What is a majoritarian electoral system and does it have a foothold in our country?

A few months after the National Assembly condemned the referendum proposed by President Plevneliev in its part on a majoritarian electoral system, this issue may again come to the agenda if the referendum organized by Slavi Trifonov and his team sees the light of day. In general, the idea of a majoritarian electoral system has been circulating in the public space for quite some time. Many people repeat that such a reform is necessary to overcome the status quo of the classic parties and replace it with “voting for personalities”. But what actually is a majoritarian vote and do we need it?

"Majoritarian" comes from the English word majority. In this electoral system, the country is divided into single-mandate electoral districts, equal to the number of members of parliament, in our case - 240. Each electoral district elects one member of parliament - the one who won the most votes, regardless of whether they are over 50% and without a minimum threshold. There is also an option for the elections to be held in two rounds, like those for president and mayors in our country. The remaining candidates from the district are eliminated, and the votes for them are lost. There is an option for the electoral districts to be fewer, with more mandates per district, but the fewer the districts are in relation to the number of members of parliament, the more the representativeness of the vote is distorted (see below).

An important point here is the way in which the electoral districts will be structured - if they are predominantly on a territorial principle, the difference in population density would distort the election result extremely much - that is, a district with 100,000 voters and one with 20,000 will each elect one member of parliament, while in the second district much fewer votes will be needed for election, and in the first district many more votes will be lost (will not be counted). Therefore, the electoral districts should be distributed on a population principle, with all districts having approximately the same number of voters. (For Bulgaria - ideally there would be 240 electoral districts with 25,000 voters each). But since this is technically very difficult to implement, there is always disproportionality of the vote and a discrepancy between the electoral and the "popular" result (see below).

What are the advantages and disadvantages of majority voting?

This system tends to produce more stable single-party governments and less coalition governments. Government efficiency is prioritized over proportional representation (which is currently in place). Majoritarian systems give a huge advantage to leading parties and punish small parties. There is a tendency for the party spectrum to become larger, with an advantage for two-party models (USA, UK), unlike the proportional system, where there is a tendency for more new and small parties to emerge (as in Bulgaria). In addition, in a majority vote, parties with small and medium-sized public support perform extremely poorly, which is, however, evenly distributed in the country. On the other hand, well-consolidated territorial parties, although with small public support overall, have a greater advantage and would win more representatives than under the proportional system.

In general, the concept of majority voting is related to the territorial decentralization of the democratic process. What does this mean? While the proportional system “fairly” distributes seats according to the support for parties on a national scale, the majoritarian system considers the state more as a collection of multiple districts. The majority here is determined by the number of districts in which a given party wins, not the overall percentage on a national scale. While the philosophy of the proportional system is that the entire people should be united and unite around a political force to which it can give a majority, the majoritarian system relies on local autonomy and the principle – “We elect a well-known person who will defend the interests of our district”. While the proportional system says “Party X is supported by a significant number of people and should have a significant number of seats”, the majoritarian system says – “Party X has a majority in too few districts, so it will have few seats”. While the proportional system says "Party Y has a majority in the country, but it is not over 50%, therefore it should not have a majority in parliament", the majoritarian system says - "Party Y wins in most electoral districts, therefore it should have a majority." While the democratic majority in the proportional vote is a "majority of percentages", in the majoritarian system it is a "majority of districts."

Examples of majoritarian electoral systems around the world

Classic examples of majoritarian elections of representatives are found in Great Britain and the United States. The British model can show us some interesting features of this system. There is an obvious discrepancy between the “popular” and the electoral vote. (The popular vote is the percentage of voters who supported a given party in the entire country, and the electoral vote is the percentage of seats in parliament that it won.)

• In the 2015 election, David Cameron's Conservatives won 37% of the popular vote but 50.8% of the electoral vote, giving them an outright majority in parliament. Under a proportional system, a government could not be formed without a coalition between the Conservatives and Labour, which would have sent the country into a parliamentary crisis.
• Moreover, it is possible for the party that wins the popular vote to lose the electoral vote. Examples of this are the 1951 British elections. Then, Clement Attlee's Labour Party defeated Winston Churchill's Conservative Party by 49% to 44% in the popular vote, but the Tories won a majority in parliament. These differences are due to the disproportionate distribution of constituencies and reflect the loss of votes - Labour lost the race in larger areas, and with it the votes for them, while the Tories won in smaller areas, which provided them with more seats in parliament. A similar situation occurred in the 2000 US presidential election (Al Gore received more votes, but George Bush won the electoral vote and was elected president).
• UKIP, Farage's party, had broad support in the country, but it was evenly spread, unlike the small but concentrated support for the Scottish National Party. As a result, with 12.6% for UKIP, they won only one seat, while with 4.7% the SNP won 56. The exact opposite distribution would have been the case under a proportional system.

Another interesting point that deserves comment is the claim that in a majoritarian system, people vote for individuals, not parties. The presence of large and strong parties in Great Britain and the USA suggests the exact opposite – although formally people vote for individual candidates, they are always supported by one of the parties. In Bulgaria, there are also majoritarian elections – for president and for mayors. In these elections, people vote for specific candidates, individuals, but as we well know, they are always supported by traditional parties and the vote is almost always based on party bias. In other words, the romantic idea of removing the party apparatus from power and replacing it with some more “real” form of democracy will not be realized through a majoritarian system.

And ultimately, we must not forget that the majoritarian system is simply one of the tools of democracy - and democracy in itself is neither a value nor does it solve problems.

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