How many votes to win a seat? Distortions of electoral equality in the 2024 European election

The democratic principle of electoral equality applies to European elections at national level, but not EU-wide, as the number of votes required to win a seat strongly varies across member states. This is due to several factors, in particular the “degressive proportionality” of national seat quotas as well as national differences in voter turnout and in the number of “lost” votes, i.e. votes not taken into account in the allocation of seats. In addition, rounding effects can lead to high differences in the seats-to-votes ratio even between parties from the same member state. This paper examines the extent to which these distortion factors affected the 2024 European Parliament elections, both with regard to national parties and to the transnational political groups. It shows that, while the seats-to-votes ratios of individual parties vary strongly, the distortions in the representation ratio are much less severe at the level of the political groups, where more and less “expensive” seats tend to balance each other out. Still, electoral inequality remains a structural problem for the European Parliament, which cannot be resolved without a comprehensive reform of European electoral law.