List of electoral systems by country

This is a list of electoral systems by country in alphabetical order. An electoral system is used to elect national legislatures and heads of state.

Key
Type of system

Type of representation:

Number of winners in a contest—whether single or multiple (more than one)


 * single winner (single office at-large such as mayor, or chamber filled by single winner contests in districts dividing electorate. System used is usually one of  FPTP, TRS, instant-runoff voting.


 * multiple winners (block voting, STV, limited voting)

Type of elections

 * direct elections
 * indirect (by legislature(s) and/or electoral college),
 * no election (chosen by a single person, or other rules e.g. hereditary)

Winning formula:
 * majoritarian/plurality (body elected in winner-take-all districts e.g. FPTP, TRS, block voting),
 * majoritarian (Instant-runoff voting, TRS),
 * proportional (body elected by STV or party-list PR),
 * semi-proportional (e.g. SNTV, LV).

Mixed systems use two or more of these methods, and produce chamber where different members are elected through two or more different election methods. (Mixed Member Proportional elects members through both first past the post and proportional.) Parallel voting systems, such as used in Egypt, are examples of mixed systems.


 * Seats per district or contest: Some elections fill all the seats in the chamber (Netherlands, Israel). Most times the electorate is split into a number of electoral districts where all the district members are elected at one time. In some elections, there is one person elected per district. In others, there are many people elected per district (sometimes all districts have same number of seats; other systems use districts with varying number of seats.) (Proportional representation and STV depends on use of a contest that fills multiple seats at one time.) Electoral districts can have different names, see list of electoral districts by nation. Some election systems see half or a third of the members elected at one time (staggered terms).:

Election systems can use one or more layers.

 * First past the post elections use just one layer. : MMP (an example of a mixed system listed above) uses both district elections and overall pooling of votes, usually where voters cast both a district vote and a party vote. In Demark's mixed member system, a single vote is used both for election of the district member and of an at-large party seat.: Some city election systems, such as City of Thunder Bay (Canada) and Nelson (New Zealand), use both ward elections and at-large district to elect members of city council. At-large contests elect multiple members so make either list, PR, STV or block voting possible. As well, multi-member wards, such as used in Nelson, make either list PR, STV or block voting possible. Single-winner ward contests usually use the first past the post, instant-runoff voting or the two-round system.:

Type of vote used
 * Total number of seats: the number of representatives elected to the body in total. (general rule is number of members in the lower house is the cube root of the total population.)
 * Electoral threshold: see Electoral threshold

First past the post uses single X voting.

Block voting uses multiple X voting, same as number of seats to fill.

STV and Instant-runoff voting use ranked votes.

List PR uses X voting.

Limited voting uses multiple X voting, not as many as number of seats to fill.