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<p>This study seeks to identify and examine those factors that affect the sizes of the majoritarian bonuses and penalties delivered by single-member plurality (SMP) electoral rules to two categories of competitors, those that receive the largest and second-large shares of the popular vote (frontrunners and second-runners, respectively). In order to achieve this goal, the study uses a dataset of national legislative election results, covering 232 races held in 25 countries of the world throughout the 1945–2021 period. The empirical analysis shows that the advantage enjoyed by the frontrunners is nearly universal and very sizeable, while second-large parties tend to be penalized by SMP rules. However, these effects are conditional on party system format and wider institutional environments in which electoral systems operate. Greater party nationalization, defined as the degree to which electoral support is spread evenly across different districts, increases the bonuses of the frontrunners but penalizes the second-runners. The frontrunners enjoy the greatest advantage in assemblies of small sizes, while the reverse is true of the second-runners. District-level party fragmentation is beneficial for both kinds of competitors, but for the frontrunners, this effect is outweighed by the negative impact of party systems’ proximity to the two-party format.</p>

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Bonuses and penalties in vote to seat conversion under single-member plurality electoral rules in a cross-national perspective: How large, and why?

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年3月14日

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  • Grigorii V. Golosov

摘要

This study seeks to identify and examine those factors that affect the sizes of the majoritarian bonuses and penalties delivered by single-member plurality (SMP) electoral rules to two categories of competitors, those that receive the largest and second-large shares of the popular vote (frontrunners and second-runners, respectively). In order to achieve this goal, the study uses a dataset of national legislative election results, covering 232 races held in 25 countries of the world throughout the 1945–2021 period. The empirical analysis shows that the advantage enjoyed by the frontrunners is nearly universal and very sizeable, while second-large parties tend to be penalized by SMP rules. However, these effects are conditional on party system format and wider institutional environments in which electoral systems operate. Greater party nationalization, defined as the degree to which electoral support is spread evenly across different districts, increases the bonuses of the frontrunners but penalizes the second-runners. The frontrunners enjoy the greatest advantage in assemblies of small sizes, while the reverse is true of the second-runners. District-level party fragmentation is beneficial for both kinds of competitors, but for the frontrunners, this effect is outweighed by the negative impact of party systems’ proximity to the two-party format.