The ruling New Democracy clings to a narrow majority: 152 seats (50.6%) on 41.8% of the vote.
I still am not clear on the details of the electoral system, but by backwards induction from the result, it appears that the proportional seats are indeed calculated as if there were a 260-seat national district, with the additional 40 seats added on for the party with the nationwide plurality of the vote.
Via EuroTrib, the parties that made it into parliament have the following seat totals, vote percentages (and change in seats and votes from 2004):
ND (conservative) 152 41.84 % (-13 seats, -3.52%)
PASOK 102 (socialist) 38.10 % (-15, -2.45%)
KKE 22 (old school communist) 8.15 % (+10, +2,26%)
SYRIZA 14 (antineolib left – greens – radicals) 5.04 % (+8, +1.78%)
LAOS 10, 3.79 % (not in the 2004 parliament)
Those parties combine for 93.7% of the votes cast, leaving 6.3% to be wasted on parties falling below the 3% threshold.
ND’s 41.8% would thus be 44.6% of the above-threshold national vote. Give them the 40 seats they automatically get rewarded with just for having the vote plurality, and you get an expected seat total of 156, or 4 more than the ND appears actually to have won:
(.446 x 260) + 40 = 116 + 40 =156
I am not sure what proportional formula might be used for the above-threshold national allocation, but it actually appears to have slightly under-represented the leading party (before the addition of the bonus seats, that is).
As was widely reported as expected prior to the election, the various smaller parties (including the far right) did very well. But not well enough to deprive the incumbents of their less-than-deserved new term.
The EuroTrib post, linked above, has some really valuable background information on the campaign and the parties (posted by a Greek writer who notes he voted for SYRIZA, as your Orchardist no doubt would have, had he had the opportunity.)
See also the Greek Interior Ministry site with results (yes, in English!). The pages still show seats by district, so while it appears (as I noted above) that the overall result is calculated as if there were a 260-seat district, evidently the 260-seat PR portion remains a two-tier system.
The 260 seats are calculated nationally according to Hare/largest remainders, as you have done. This yields 112 ND, 102 PASOK, 22 KKE, 14 SYRIZA and 10 LAOS seats, on top of which come the 40 plurality bonus seats.
It is when these seats are to be filled either by “state deputies” or by deputies from the 56 constituencies that things get slightly more complicated, but much less so than in the previous system.
The 12 national seats are calculated the same way as above, according to the Hare quota (likewise only taking into account votes for parties with at least 3 percent of the national vote).
In the eight single-member constituencies, the seat is awarded to the party (among those crossing the national threshold) that got the most votes locally.
In the remaining, multi-member constituencies (the number of seats in all constituencies having been established according to the population at the last census), local Hare quotas are calculated, this time based on ALL valid votes cast in the constituency. Parties above the national threshold then receive seats for each whole quota.
If the number of seats awarded so far exceeds the number of seats to which a party is entitled under the initial national calculation, my understanding is that they may keep these “overhang seats”, and that this reduces the number of plurality bonus seats. I am not entirely certain here. In any case, this did not happen at the 2007 election, and may be unlikely to happen in the future. By the way, the party most likely to thus reduce the number of bonus seats, is probably the largest party, the recipient of those very bonus seats.
At this point in the 2007 election, 92 constituency seats were left to be distributed, 10 plus 40 ND, 13 PASOK, 12 KKE, 9 SYRIZA and 8 LAOS. This was done in two rather interesting ways, the first evidently designed to protect small constituencies from “malapportionment” (seats being awarded where the relevant party has few votes), the second to protect small parties from the same fate.
The first distribution concerns only two- or three-seat constituencies. Here the remaining seats are awarded to the parties with the largest vote remainders (after constituency Hare-quotas have been subtracted for each seat already won). However, if this gives a party more seats than its overall entitlement, it has to abandon those taken with the lowest vote remainders (absolute numbers, not relative). But this cutting process only concerns three-seat constituencies at first; only if necessary are the two-seaters affected. In the 2007 election the ND at first got 13 seats in this distribution, and had to give up three of them (all later retaken as bonus seats, however).
The second distribution is even more unusual. Here, the parties are ranked according to reverse national popularity, with the smallest party first in line to receive its remaining seats, and so forth. Again, the basis on which the seats are awarded is absolute remainder votes (after deductions of constituency Hare-quotas), with the largest remainders yielding seats, as long as there are seats left to receive in the relevant constituencies.
All 260 proportional seats thus being distributed (248 of which are constituency seats), the 40 bonus seats are given to the constituencies which still have unfilled seats.
Although the aim of this elaborate way of distributing seats to the constituencies must be to prevent “malapportionment”, it too can create some strange local seat distributions. When one is dealing with an average district magnitude of 5.14, this is not unexpected. Take the constituency of A’ Peiraios, where PASOK had the equivalent of 1.954 Hare quotas, yet received only one seat. Meanwhile, KKE, SYRIZA and LAOS each also received one seat, but with only 0.536, 0.405 and 0.314 of the quota, respectively. This happened because the latter parties were earlier in line to receive seats, in accordance with the second distribution method mentioned above. However, these cases were rare compared to the general picture of the ND receiving “too many” seats due to the plurality bonus.
Finally, my source is not completely foolproof. I found the Greek text of the electoral law (.doc at http://tinyurl.com/2uqxry) through the companion blog to the excellent electionresources.org, Electoral Panorama. I then babelfished this text, found the relevant articles (99 and 100), and used the slightly gibberish clues contained therein to do trial calculations in Excel until everything fit into place. I have crosschecked with the official seat distribution. I am open to corrections, but I am satisfied that my description is essentially correct.
Nor was it a complete waste of spare time, since I can use this information for another project.
Seed planted by Espen Bjerke — 22 September 2007 @ 03:14
Thanks for the information on the Greek electoral law, Espen. And also for the Panorama link. I was not aware of that blog. It looks like it will be permanently link-worthy.
Seed planted by MSS — 23 September 2007 @ 15:36