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Proportional Representation
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Proportional Representation

This means that parties get a certain number of seats in parliament according to the percentage of votes that they get in an election. So, for example, if your party gets 15% of all the votes in the country then it gets 15% of the seats in parliament.

There are 400 seats in the national parliament. So for every 1% of the vote a party gets 4 seats. The example on the next page shows how seats are allocated for the top three parties that won seats in the 2014 election.

% of the votesNumber of seats
African National Congress62 %247 seats
Democratic Alliance22 %89 seats
Economic Freedom Fighters6 %25 seats
Other small parties (together)7 %39 seats