Editing Proportional representation (section)

== Districting under proportional representation ==
All PR systems require multi-member election contests, meaning votes are pooled to elect multiple representatives at once. Pooling at the national level may be done in multi-member [[electoral district|voting districts]] (in STV and most list-PR systems) or in single countrywide{{Snd}}a so called ''at-large''{{Snd}}district (in only a few list-PR systems). A country-wide pooling of votes to elect more than a hundred members is used in Angola, for example. 

Where PR is desired at the municipal level, a city-wide [[at-large]] districting is sometimes used, to allow as large a district magnitude as possible. In other cases, multi-member wards are used.

For large districts, [[Party-list proportional representation|party-list PR]] is often used, but even when list PR is used, districts sometimes contain fewer than 20 members.<ref>Algeria's largest district has 37 deputies:{{cite web |url=https://www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/news/peace_publications/election_reports/algeria-may2012-final-rpt.pdf |title=People's National Assembly Elections in Algeria |publisher=The Carter Center |p=15}}</ref>  

[[Single transferable vote|STV]], a candidate-based PR system, has only rarely been used to elect more than 21 in a single contest.{{Efn|STV was used in 2010 to elect 25 members at large in the [[2010 Icelandic Constitutional Assembly election]].}}  

Some PR systems use party lists and at-large pooling or regional pooling in conjunction with [[single-member district]]s (such as New Zealand's [[Mixed-member proportional representation|MMP]] and Scotland's [[additional member system]]). Other PR systems use party lists and at-large pooling in conjunction with multi-member districts ([[Scandinavia|Scandinavian countries]]). In these systems, votes are pooled to allocate ''[[leveling seat]]s'' (top-up) to compensate for the disproportional results produced in single-member districts using FPTP or to increase the fairness already produced in multi-member districts using list PR. PR systems that achieve the highest levels of proportionality t{{Original research inline|date=May 2025}}end to use as general pooling as possible (typically country-wide) or districts with large numbers of seats (high [[district magnitude]]).