unlikely to be won by a rival politician based on the constituency 's past voting record or polling results. Conversely, a marginal seat or swing seat is one that could easily swing either way, and may even have changed hands frequently in recent decades - the party that currently holds it may have only won it by

265-506: A geographic concentration and a redistricting process that seeks to represent them. These disadvantages tend to suppress the ability of a third party to engage in the political process. The second challenge to a third party is both statistical and tactical. Duverger presents the example of an election in which 100,000 moderate voters and 80,000 radical voters are to vote for candidates for a single seat or office. If two moderate parties and one radical party ran candidates, and every voter voted,

318-450: A low effective number of parties . Malta with only two major parties is a stark example of divergence from Duverger's rule. In a system where the intent is to avoid the waste of votes, a set proportion of votes, as a minimum, assures the election of a candidate. This is set as the inverse of the district magnitude plus one, plus one, the Droop quota . Droop is the mathematical threshold that

371-580: A method called binomial voting , which assigned 2 MPs to each district. In many cases, however, multi-member constituencies correspond to already existing jurisdictions (regions, districts, wards, cities, counties, states or provinces), which creates differences in district magnitude from district to district: The concept of district magnitude helps explains why Duverger's speculated correlation between proportional representation and party system fragmentation has many counter-examples, as PR methods combined with small-sized multi-member constituencies may produce

424-474: A multiparty system, but to a lesser degree than proportional representation does. William Clark and Matt Golder (2006) find the effect largely holds up, noting that different methods of analyzing the data might lead to different conclusions. They emphasize other variables like the nuances of different electoral institutions and the importance that Duverger also placed on sociological factors. Thomas R. Palfrey argued Duverger's law can be proven mathematically at

477-478: A national level where seats were awarded to national lists of each party or alliance. Electoral districts The names for electoral districts vary across countries and, occasionally, for the office being elected. The term constituency is commonly used to refer to an electoral district, especially in British English , but it can also refer to the body of eligible voters or all the residents of

530-487: A particular group has a slight majority, for instance, gerrymandering politicians can obtain 2/3 of that district's seats. Similarly, by making four-member districts in regions where the same group has slightly less than a majority, gerrymandering politicians can still secure exactly half of the seats. However, any possible gerrymandering that theoretically could occur would be much less effective because minority groups can still elect at least one representative if they make up

583-428: A significant percentage of the population (e.g. 20–25%), compared to single-member districts where 40–49% of the voters can be essentially shut out from any representation. Sometimes, particularly under non-proportional or winner-takes-all voting systems, elections can be prone to landslide victories . As the result in each district is not related to votes cast elsewhere and may not reflect a party's national popularity,

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636-886: A significant presence in an area. Many assemblies allow free postage (through franking privilege or prepaid envelopes) from a representative to a constituent, and often free telecommunications. Caseworkers may be employed by representatives to assist constituents with problems. Members of the U.S. Congress (both Representatives and Senators) working in Washington, D.C., have a governmentally staffed district office to aid in constituent services. Many state legislatures have followed suit. Likewise, British MPs use their Parliamentary staffing allowance to appoint staff for constituency casework. Client politics and pork barrel politics are associated with constituency work. In some elected assemblies, some or all constituencies may group voters based on some criterion other than, or in addition to,

689-517: A slender margin and a party that wants to win it may be able to take it away from its present holder with little effort. In United Kingdom general elections and United States presidential and congressional elections, the voting in a relatively small number of swing seats usually determines the outcome of the entire election. Parties aspire to hold as many safe seats as possible, and high-level politicians, such as prime ministers, prefer to stand in safe seats. In large multi-party systems like India ,

742-533: A small shift in election results, sometimes caused by swing votes, can lead to no party taking a majority of seats, causing a hung assembly . This may arise from a significant number of seats going to smaller regional parties instead of the larger national parties which are the main competitors at the national or state level, as was the situation in the Lok Sabha (Lower house of the Parliament of India ) during

795-530: A smaller party whose policies they actually favor because they do not want to "waste" their votes (on a party unlikely to win a plurality) and therefore tend to gravitate to one of two major parties that is more likely to achieve a plurality, win the election, and implement policy. For legislatures where each seat represents a geographical area and the candidate with the most votes wins that seat, minor parties spread fairly evenly across many districts win less representation than geographically concentrated ones with

