Scotland's regional MMP - Scottish Proportional Representation -- impact of effective threshold in the 2021 election
- Tom Monto
- Mar 11
- 2 min read
Scottish Assembly elections --
There are 8 regions, each sub-divided into 8 to 10 single-member constituencies, each region having 7 top up members.
no overall top-up.
Wiki "2021 Scottish Parliament election"
most regions have nine district members, and all have 7 top-up members.
impact of effective threshold in regions, 2021
disregarding overhang problem, the effective threshold thus varies just a bit:
6.67 percent in 15 seat region (8 + 7 top up)
5.88 percent in 17 seat region (10 + 7 top up).
only one 15-seat region:
Highlands and Islands
Green party with 7.4 percent got one seat as top up
7.4 percent = 17,729 votes
only two 17-seat regions:
Northeast Scotland
Liberal Democrats party with 5.0 percent got one seat as top up
5.0 percent = 18,051 votes
(lower than effective threshold likely due to wasted votes cast for minor parties)
West Scotland
Green party with 7.1 percent got one seat as top up
7.1 percent = 26,632 votes.
(next-placing party, Liberal Democrats, with 3.6 percent (13,570 votes) got no seats.)
the variation between least-popular winner in SE Scotland and the least-popular winner in West Scotland is due to more votes being cast in SE compared to Highlands/Islands.
Regional vote totals not available
unfortunately I cannot find total votes cast in the regions (regional party vote) anywhere
(it plays no part in the election process so is not even computed apparently)
West Scotland region I estimate it as 370,000 votes
Highlands and Islands: I estimate it as 240,000 votes
so that variation in number of votes cast in region, which was not totally addressed by lower seat count for Highlands/Islands, accounts (at least in part) for the larger number of votes needed to take a seat in West Scotland versus Highlands/Islands.
like in many places, Scotland over-represents rural places versus urban places.
====
West Scotland
the process of how d'hondt was used to allocate seats is shown online:
(at the bottom, "List Seat Allocation Process").
in final round of allocation, the d'hondt quotient for each party was
Scottish National 16,963 votes
Conservatives 20,660
Labour 16,756
Green 13,316
Liberal Democrats no seats 13,570.
(previous to Greens getting their one seat it had about 26,000 votes so twice the LD's total.)
===============
number of votes needed to take single-seat-district seats
This of course varies considerably, as normal under FPTP:
Edinburgh North - 22,000
Edinburgh Eastern - 23,000
Edinburgh West - 26,000
Falkirk East 18,000
Glasgow Kelvin 15,000
and so on.
some of this variation and the dis-proportionality that it produces is addressed by the top-up members in each region, but the seven top-up seats can only do so much and the Scottish National Party received overall got 62 district seats and only two top-up seats, and overall got 49.6 percent of the seats when it was due only 40 percent based on its portion of the party vote.
SEE
================================
Comments