Talk:2007 Icelandic parliamentary election

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the Alliance

the Alliance is not against the war in Afghanistan, take it away

Icelandic PR

Can someone explain how proportional representation works in Iceland? In the North Reykjavik constituency, the Independence Party won four seats with 36.4% of the vote, while the Alliance Party won three seats with 29.2%. But then the Alliance is allocated two additional seats ("Uppbótar") which gives them five, a gain of one, despite a lower vote and a decline of 7% since the last election. Why is this done? Intelligent Mr Toad 07:56, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's because the d'Hondt rule used for allocating seats to parties sometimes leads to parties not having the amount of seats their percentage of the total vote (in all constituencies) should warrant them. At this point they get allocated one of a fixed number of extra seats (the uppbotar-) available for each constituency. This is to guarantee that a partie's number of seats is always correct with regard to their proportion of the votes in total. It can actually be really complicated to anticipate where (i.e. in which constituency) the extra seat that the party should get falls. I think it is where the party is closest to getting the next man inside at that point. In this case the Alliance won both of the extra seats allocated for Reykjavik north, whereas in others it got none. Regards... --Akigka —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.220.104.152 (talk) 14:23, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]