After the allocation of seats at the district level in a general election, many people’s attention is focused on how the 29 MPs in the national list will be allocated.
Even of you vote for a maximum of three of your favourite candidates on a district basis, you will not get a chance to vote for the national list candidates. The reason for this is that the seats are allocated based on the total number of votes obtained by the respective parties or independent groups from the entire island.
How are the 29 MPs in the national list divided between each party or independent group?
In the first round, the leading parties or independant groups in the national list will be awarded seats according to the whole number that is obtained after dividing the total number of votes obtained by the relevant party from the total number of valid votes, and then mul
tiplying that value from 29. So, according to this year’s election, the total number of votes obtained by the relevant party will be divided by 11,148,006, which is the total number of valid votes, and then multiplied by 29.
In other words, a party or an independent group that gets more than 3.44% (100/29%) of the total votes will definitely get at least one national list seat in the first round of counting.
But when checking the results this time, it is clear that only 3 parties have received a total vote percentage of more than 3.44% (more than 384,414). The three parties are National People’s Power (Compass) – 61.56%, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (Telephone) 17.66%, New Democratic Front (Cylinder) – 4.49%.
How are these national list MPs seats allocated?
Simply, as mentioned earlier, the number of seats that each party got relatively to the total number of votes of 384,414 is considered here.
In this year’s parliamentary election, the National People’s Power party, which obtained the highest number of votes, will get 17 seats in the calculation of seats in the first round. Another 328,148 votes will be counted in the second round.
It was obtained by dividing the total number of voted they got which is 6,863,186 by the number of votes required for one national lost parliamentary seat which is 384,414. The value obtained by dividing was 17.85.
Accordingly, Samagi Jana Balawegaya got 5 seats, according to the value they got after calculating, which is 5.12. They have got a remaining 46,646 votes for the second round.
Thus, the New Democratic Front has one seat and 116,421 votes left for the second round.
However, currently only 23 national seats (17 +5) have been allocated. So the remaining 6 seats will be divided between the remaining parties and indepedent groups.
Second round of allocation of seats
The allocation of MP seats in the second round is calculated according to the remaining number of votes of National People’s Power, Samagi Jana Balawegya, and New Democratic Front, and the acquired total number of votes of other parties.
So the seats are allocated to the parties or independent groups with the highest number of votes.
Accordingly, the remaining 6 seats are allocated to the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna which has acquired 350,429 votes, National People’s Power with the remaining votes of 328,148, Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi which has got 257,813, Sarwajana Balaya Party with 178,006 votes, New Decoratic Front with a remaining number of votes of 116,421, and Sri Lanka Muslim Congress which has acquired 87,083 votes.
Accordingly, neither the United Democratic Voice, which obtained 87,038 votes nor the United National Party, which obtained 66,234 votes, will get a seat in the Parliamnet.
But last time, according to the way the votes were distributed in the 2020 parliamnetary election, even though two parties that got less than sixty eight thousand votes won the positions in the national list, this time the United Democratic Voice party did not get that opportunity. The reason for this was the ratio of how the votes were divided between the parties.
Also, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya does not get a seat in the second round as they only have a total of 46,646 remaining votes.
Accordingly the 29 national list seats are divided among parties as follows.
- National People’s Power – 18 seats (17 + 1)
- Samagi Jana Balawegaya – 5 seats
- New Democratic Front – 2 seats ( 1+ 1)
- Sri Lanka Podu Jana Peramuna – 1 seat
- Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi – 1 seat
- Sarwajana Balaya Party – 1 seat
- Sri Lanka Muslim Congress – 1 seat
You can refer how the seats were allocated from the below table.
