Danish District Debacles

Denmark has a proportion representation formula of voting in a multi-party system, wherein each citizen can cast one vote for either a specific candidate or for a party in the election for parliament seats. For each election all 175 seats in the parliament (the Folketing) are voted upon – 135 constituency seats and 40 compensatory seats (Wikipedia 2012). The country is divided into 3 electoral regions, which are further divided into 10 smaller constituencies. For each election, the 135 constituency seats are divided among the 10 constituencies based on three criteria: population size, number of registered voters in the last general election, and area in square kilometers (to measure population density) (Inter-Parliamentary Union 2011). The one exception is the Baltic island of Bornholm, which is guaranteed two seats even if the island only qualifies for one. The other 40 compensatory seats are voted upon by the larger electoral regions. Each region – Metropolitain Copenhagen, Sealand-South Denmark, and Central Jutland – receives seats based on the same measurement of population that is used to calculate constituency votes. In a recent general election, each constituency could vote on between 14 and 28 seats (excepting Bornholm, which voted on two seats). Therefore, an accurate measure of district magnitude would be the average number of seats received by each constituency – 21 (Danish Ministry of Interior and Health 2011, 4-5)

During elections, votes are distributed to individuals and parties based on the d'Hondt method of vote allocation. There are three electoral thresholds given for party eligibilty, and a party must meet at least one requirement in order to obtain power. These thresholds are as follows: winning a seat directly in any of the 10 constituency elections; obtaining at a regional level a number of votes which equals or surpasses the ratio of votes to seats at the provincial level; or obtaining 2 percent of the national vote. In the 2007 election, two of the nine participating parties did not qualify for one of the three thresholds and were excluded (Danish Ministry of Interior and Health 2011, 5-6)

The system of candidate selection is a hybrid system, because voters must choose to cast their one vote for either a candidate or a political party. Votes cast for candidates are counted towards the candidate and allocated accordingly. The political parties themselves use an open/preferential list system (Danish Ministry of Interior and Health 2011, 6-7). Each party receives a certain amount of votes and allocates them to their most favored candidates.

To calculate the number of effective parties in Denmark, I will use the inverse of the squared sum of each parties' results in the most recent election. The numbers used below is the fraction of the total votes that was received by each political party (Wikipedia 2012).

N (eff) = 1/ ((.267)^2 + (.248)^2 + (.123)^2 + (.095)^2 + (.067)^2 + (.050)^2 + (.049)^2 + (.008)^2) =

1/.166 = 6.01

Therefore, the case study of Denmark proves that Duverger's law is valid. Denmark has a system of proportional representation, not SMDP, and it has an effective number of political parties of about six (more than two). This is exactly what Duverger and other political scientists have estimated.

REFERENCES

Danish Ministry of Interior and Health. 2011. The parliamentary electoral system in Denmark: A guide to the Danish electoral system. http://www.thedanishparliament.dk/Democracy/~/ media/Pdf_materiale/Pdf_publikationer/English/The%20Parliamentary%20Electoral %20System%20in%20Denmark_samlet%20pdf.ashx (accessed November 2, 2012).

Inter-Parliamentary Union. 2011. Denmark. http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2087_B.htm (accessed November 2, 2012).

Wikipedia. 2012. Danish parliamentary election, 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Danish_parliamentary_election,_2011 (accessed November 2, 2012)