Maltese general election, 1981

Maltese general election, 1981
Maltese general election, 1981
Malta
1976 ←
12 December , 1981
→ 1987

All 65 seats of the Maltese House of Representatives
  First party Second party
  Replace this image male.svg Edward Fenech Adami.jpg
Leader Dom Mintoff Eddie Fenech Adami
Party Labour Nationalist
Last election 34 seats, 51.5% 31 seats, 48.5%
Seats won 34 31
Seat change steady 0 steady 0
Popular vote 109,990 114,113
Percentage 49.1% 50.9%
Swing decrease 2.4% increase 2.4%

Prime Minister before election

Dom Mintoff
Labour

Elected Prime Minister

Dom Mintoff
Labour

Malta

This article is part of the series:
Politics and government of
Malta



Other countries · Atlas
Politics portal
view · talk · edit

The 1981 general election was held to elect the House of Representatives of Malta. The election resulted in controversy because although the Nationalist Party (Partit Nazzjonalista) gained 51.8% of the votes, the voting system in use led to Malta Labour Party (Partit Laburista) winning the majority of seats and governing the Maltese islands with a disputed mandate, until the general election of 1987. This provoked a constitutional crisis, with the Nationalist Party boycotting parliament. As a result a compromise was reached whereby changes were made to the voting system to prevent a recurrence of the same problem.

The voting system

The 1981 election was held under the single transferable vote (PR-STV) system, with five-seat constituencies. PR-STV is designed to achieve proportional representation but, it does not produce perfect proportionality, especially if a small constituency size (district magnitude) is used or there are distortions caused by differential turn-out, gerrymandering or malapportionment. As a consequence, on rare occasions it is possible for a party to receive more than 50% of the vote in a parliamentary election but to fall short of a majority of seats.

Under the agreement reached following the 1981 election additional 'bonus' seats were introduced. Under the new system if a repeat of the 1981 scenario occurs then the party supported by an overall majority of voters will be awarded a number of additional seats from a party list, so that it secures a parliamentary majority.[1]

Results

e • d Summary of the December 12, 1981 House of Representatives of Malta election results
Parties Votes % Seats
Malta Labour Party (Partit Laburista) 109,990 49.1 34
Nationalist Party (Partit Nazzjonalista) 114,113 50.9 31
Total (turnout 94.1 %) 224,151 100.0 65
Source: [1].

References