TERRITORIAL REPRESENTATIONAL ASYMMETRY IN A MULTI-DISTRICT PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SYSTEM: MARGINAL SEAT THRESHOLDS IN MACEDONIA, 2002–2024
Сажетак
Macedonia elects 120 members of parliament from six domestic electoral districts of equal magnitude, each returning twenty seats through closed-list D’Hondt allocation. Equal district magnitude and a common allocation rule do not, however, imply an identical marginal threshold for the final seat. Using official district-level results for eight parliamentary elections from 2002 to 2024, this article calculates the twentieth (lowest winning) D’Hondt quotient for each of 48 district-election observations. The measure is interpreted narrowly as a district-level marginal winning threshold, not as a general individual-level measure of vote value or as classical malapportionment. The results show persistent territorial asymmetry: ED4, ED3, and ED1 generally display higher marginal thresholds, while ED6 lies below the cross-district mean in every election and records the lowest value in six of the eight contests. A seat-weighted calculation shows that Macedonian- and Macedonian-led mandates were won in district environments with an average marginal threshold of 7,629 votes, compared with 6,720 for Albanian- and Albanian-led mandates, a difference of 909 votes (13.5 percent). This pattern does not arise from reserved seats, ethnic allocation rules, or a lower legal threshold; the domestic system has no general national legal threshold. Rather, it reflects the territorial distribution of votes, valid-vote volume, and party competition. Registered-voter data point the same way: the two districts with the highest mean marginal thresholds, ED4 and ED3, have the smallest 2024 electorates, so the asymmetry documented here runs counter to, rather than with, classical apportionment inequality. The article thus identifies a form of territorial representational asymmetry that is conceptually distinct from classical malapportionment and offers a replicable diagnostic for multi-district proportional representation systems.
Жидас Даскаловски
Референце
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