What system does the European Parliament use for its elections?
Proportional Representation: a general term describing a system where the number of seats a party obtains in the Parliament corresponds roughly with the total share of the votes. (Ie. Party X has 12% of all the votes, and has roughly 12% of the seats) Source: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/members/expert/groupAndCountry.do?language=EN Many European countries, such as Germany and Austria, use a variation of this electoral system. However, since the EU is not a country, and since each member state within the EU is allotted a certain number of seats, proportional representation in European Parliament elections is more complicated than the scenario described in the definition of proportional representation. For European Parliament elections, countries either treat their territory as one single electoral district, or divide it into several European parliament constituencies. Seats are distributed according to the different political groups’ share of the vote, within the same country. Here is