848-529: A term also used for administrative subdivisions of a municipality. However, in the Republic of Ireland , voting districts are called local electoral areas . District magnitude is a term invented by the American political scientist Douglas W. Rae in his 1967 dissertation The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws . It refers to the number of seats assigned to each district, and thus helping determine

901-691: Is allowed to affect apportionment, with rural areas with sparse populations allocated more seats per elector: for example in Iceland, the Falkland Islands, Scottish islands, and (partly) in US Senate elections. Gerrymandering is the manipulation of electoral district boundaries for political gain. By creating a few "forfeit" districts where opposing candidates win overwhelmingly, gerrymandering politicians can manufacture more, but narrower, wins for themselves and their party. Gerrymandering relies on

954-580: Is larger than 1 where multiple members are elected - plural districts ), and under plurality block voting (where voter may cast as many votes as the number of seats to be filled), proportional representation or single transferable vote elections (where the voter casts just one vote). In STV elections DM normally range from 2 to 10 members in a district. But 21 are elected in a single contest conducted through STV in New South Wales (Australia). In list PR systems DM may exceed 100. District magnitude

1007-519: Is maximized where: DM is moderate where districts break up the electorate or where relatively few members overall are elected, even if the election is held at-large. District magnitude may be set at an equal number of seats in each district. Examples include: all districts of the Northern Ireland Assembly elected 6 members (5 members since 2017); all those of the Parliament of Malta send 5 MPs; Chile, between 1989 and 2013, used

1060-404: Is not synonymous with proportional representation. The use of "general ticket voting" prevents the multiple-member representation of the district from being mixed and balanced. Where list PR is used in the district, a closed list PR method gives the party machine, not the voters, the power to arrange the candidates on the party list. In this case, a large district magnitude helps minorities only if

1113-426: Is strongest when a society is homogenous or closely divided, but is weakened when multiple intermediate identities exist. As evidence of this, Duhamel cites the case of India, where over 25 percent of voters vote for parties outside the two main alliances. Two-party politics may also emerge in systems that use a form of proportional representation, with Duverger and others arguing that Duverger's Law mostly represents

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1166-456: Is the legal term. In Australia and New Zealand , Electoral districts are called electorates , however elsewhere the term electorate generally refers specifically to the body of voters. In India , electoral districts are referred to as " Nirvācan Kṣetra " ( Hindi : निर्वाचन क्षेत्र ) in Hindi , which can be translated to English as "electoral area" though the official English translation for

1219-425: Is the mathematical minimum whereby no more will be elected than there are seats to be filled. It ensures election in contests where all votes are used to elect someone. (Probabilistic threshold should include the likely number of votes wasted to minor lists). For instance, a 10%-polling party will not win a seat in a 5-member district (Droop quota of 1/6=16.67%) but will do so in a 10-member district as its 10 percent of

1272-660: Is used such as general ticket voting. The concept of magnitude explains Duverger's observation that single-winner contests tend to produce two-party systems , and proportional representation (PR) methods tend to produce multi-party systems . District magnitude is minimal (exactly 1) in plurality voting in single-member districts ( First-past-the-post voting used in most cases). As well, where multi-member districts are used, threshold de facto stays high if seats are filled by general ticket or other pro-landslide party block system (rarely used nationwide nowadays). In such situations each voter has one vote. District magnitude

1325-660: The Cantonal Council of Zürich are reapportioned in every election based on the number of votes cast in each district , which is only made possible by use of multi-member districts, and the House of Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina , by contrast, is apportioned without regard to population; the three major ethnic groups – Bosniaks , Serbs , and Croats – each get exactly five members. Malapportionment occurs when voters are under- or over-represented due to variation in district population. In some places, geographical area

1378-639: The Free State of Saxony . It was constituency 30 in the numbering scheme. The constituency was created for the 1919 election . Under the proportional representation electoral system of the Weimar Republic, voters cast a vote for party lists . Parties were awarded a seat for every 60,000 votes in a constituency. Excess votes were aggregated at two higher levels of seat distribution: an intermediate level combining multiple constituencies, where extra seats were awarded to parties' constituency lists, and

1431-654: The Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian Parliament) in this way in the elections in October 2012 . Duverger%27s Law In political science , Duverger's law ( / ˈ d u v ər ʒ eɪ / DOO -vər-zhay ) holds that in political systems with single-member districts and the plurality voting system , (as in the U.S.), two main parties tend to emerge. In this case, votes for minor parties can potentially be regarded splitting votes away from

