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Mixed Member Proportional

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Mixed Member Proportional





In most models the voter casts two votes: one for a constituency representative and one for a party. In the original variant used at first in Germany, still used by two States of Germany until 2010, both votes were combined into one, so that voting for a representative automatically means also voting for the representative's party. Most of Germany changed to the two-vote variant to make local MPs more personally accountable; the state of North Rhine-Westphalia finally made the change in 2010. Voters can vote for the local person they prefer for local MP without regard for party affiliation, since the partisan make-up of the legislature is determined only by the party vote. In the 2005 New Zealand election, 20% of local MPs were elected from electorates (constituencies) which gave a different party a plurality of votes.





Calculation methods


Overhang seats







Current usage

MMP is currently in use in:

Proposals for use




Potential for tactical voting

Surpassing thresholds

In systems with a threshold, tactical voting for a minor party that is predicted to poll close to or slightly below the threshold is relatively common. Some voters may be afraid the minor party will poll below the threshold, and that that would weaken the larger political camp to which the minor party belongs. For example the German moderate-right Free Democratic Party (FDP) has often received votes from voters who preferred the larger Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, because they feared that if the FDP received less than 5% of the votes, the CDU would have no parliamentary allies and would be unable to form a government on its own. This tactical voting also ensures that less votes are wasted, but at the cost of giving the FDP more seats than CDU voters would ideally have preferred.


Implicit collusion

In terms of tactical voting, the vote for the constituency representative is normally much less important than the party vote in determining the overall result of an election; but in some cases a party may be so certain of winning seats in the constituency elections that it expects no extra seats in the proportional top-up. Some voters may therefore seek to achieve double representation by voting tactically for another party in the regional vote, as a vote for their preferred party in the regional vote would be wasted. This tactic is much less effective in good MMP models with enough extra seats (50% in most German states, and 42.5% in the New Zealand House of Representatives) and/or ones which add "balance seats", leading to less opportunities for overhangs and maintaining full proportionality even when a party wins too many constituency seats.


In the 2005 election the two main parties expected no extra seats, and encouraged voters to use their list votes for allied minor parties. This became so severe that it totally distorted the working of the model. The oddity was noted that only one local member was elected from parties receiving list seats. Rather than increase the number of "list seats" or allow additional "overhang" seats, Albania recently decided to change to a pure-list system.

Decoy lists

Political parties can also abuse the system by splitting their party into two, if this is allowed by electoral law. One subdivision of the party contests the constituency seats, the other contests the list seats. This is significantly easier to manipulate where voters have the option of a separate vote in the nominal and list tier. This tactic will produce an overhang. The two linked parties can co-ordinate their campaign and work together within the legislature, while remaining legally separate entities. This can also give other advantages in areas such as party funding.

Italy 2001

For instance in the Italian general election, 2001, one of the two main coalitions (the House of Freedoms, which opposed the scorporo system, (an alternate version of MMP), linked many of their constituency candidates to a decoy list (liste civetta) in the proportional parts, under the name Abolizione Scorporo. As a defensive move, the other coalition, Olive Tree, felt obliged to do the same, under the name Paese Nuovo. The constituency seats won by each coalition would not reduce the number of proportional seats they received. Between them, the two decoy lists won 360 of the 475 constituency seats, more than half of the total of 630 seats available, despite winning a combined total of less than 0.2% of the national proportional part of the vote. In the case of Forza Italia (part of the House of Freedoms), the tactic was so successful that it did not have enough candidates in the proportional part to receive as many seats as it in fact won, missing out on 12 seats.

Lesotho 2007

In the 2007 Lesotho general election, the two leading parties, the Lesotho Congress for Democracy and the All Basotho Convention used decoy lists, respectively named the National Independent Party and the Lesotho Workers' Party to avoid the compensatory mechanisms of MMP. In the 2012 election, the voting system was adjusted to link the local and list seats to limit the decoy lists' effectiveness, resulting in a more proportionate election result.[6][unreliable source?]


Venezuela previously used MMP as its electoral system. The tactic was originated by the opposition governor of Yaracuy and subsequently adopted by pro-Chavez parties. After the decoy list tactic withstood a constitutional challenge,[7] Venezuela eventually reverted to parallel voting.

See also


Further reading


External links

  • ACE Project: "Germany: The original MMP system"
  • International IDEA
  • ACE Project
  • Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, 2003.
  • Handbook of Electoral System Choice
