Talk:Party-list proportional representation

Is STV Party List?
From the article:
 * The unmodified Sainte-Laguë method and the LR-Hare method rank as the most proportional[citation needed] followed by LR-Droop; single transferable vote; modified Sainte-Laguë, D'Hondt and largest remainder Imperiali.

Is STV party list or is this meant to be a ranking of all proportional voting/counting methods? (In fact, I would've thought STV was explicitly the opposite of party list, although the Australian group voting tickets could be seen as kinda party-list-like maybe?)

—Felix the Cassowary 04:53, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

most proportional to least proportional
The unmodified Sainte-Laguë method is not more proportional than the D'Hondt method. The first one is designed to favor very small parties, and they can get better results than their proportional share. Sometimes a party that has less than half the votes of anther party gets the same representation. In those cases Sainte-Laguë is less proportional than the D'Hondt method. I think that the criteria used for this list should be detailed, because the "more proportional" comparison is not a well defined property, and certainly the inequalities, as they are presented right now, do not behave in the same sense for all possible cases. --83.34.27.8 (talk) 22:15, 9 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Unmodified Sainte-Laguë method is certainly not "designed to favor very small parties" - it is designed to treat all parties equally; the slight favoring of very small parties is rather an "unintended side-effect" due to rounding errors. In the majority of cases, S-L is more proportional than d'Hondt, as stated. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 23:14, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Do you have any reference to back your statements? --83.34.27.8 (talk) 20:38, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * See e.g. (in German, unfortunately): "keine tendenzielle Bevorzugung großer oder kleiner Parteien",  "Erfüllt die Erfolgswertgleicheit optimal", which translate to: "[St. Lague] does not tend to favor smaller or larger parties", "[it] fulfills the "Erfolgswert" equality optimally", i.e. the proportion of seats to votes is on average the same for each party, whatever its size. That's what I call proportional; they don't even mention any favoring of very small parties (which is also unreferenced in the article, by the way). --Roentgenium111 (talk) 20:28, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * PS: This English reference explicitly states that "the Sainte-Lague method [is] shown to be the most proportional method of the 11 formulas considered" (one of the others being d'Hondt). Do you have any reference to back your contrary statement? Otherwise the "Dubious" tag should be removed. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 21:19, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Done.--Roentgenium111 (talk) 21:48, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Many Scandinavian countries?
I don't think 2 counts as many. Although, in reality, I think it is all three. But 'many Scandinavian countries' is one of the silliest thing I've heard all that. --Svippong 02:33, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Macanese d'Hondt method
Macanese "d'Hondt method" is not mentioned in the source http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucahhwi/dhondt.pdf. It is mentioned in the d'Hondt method entry, which is where the source got its numbers. The formula there, 2/V^s, may very well be more proportional than St. Laguë, but that will depend on the district magnitude. Does anyone have a reference with maths (like the other source http://polmeth.wustl.edu/analysis/vol/8/PA84-381-388.pdf) showing that the modified d'Hondt is the most proportional system? Will the method favor small parties to the extent that the method is no longer proportional unless the district magnitude is great? (http://www.macaunews.com.mo/content/view/2409/lang,english/) I guess the article is correct - but I prefer being convinced. Markuswestermoen (talk) 07:41, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Huntington-Hill method and bias
I've changed the Huntington-Hill method from "greatly favors large parties" to "slightly favors small parties". The cited source calls it "equal proportions" and says of it: "A comparison of the ranking in Table 4 with that in Table 2 indicates that the least proportional formulas are not necessarily the ones that overrepresent the largest party most. Formulas that overrepresent small parties, such as the Adams and equal proportions methods, may score high on disproportionality but low on advantageousness toward large parties." According to George Szpiro's Numbers Rule, Balinski and Young also found that Huntington-Hill favoured small states when used to apportion US House of Representative seats between states. Tim Ivorson 2019-10-23

Interwiki leads to a wrong article in German
Interwiki should lead to Sitzzuteilungsverfahren. To repair this wrong link one has to know which article in English corresponds to Listenverbindung where Interwiki leads now. Can someone familiar with the subject _and_ with the English language please repair this mistake, or else can someone familiar with templates in the English Wikipedia mention and describe this mistake on top of this article? -- Wegner8 13:29, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Wanted: a mathematician reading German ...
... to check and translate the survey table "Sitzzuteilungsverfahren im Vergleich" in Sitzzuteilungsverfahren. -- Wegner8 19:07, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Macanese D'Hondt
@Glide08 Hello, you added this method with an example that looks nowhere near proportional, can you please explain this one? Rankedchoicevoter (talk) 15:04, 31 August 2022 (UTC)


 * It's the modified d'hondt system used in Macau, which has $$\textstyle\frac{V}{2^{s}}$$ quotients Glide08 (talk) 16:19, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
 * But it is not proportional (based on the example to have given, its seems more like semi-proportional) Rankedchoicevoter (talk) 16:53, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Table duplicate
The table in "List of countries using party-list proportional representation" is largely identical to the table in Proportional representation and little maintained, propose to merge the table into the table in Proportional representation and link to it. HudecEmil (talk) 22:51, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Apportionment methods
@Archives908 to explain my commit which was reverted: HudecEmil (talk) 14:47, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
 * distinction between highest averages method and Largest remainder method is less important than difference between different methods themselves, changing order first, shortening
 * which countries use each methods was not updated, no source, removed
 * Adams' method not commonly used, moved down the list


 * Thanks for the quick reply. I thought the existing format was sufficient enough so I didn't understand the need for the change. However, I will not oppose if you wish to reinstate your version. My only recommendation is that we keep the countries using the methods. Listing a few countries as examples is a pretty normal practice across the encyclopedia. In my opinion, I would keep that short list as it serves a beneficial reference point to readers. Cheers! Archives908 (talk) 15:19, 19 June 2023 (UTC)