1484-439: The wasted-vote effect , effectively concentrating wasted votes among opponents while minimizing wasted votes among supporters. Consequently, gerrymandering is typically done under voting systems using single-member districts, which have more wasted votes. While much more difficult, gerrymandering can also be done under proportional-voting systems when districts elect very few seats. By making three-member districts in regions where

1537-404: The 1990s. Elected representatives may spend much of the time serving the needs or demands of individual constituents , meaning either voters or residents of their district. This is more common in assemblies with many single-member or small districts than those with fewer, larger districts. In a looser sense, corporations and other such organizations can be referred to as constituents, if they have

1590-494: The United States, like Canada, United Kingdom and India, multiparty parliaments exist due to the growth of minor parties finding strongholds in specific regions, potentially lessening the psychological fear of a wasted vote by voting for a minor party for a legislative seat. Riker credits Canada's highly decentralized system of government as encouraging minor parties to build support by winning seats locally, which then sets

1643-403: The increasingly vocal anti-slavery Republican Party. Absent a major reform like switching to proportional representation, minor reforms like ranked-choice voting has the potential to allow for more choice in a winner-take-all system. Duverger argued that "a majority vote on two ballots is conducive to a multiparty system, inclined toward forming coalitions": that the two-round system encourages

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1696-538: The law remains a valid generalization. Steven R. Reed argued in 2001 that Duverger's law could be observed in Italy, with 80% of electoral districts gradually but significantly shifting towards two major parties. He finds a similar effect in Japan through a slow trial-and-error process that shifted the number of major parties towards the expected outcome. Eric Dickson and Kenneth Scheve argued in 2007 that Duverger's law

1749-415: The limit when the number of voters approaches infinity for one single-winner district and where the probability distribution of votes is known (perfect information). Duverger did not regard this principle as absolute, suggesting instead that plurality would act to delay the emergence of new political forces and would accelerate the elimination of weakening ones, whereas proportional representation would have

1802-531: The location they live. Examples include: Not all democratic political systems use separate districts or other electoral subdivisions to conduct elections. Israel , for instance, conducts parliamentary elections as a single district. The 26 electoral districts in Italy and the 20 in the Netherlands have a role in the actual election, but no role whatsoever in the division of the seats. Ukraine elected half of

1855-447: The make-up of the district map, made easier by a multitude of micro-small districts. A higher magnitude means less wasted votes, and less room for such maneuvers. As well, a fair voting system in the district contests also means that gerrymandering is ineffective because each party gets their fair share of seats however districts are drawn, at least theoretically. Multiple-member contests sometimes use plurality block voting , which allows

1908-531: The most similar major party. In contrast, systems with proportional representation usually have more representation of minor parties in government. A two-party system is most common under plurality voting . Voters typically cast one vote per race. Maurice Duverger argued there were two main mechanisms by which plurality voting systems lead to fewer major parties: (i) small parties are disincentivized to form because they have great difficulty winning seats or representation, and (ii) voters are wary of voting for

1961-550: The number of representatives allotted to each. Israel and the Netherlands are among the few countries that avoid the need for apportionment entirely by electing legislators at-large . Apportionment is generally done on the basis of population . Seats in the United States House of Representatives , for instance, are reapportioned to individual states every 10 years following a census, with some states that have grown in population gaining seats. By contrast, seats in

2014-406: The number of seats to be filled in any election. Staggered terms are sometimes used to reduce the number of seats up for election at any one time, when district magnitude is more than one. The number of seats up for election varies the ease or difficulty to be elected, as the threshold de facto decreases in proportion as the number of seats being filled increases, unless a pro-landslide voting system

2067-417: The opposite effect. The U.S. system has two major parties which have won, on average, 98% of all state and federal seats. There have only been a few rare elections where a minor party was competitive with the major parties, occasionally replacing one of the major parties in the 19th century. In Matt Golder's 2016 review of the empirical evidence to-date, he concluded that despite some contradicting cases,

2120-607: The parties up to get representatives in the House of Commons of Canada . The political chaos in the United States immediately preceding the Civil War allowed the Republican Party to replace the Whig Party as the progressive half of the American political landscape. Loosely united on a platform of country-wide economic reform and federally funded industrialization, the decentralized Whig leadership failed to take

