Kia ora!

Welcome to this page designed to help international visitors to the Elections New Zealand website find key content about MMP, the Mixed Member Proportional electoral system we use in New Zealand.

This table has links through to  content on this site and elsewhere sorted by topic focus and level of detail required.

MMP is used or proposed in different forms elsewhere.

• The German Bundestag has 598 seats, half of which are 299 constituency seats and the rest list seats. Seats are allocated proportionally to parties crossing the threshold of winning 3 constituency seats or 5% of the party vote. Parties’ allocations of seats are then divided between states (“lands”), and filled from constituency winners and list candidates. Parties may nominate a single federal list, or submit a list for each land (and there are different rules for some lands). Overhang seats are possible at the land level. The Largest Remainder (Hare-Niemeyer) method is used. (The former West) Germany was the first legislature to be elected using Mixed Member Proportional.
• The Scottish Parliament has 129 seats, split between 73 constituency Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) and 56 additional (list) members (giving rise it being called the “Additional Member System” in Scotland). Scotland is split into eight regions, with each constituency assigned to a region and regional lists used to achieve proportionality using the Largest Remainder (Hare) method (meaning overhang seats are not possible).
• The National Assembly for Wales has 60 seats, with 40 constituencies and 20 list members. Seat allocation under this “Additional Member System” is also on a regional basis, with five regions each having four list seats allocated using the d’Hondt formula. The number of constituencies differs between regions. There is no threshold, but the small number of seats in each region effectively creates one.
• The Canadian province of Ontario is to voted in a referendum on 10 October 2007 to keep FPP rather than adopt MMP as recommended by the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. The proposed system would see 129 seats in the legislature, with 90 single-member districts and 39 province-wide list seats. The threshold for proportional seat allocation using the Hare formula would be to gain at least 3% of the party vote. The assembly website includes a useful and wide range of background papers on electoral systems and reform. 

The ACE Electoral Knowledge Network is another useful source of international comparative data on electoral systems and practices.