Maltese general election, 1981

The 1981 general election was held to elect the House of Representatives of Malta. The election resulted in controversy because although the Nationalist Party (Partit Nazzjonalista) gained 51.8% of the votes, the voting system in use led to Malta Labour Party (Partit Laburista) winning the majority of seats and governing the Maltese islands with a disputed mandate, until the general election of 1987. This provoked a constitutional crisis, with the Nationalist Party boycotting parliament. As a result a compromise was reached whereby changes were made to the voting system to prevent a recurrence of the same problem.

The voting system

The 1981 election was held under the single transferable vote (PR-STV) system, with five-seat constituencies. PR-STV is designed to achieve proportional representation but, it does not produce perfect proportionality, especially if a small constituency size (district magnitude) is used or there are distortions caused by differential turn-out, gerrymandering or malapportionment. As a consequence, on rare occasions it is possible for a party to receive more than 50% of the vote in a parliamentary election but to fall short of a majority of seats.

Under the agreement reached following the 1981 election additional 'bonus' seats were introduced. Under the new system if a repeat of the 1981 scenario occurs then the party supported by an overall majority of voters will be awarded a number of additional seats from a party list, so that it secures a parliamentary majority.^[1]

Results

References