2173-504: The party machine of any party chooses to include them. In a multi-member district where general ticket voting is not used, there is a natural impetus for a party to open itself to minority voters, if they have enough numbers to be significant, due to the competitive environment produced by the electoral system. Apportionment is the process of allocating a number of representatives to different regions, such as states or provinces. Apportionment changes are often accompanied by redistricting ,

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2226-411: The radical candidate would tend to win unless one of the moderate candidates gathered fewer than 20,000 votes. Appreciating this risk, moderate voters would be inclined to vote for the moderate candidate they deemed likely to gain more votes, with the goal of defeating the radical candidate. To win, then, either the two moderate parties must merge, or one moderate party must fail, as the voters gravitate to

2279-461: The redrawing of electoral district boundaries to accommodate the new number of representatives. This redrawing is necessary under single-member district systems, as each new representative requires their own district. Multi-member systems, however, vary depending on other rules. Ireland, for example, redraws its electoral districts after every census while Belgium uses its existing administrative boundaries for electoral districts and instead modifies

2332-442: The representation of minorities. John Stuart Mill had endorsed proportional representation (PR) and STV in the mid-19th century precisely to respond to this shortcoming. With lower district magnitudes, the only way to include demographic minorities scattered across the country is to force parties to include them: Large district magnitudes increase the chance for diverse walks of life and minority groups to be elected. However, it

2385-602: The represented area or only those who voted for a certain candidate. The terms (election) precinct and election district are more common in American English . In Canadian English , the term is used, especially officially, but is also colloquially and more commonly known as a riding or constituency . In some parts of Canada, constituency is used for provincial districts and riding for federal districts. In colloquial Canadian French , they are called comtés ("counties"), while circonscriptions comtés

2438-437: The rules permit voters not to rank all the candidates or prevent them from ranking all the candidates, some votes are declared exhausted. Thus it is common for one or two members in a district to be elected without attaining Droop. Larger district magnitudes means larger districts, so annihilate the need and practice of gerrymandering , Gerrymandering is the practice of partisan redistricting by means of creating imbalances in

2491-554: The same overall level of public support. An example of this was the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom , whose proportion of seats in the legislature was, until recently, significantly less than their proportion of the national vote. The Green Party of Canada is another example; the party received about 5% of the popular vote from 2004 to 2011 but had only won one seat (out of 308) in the House of Commons in

2544-412: The same span of time. Another example was seen in the 1992 U.S. presidential election , when Ross Perot's candidacy received zero electoral votes despite receiving 19% of the popular vote. Gerrymandering is sometimes used to try to collect a population of like-minded voters within a geographically cohesive district so that their votes are not "wasted", but tends to require that minor parties have both

2597-516: The short term, but in the mid-to-long term. Some minor parties in winner-take-all systems have managed to translate their support into winning seats in government by focusing on local races, taking the place of a major party, or changing the political system. William H. Riker , citing Douglas W. Rae , noted that strong regional parties can lead to more than two parties receiving seats in the national legislature, even if there are only two parties competitive in any single district. In systems outside

2650-463: The single largest group to take all the district seats. Each voter having just one vote in a multi-member district, Single voting, a component of most party-list proportional representation methods as well as single non-transferable vote and single transferable vote , prevents such a landslide. High district magnitude is a major factor in the inclusion of minorities . Plurality (and other elections with lower district magnitudes) are known to limit

2703-542: The term is "constituency". The term "Nirvācan Kṣetra" is used while referring to an electoral district in general irrespective of the legislature. When referring to a particular legislative constituency, it is simply referred to as "Kṣetra" along with the name of the legislature, in Hindi (e.g. 'Lok Sabha Kshetra' for a Lok Sabha constituency). Electoral districts for buli municipal or other local bodies are called "wards". Local electoral districts are sometimes called wards ,

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2756-429: The two strongest parties. Duverger called this trend polarization. Kenneth Benoit suggested causal influence between electoral and party systems might be bidirectional or in either direction. Josep Colomer agreed, arguing that changes from a plurality system to a proportional system are typically preceded by the emergence of more than two effective parties, and increases in the effective number of parties happen not in

2809-520: The vote exceeds the Droop quota in such a district (1/11=9%). In systems where a noticeable number of votes are wasted, such as Single non-transferable voting or Instant-runoff voting where transferable votes are used but voters are prohibited from ranking all candidates, you will see candidates win with less than Droop. STV is intended to avoid waste of votes by the use of transferable votes but even in STV, if

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