Party List

A party list is the slate of candidates a political party (or sometimes a coalition or independent group) registers with the electoral authority to contest seats in a proportional representation (PR) election. Voters cast a ballot for the party, and seats are then distributed in proportion to each party's vote share using a formula such as D'Hondt, Sainte-Laguë, or the largest-remainder method. Candidates take seats in the order they appear on the list.

Party lists come in several variants:

• Closed lists: the party fixes the order of candidates, and voters cannot alter it. Seats are filled strictly from the top. Used in Israel, South Africa, and Spain's Congreso de los Diputados.
• Open lists: voters cast a preference vote for an individual candidate within the chosen party, and that vote helps reorder the list. Used in Finland, Brazil, and the Netherlands (with varying thresholds).
• Flexible or semi-open lists: a party ordering exists, but sufficient personal votes can elevate a candidate. Belgium and Sweden use variants of this.
• Free lists / panachage: voters can split preferences across parties. Used in Luxembourg and Switzerland.

Lists may be national (a single nationwide constituency, as in Israel and the Netherlands) or regional/district-based (as in Spain, Portugal, and Poland). In mixed-member proportional (MMP) systems like Germany's Bundestag elections or New Zealand's, voters cast a separate list vote alongside a constituency vote, and list seats are used to bring overall party representation into proportion.

Party lists are central to debates about candidate selection, gender quotas (many jurisdictions require "zipped" lists alternating men and women), minority representation, and intra-party democracy. Critics of closed lists argue they concentrate power in party leaderships; defenders note they enable balanced tickets and protect underrepresented groups. Most PR systems also impose a legal threshold (e.g., 5% in Germany, 3.25% in Israel) below which a list receives no seats.