Questions about Norwegian politics

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1. **What is the voting system on these district elections for the 150 seats? Is it a ranked choice voting?**

   The voting system used in Norway is [party-list proportional representation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party-list_proportional_representation). Briefly, what this means is that we don’t vote for individual candidates, we vote for a party. The seats are then allocated to the people in that party according to a predetermined party list, counting the votes using a modified version of the [Sainte-Laguë Method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster/Sainte-Lagu%C3%AB_method),

   To show you how this works, I can use a practical example. The county of Aust-Agder had 3 seats in parliament at the last election. There were 66 177 votes split among 18 parties. When all the votes are in, the first thing that happened was that every single party’s total vote count was divided by 1.4 to give each party a “score”. Arbeiderpartiet (Labor) had 16 148 votes in Aust-Agder, so their initial “score” was 16 148/1.4=11 534. Høyre (Conservatives) had a “score” of 13 307/1.4=9 505, Senterpartiet (Agrarian/Center) had 8 908/1.4=6 363, and Fremskrittspartiet (Progress Party) had 8 729/1.4=6 235. (There were 14 more parties who all had the same math formula applied to them, but I’m not going to list of all them)

   After having looked at the scores of all 18 parties the first seat was then to the party with the highest score (obviously, since all parties have their votes divided by 1.4, whoever has the most votes will always get the first seat). In Aust-Agder’s case, this was Arbeiderpartiet, so they got the first seat. The person on top of Arbeiderpartiet’s list for Aust-Agder was then awarded this seat.

   For the second seat, Arbeiderpartiet’s initial vote count was now divided by 3 instead of 1.4, while everyone else remains at the score they got from dividing by 1.4. This meant that Arbeiderpartiet’s new score in Aust-Agder now was 16 148/3=5 383. Thus, the party with the top score was now Høyre at 9 505. The second seat thus went to Høyre. The person on top of Høyre’s list for Aust-Agder was then awarded this seat.

   For the third and final seat, both Arbeiderpartiet and Høyre had their scores calculated by dividing by 3, meaning Høyre’s new score was now 13 307/3=4436. The top score now belonged to Senterpartiet at 6 363, who got the final seat.

   Obviously, Aust-Agder is a very small county with only 3 seats, so no party was able to win multiple seats. If Arbeiderpartiet had been able to win a second seat, though, their new score would be calculated by dividing by 5 instead of 3. After winning a third seat, the vote is divided by 7, and so on using increasing odd numbers for each new seat they win.

   **Why is proportional representation is added and why more of it isn’t covered on more seats?**

   The system in use is already proportional, or fairly close to proportional. But it does produce some “unfair” results, especially in smaller counties. In the aforementioned Aust-Agder example, Fremskrittspartiet only had 179 less votes than Senterpartiet, but Senterpartiet got the last seat available, meaning Senterpartiet got a seat, while Fremskrittspartiet did not, even though their vote counts were almost the same. Thus, if we had only used the system of party-list proportional representation with modified Sainte-Laguë we would have gotten a result that was fairly proportional, but that heavily disfavored smaller parties. To make up for this, 19 extra seats are handed out, one for each county. These seats can be won by any party as long as they’ve gotten at least 4% of the total national vote, and they are handed out using a system that makes the percentage of total members of parliament for a party be close to the percentage of total national votes.

   This system ensures that even if you live in a small county like Aust-Agder where smaller parties have no realistic shot at any of three seats available, you can still vote for a small party to help them get over the 4% threshold and win more of the national seats. Thus, so-called [wasted votes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasted_vote) are less likely to happen.

   To show you an example of how it works, in the last election, Venstre (Liberals) won 4.6% of the national vote, but since they are a small party they were only able to win 3 seats in total using the first method of distributing seats. Of these three seats, two were in Oslo and one was in Akershus, the two most populous counties. However, 3 seats only make up 1.8% of the 169 seats in total in Parliament. So in order to make their final result more proportional to their total vote count, they were given 5 of the 19 extra seats, bringing their total to 8 seats (4.7% of Parliament).

   On the flip side, Miljøpartiet de Grønne (The Environmental Party) got 3.9% of the national vote and won 3 seats in total from the first method of distributing seats. Just like Venstre, they got two seats in Oslo and one in Akershus. However, since they were unable to cross the 4% threshold and were thus barred from gaining any extra seats, leaving them with a slightly disproportionate result of having 3.9% of the vote and only 1.8% of the seats in Parliament. Had only a few more people nationally voted for them they would have been able to cross 4% and thus get access to a lot more representation.

