Editing D'Hondt method (section)

==Variations==

In some cases such as the [[Elections in the Czech Republic|Czech regional elections]], the first divisor (when the party has no seats so far, which is normally 1) is raised to create an [[effective threshold]], favoring larger parties and eliminating small ones. In the Czech case, it is set to 1.42 (approximately <math>\sqrt{2}</math>, termed the Koudelka coefficient after the politician who introduced it).{{cn|date=March 2025}}

In 1989 and 1992, [[Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly|ACT Legislative Assembly]] elections were conducted by the [[Australian Electoral Commission]] using a modified d'Hondt electoral system. The electoral system consisted of the d'Hondt system, the [[Australian Senate]] system of proportional representation, and various methods for preferential voting for candidates and parties, both within and across party lines.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.elections.act.gov.au/elections_and_voting/past_act_legislative_assembly_elections/modified_dhondt_electoral_system|title=Modified d'Hondt Electoral System|date=2015-01-06|website=elections.act.gov.au|language=en|access-date=2018-05-05}}</ref> The process involves 8 stages of scrutiny. ABC elections analyst [[Antony Green]] has described the modified d'Hondt system used in the ACT as a "monster ... that few understood, even electoral officials who had to wrestle with its intricacies while spending several weeks counting the votes".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Green |first1=Antony |title=Election Preview |url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/act/2020/guide/preview |access-date=16 April 2021 |work=ACT Votes 2020 |publisher=Australian Broadcasting Corporation}}</ref>  It was replaced with the [[Hare-Clark]] system from 1995 onward.

Because of the strong [[seat bias]] in D'Hondt, some systems allow parties to associate their lists together into a single [[electoral alliance]] in order to overcome the threshold and win more (or any) seats. Some systems set a separate threshold for such alliances. In a system of proportional representation where the country is divided in multiple [[electoral district]] (such as [[Belgium]]) the [[Election threshold|threshold]] to obtain one seat can be very high (5% of votes in a district since 2003), which also favors larger parties.{{cn|date=March 2025}}

===Regional D'Hondt===
In most countries, seats for the national assembly are divided on a regional or even a provincial level. This means that seats are first divided between individual regions (or provinces) and are then allocated to the parties in each region separately (based on only the votes cast in the given region). The votes for parties that have not gained a seat at the regional level are thus discarded, so they do not aggregate at a national level. This means that parties which would have gained seats in a national distribution of seats may still end up with no seats as they did not gain enough votes in any region. This may also lead to skewed seat allocation at a national level, such as in Spain in 2011 where the [[People's Party (Spain)|People's Party]] gained an absolute majority in the [[Congress of Deputies (Spain)|Congress of Deputies]] with only 44% of the national vote.<ref name="gallagher"/> It may also skew results for small parties with broad appeal at a national level compared to small parties with a local appeal (e.g. nationalist parties). For instance, in the [[2008 Spanish general election]], [[United Left (Spain)]] gained 1 seat for 969,946 votes, whereas [[Convergence and Union]] (Catalonia) gained 10 seats for 779,425 votes.

===Modified d'Hondt electoral system===
The modified d'Hondt electoral system<ref>Australian Capital Territory Electoral Commission,  [https://www.elections.act.gov.au/elections_and_voting/past_act_legislative_assembly_elections/modified_dhondt_electoral_system Modified d'Hondt Electoral System]</ref> is a variant of the d'Hondt method with an [[electoral threshold]] for parties. Votes for parties below the electoral threshold are transferred to other candidates according to the [[single transferable voting]] method. This electoral system was used in [[1989 Australian Capital Territory general election|1989]] and [[1992 Australian Capital Territory election]]s.