Now that there will be no pre-electoral coalitions allowed in the upcoming parliamentary election on June 25, Albania will practically have voting system with different electoral zones and a voting threshold per electoral zone of 3%.
There will be twelve electoral zones, coinciding with the different counties, whose populations will vote for a total of 140 mandates. The number of mandates per zone is determined by means of the total eligible voters. The mandates are distributed as follows:
- Berat: 7 mandates
- Dibra: 6 mandates
- Durrës: 14 mandates
- Elbasan: 14 mandates
- Fier: 16 mandates
- Gjirokastra: 5 mandates
- Korça: 11 mandates
- Kukës: 3 mandates
- Lezha: 7 mandates
- Shkodra: 11 mandates
- Tirana: 34 mandates
- Vlora 12 mandates
Naturally, not all parties will gain enough votes to rise above the 3% voting threshold. Nor will it be the case that all parties acquire rounded-off numbers of votes that match the number they need for a seat.
In order to distribute these “remaining” votes of parties that didn’t meet the voting threshold and those that are not enough for a “full” seat, seat distribution is based on the D’Hondt method, an algorithm that will also be implemented during the upcoming elections.
The following example illustrates this method. The numbers are based on the voting results within the Tirana electoral zone in 2013. During those elections, only three parties – PS, PD, and LSI – acquired enough votes to rise above the threshold, so they are the only ones competing for the 34 mandates in this zone.
The D’Hondt method divides the voting numbers through an increasing denominator starting at 1, 2, 3, etc. The highest 34 numbers, shaded in green, will represent the distribution of the mandates for the zone.
The total number of votes cast in Tirana was 451,407. With 34 mandates to distribute, 13,276.7 votes equals one mandate. This means that proportionally, the PS won 15.0, PD won 11.4, and LSI won 2.7 seats. This represents a total of 29.1 seats.
By using the D’Hondt method, the “left-over” 4.9 seats are distributed over the three parties that met the 3% threshold. Thus the final distribution of mandates is PS 18, PD 13, and LSI 3.
This distribution method will be applied in all electoral zones, after which all the mandates are added together to form the parliamentary groups in the new Parliament.
