The Hungarian parliament, known as the National Assembly, has 199 seats, all of which were contested in Sunday’s election.
Seats are assigned in two different ways.
There are 106 candidates elected in single-seat constituencies, where one candidate is elected from each constituency. The person with the most votes wins the seat, even if they receive less than 50% of the votes.
But here’s where things get a little complicated: the remaining 93 seats are allocated by voting on national party lists. Broadly speaking, these seats are allocated based on each party’s percentage of the total vote. If a party receives approximately 20% of the votes, it will receive approximately 20% of the 93 seats.
However, there are some caveats.
To win any of the 93 seats, each party must win at least 5% of the votes cast on the national list. There are also so-called surplus votes, in which a portion of the votes cast for candidates in single-member constituencies are added to the votes cast for national party lists.
And to further complicate matters, Hungarian citizens who belong to any of the 13 officially recognized ethnic minorities, including Roma, Slovaks and Germans, can choose to forego voting for the national party list and instead vote for a candidate from the nationality list.
Hungarian citizens with a registered address in Hungary receive two votes: a single-seat electoral district and a national list. They must vote in person.
People who do not have a registered address in Hungary can only vote for the national party list, but they can also vote by post.
