Cyprus-Forum.com

[dlublin]

Hello,

I'm a political scientist in the US trying to figure out the details of how the electoral system of the Republic of Cyprus works at the time of the 1991 election. I'm just interested in the Greek Cypriot seats as the Turkish Cypriot seats obviously remain unoccupied. Any help anyone can give me would be welcome as I can't seem to find the answers either on the web or in academic publications.

In 1991, how were the seats distributed to the parties? In other words, what formula(s) were used to distribute them? Were they allocated at the constituency level first and then at the national level? Or was the seat allocation for each party done first at the national level with seats then allocated to specific constituencies?

In 1991, did parties need to receive a certain share of the vote (i.e. pass a threshold) in order to qualify to receive seats?

Also, does anyone know what office supervises elections in Cyprus?

Anyone who can help is welcome to post here or to email me at [email protected].

Many thanks,
David


P.S. Here is my understanding of the system used since the 1995 election:

Seats are first allocated within the six constituencies for each full multiple of the quota won by a party. The quota equals valid votes divided by seats.

Any seats not allocated at the constituency level are allocated at the national level based on the number of votes which did not help a party win a seat at the constituency level. In other words, the number of unused votes at the constituency level for each party is summed up. The national quota is calculated by summing up all the unused votes and dividing by the number of seats unallocated at the constituency level. Parties get a seat for each full multiple of the national quota each party has among its unused votes. Any leftover seats go to the parties with the largest number of remaining votes.

Parties must win a constituency seat or 1.8% of the national vote to participate in this allocation (and 3.6% to be eligible to receive more than 1 seat).

[Get Real!]

http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/arc/2081_91.htm

[dlublin]

Thanks for the reply GR! I'm aware of the IPU site. Unfortunately, the description of the 1991 results on that page doesn't really give any details about the electoral system.

[Get Real!]

http://www.parliament.cy/parliamenteng/002_02.HTM

http://www.ekloges.com.cy/nqcontent.cfm?a_name=home

[dlublin]

Thanks again for the reply GR! The parliament site doesn't describe the electoral system in 1991.

The ekloges site is very interesting. Unfortunately, I don't know Greek so I can piece through it to find the election returns (I can figure out individual place names but that's about it) but no idea what any words mean or if the electoral system is explained. Any idea if it's an official site? I wonder why the 2006 returns aren't posted there.

Best,
David

[Get Real!]

Elections come under the Ministry of the Interior and specifically the…

“Κεντρική Υπηρεσία Εκλογών” (Central Elections Service)

The relevant section regarding “Election of members of the house of representatives” is section 52 of the constitution and can be found under this PDF link but unfortunately it’s in Greek…

http://moi.gov.cy/index.php?ac=95&l=2

[CBBB]

I was invovled in running software to make predictions for the 1991 elections as the results were being given out on the TV and radio, as well as information we were getting directly from the HQ for the counting process.

The 1991 elections were mainly on the the basis you describe for 1995, although I seem to recall the threshhold for a party to gain a seat was different, but I am not sure what it was.

With around 10% of the votes in, our predictions were within 1% of the final result. At the time the TV stations were not doing there own predictions, but our results were being used by a number of the radio stations.