Palestinian Election Results 101:  How did Hamas win such a large victory?

By David Albert

Hamas won a big victory in the election; however, due to the structure of the electoral system they actually won many more Parliamentary seats than might be expected by their margin in the popular vote.   It may help to consult the website with the Palestinian election results and look over the various result documents, particularly the 1st, 2nd, and 4th .pdf files at the bottom of the page.

1. How many seats are there in the Palestinian parliament?
There are 132 seats, 66 won by proportional representation and 66 by 16 multi-member districts (larger cities get more members, smaller cities get fewer) in which those getting the most votes in the district get the seats.  Each Palestinian voter voted once on the national ballot (choosing from a list of 11 parties) and then voted for as many candidates as their city had seats on their 2nd ballot.  In Hebron, for example, the 2nd ballot had a list of 46 candidates and the voter checked off 9 names.

2. How many people voted?
Roughly a million Palestinians voted.  The turnout was about 75-80%

3. Does44% of votes equal 44% of the seats in the Parliament?
Not necessarily. For the 1st ballot, the part done by proportional representation, this is indeed the case.   Hamas won 44.45% of the vote on the electoral lists as compared 41.43% for Fatah.  The distribution of those 66 seats is approximately in line with the proportion of people voting for each party.  Hamas got 29 of those seats, Fatah got 28.  Four smaller parties received 9 seats (See Final Results for Electoral Lists). But, as explained below, the second ballot does not work this way.

4. Can individuals vote both for parties and for individual candidates within their geographical district?
Yes.  After they vote for the party on the national ballot, they vote for the individuals running in their district.  The candidates who get the most votes in the district win the seats.  Since there were more Hamas voters than Fatah voters in most places, Hamas usually beat out the individual Fatah candidates for the seats. On the second ballot, therefore, Hamas won a disproportionate number of seats compared with their vote total.Take the largest Palestinian city, Hebron, which has 9 district seats, as an example (See Final Results for the Electoral Districts / Hebron is district 11).  There were 9 Hamas candidates; they each got between 47,000 and 59,000 votes, and Hamas won all 9 seats.  There were also 9 Fatah candidates who polled between 31,000 and 41,000 votes apiece.  The Fatah candidates finished in 10th thru 18th places in Hebron and therefore didn't get into the parliament.  Similar patterns emerged in Ramallah, Nablus, North Gaza, Gaza City, and a few other multi-member districts.  Consistently, the Fatah candidates were strong seconds in many of these cities, losing to the Hamas candidates in most districts.

5. Can you summarize the results in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem?
In the West Bank, there were 42 seats; Hamas won 30, Fatah won 11, and 1 independent won a seat in Tulkarem.  Incidentally, 5 of the Fatah seats here were seats that were reserved for Christians (2 in Jerusalem, 1 in Ramallah, 2 in Bethlehem).  Hamas didn't put up candidates for the Christian quota seats.  Thus were 6 Jerusalem seats with 2 reserved for Christians, so Hamas only put up 4 candidates in Jerusalem, all of whom won.In Gaza it was much the same.  Of the 24 seats, Hamas won 15, Fatah 6, and 3 went to independents in Gaza City (1 of these independents won a reserved Christian seat and at least 1 other was an independent ally of Hamas). The reality of this electoral system is that it was designed to create a large parliamentary majority for the party that wins a small majority in the popular vote.  Fatah probably designed this system expecting to be the beneficiary; if so, this strategy backfired.  It was a near perfect storm for Hamas, since, in the end, Hamas got a much larger majority in the Parliament than its actual percentage of the popular vote.  Their small popular majority doesn't change the fact that they won and won completely fairly.

6. Is this sort of occurrence common in democracies?
Actually, it’s very common for electoral systems to be set up this way in order to ensure a stable governing majority.  Consider the 2005 British election results, based on 646 single-member districts. 

In the Palestinian case, much the same thing happened with their 132-seat parliament:

David Albert is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Government at the University of Texas – Austin and a Brit Tzedek Board Member.