Elections in Norway - The Election System

The Election System

Norway uses the same system in both local and national elections when it comes to distributing mandates. This method is the modified Sainte-Laguë method and the underlying principle is that the number of seats a party gets in the Storting should be as close to the relative number of votes the party got in the election (the principle of mathematical fairness).

There are some exceptions to the above-mentioned principle:

1. Levelling seats: These mandates exist to adjust what was thought to be unfair: A party could theoretically get a number of votes in total, but not a high enough count in any single constituency to get a mandate. A party must achieve more than 4% of the total votes – the election threshold – to be entitled to levelling seats.
2. The rural additions: Sparsely populated constituencies get more mandates than the population would suggest. This is to maintain a representative feeling in the national assembly and to prevent urban votes overrunning the rural votes, but has lately been heavily criticised for being undemocratic and not mathematically fair.
3. Many parties, few mandates: All of the 7 parties currently represented in the Storting (SV, Ap, Sp, V, KrF, H, FrP) run lists in all 19 counties. In addition to these 7, a total of 21 parties had lists in the 2005 election. These parties all compete for the same mandates, and in constituencies with few mandates, few or none of them get in. This is partially offset by levelling seats, but only for parties above the election threshold.

Unlike most parliaments, the Storting always serves its full four-year term; the constitution does not allow snap elections, nor does it give the monarch the right to dissolve parliament even if the government advises it.