Electoral Panorama / Panorama Electoral

Matthew Shugart's Fruits and Votes blog has an in-depth discussion on the unusual behavior of the proportional representation system used in El Salvador, which held a legislative election last January 18.

The 84 members of the Central American nation's unicameral Legislative Assembly are chosen by the largest remainder method of PR in fourteen multi-member constituencies - the departments of El Salvador. However, the system often works to the advantage of smaller parties, particularly the right-wing National Conciliation Party (PCN), which elected eleven deputies (13.1% of the total) with just 8.8% of the vote. Meanwhile, the country's two major parties - the ruling, conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the left-wing opposition Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) - ended up slightly under-represented in the Assembly.

In response to Prof. Shugart's suggestion about distributing Assembly seats by the D'Hondt rule, I calculated the notional distribution of Legislative Assembly seats under that procedure as well as other PR methods, and the results are actually quite surprising.

Incidentally, El Salvador's recently held poll was a warm-up act for the upcoming presidential election, scheduled to be held next March 15.