   As you can see, the 4% threshold is incredibly important to cross. This system thus incentivizes people to vote for their favorite party, even if it’s a small party with no chance of winning a direct seat in their small county.

   **How are election districts created? What is the status of gerrymandering in Norway?**

   If you’ve been paying attention, you might have noticed that I’ve talked about counties a lot. The election districts are equal to the counties of Norway. How many seats a county has in parliament depends on the county’s population and also slightly on its area (the area of a county counting towards its seat total is a rule which is in place to give the northern counties, which are large in area but small in population, a little more representation in Parliament. This is seen as fair as they are further from Oslo and thus their voice isn’t heard as well as other counties).

   Gerrymandering isn’t really possible, as there is no such thing as redistricting. The counties are the districts. However, we recently had a county reform, where several counties were merged into newer and larger counties, meaning Norway now only has 11 counties, not 19. The Constitution of Norway, however, specifies that Parliament shall be elected from 19 districts, so for the last election Members of Parliament were elected using the old counties as election districts. The language of the Constitution requiring 19 districts is in the process of being changed, though, so that the election districts again can match the county lines in coming elections.

   **Do Norwegian political parties have primaries similar to the Democratic and Republican parties?**

   Nope. How the different parties create their party lists will differ slightly from party to party. Generally, though, all parties will have an organizational structure split into three levels. There’s the national party, and underneath the national party there will be multiple county parties, and underneath them there are multiple municipal parties. The largest parties, like Arbeiderpartiet and Høyre, will have municipal parties in pretty much every single municipality in Norway, whereas the smaller parties might not be represented everywhere. It all depends on if there’s anyone in the municipality who’s willing to actually go ahead and run a local party, as it is quite a lot of work.

   The national party is the “face” of the party, but it’s really the county parties who are responsible for most of the national election, since the national election’s districts are split along county lines. What happens is that at some point in good time before the election, the members of the many different municipal parties will come together and elect people from their municipal party to the county party’s congress. At the county party’s congress, these representatives then debate and vote on who should be on that county party’s list in the next election, and how the list should be ordered. Obviously, being on top of the list is best, as it means that your party only has to win a single seat in your county in order for you to become a Member of Parliament. Most of the names further down on the list have no realistic shot at being elected, and they are often referred to as “listefyll” (list-fillers). When the county party’s congress has agreed to a list, this list is then reported to the election officials and becomes the official list for that party in that county.

   Occasionally, a party may have two prominent politicians living in the same county, and only a realistic shot at winning one seat in that county. What might happen then is that one of those politicians start looking around for a different county to go to and be on top of the list (while still being in the same party, of course). This is always a little controversial, as the members of the party in that county might feel like that politician doesn’t really represent them, but at the same time, if there are no prominent politicians from that party in that county they might be happy to be able to put a well known name at the top of their list.

   That’s about all I have time for right now. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to skip the remaining questions. I hope this helped clear up some things about our election process for you. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

2. I can answer a few of these on top of my head. I’m sure someone with a bit more knowledge of the details about the Norwegian political system has the rest of the details.

   *-How are election districts created? What is the status of gerrymandering in Norway?*

   They are based on the borders of the (previous) 19 counties. So it is a well defined area and no gerrymandering is therefore possible.

   *-Is there a Norwegian equivalent to the Minority Leader of the US House of Representatives? Is it Opposition Leader and Former Prime Minister Erna Solberg?*

   No, not to my knowledge.

   *-How much political power does the monarchy have?*

   De facto – None as far as I know.

   ​

   As for political parties and factions in Norway, it is important to note that pretty much all Norwegians are social-democrats (probably 95%+ of the population) [ Special US Note: Social-Democrat is not the same as Democratic Socialist! ]. So there are really only minor differences between the political parties. This allows for parties to cooperate fairly easily between party and faction borders if they agree on a specific topic.

   The entire Norwegian parliament could easily have fitted into a larger party in another country labeled “Social Democratic Party of Norway”, and then you could have each of the parties in Norway being the different factions of that big party.

   This allows for a boring and fairly cooperative political climate in Norway, which is how we like it. Large amount of voters change political affiliation between each election. Political affiliation is not normally a big part of your identity.