One of the most debated issues in elections in Spain is the manner in which seats are allocated to the Congress of Deputies and its consequences, especially if neither of the two major national parties PSOE (English Socialist Workers Party) and PP (Partido Popular) obtained an absolute majority although the system itself is designed to encourage obtaining majorities.
current English electoral law combines the general standards established by the 1978 Constitution in Articles 68 and 69 and Organic Law 5 / 1985 of 19 June on the General Electoral Regime . The main feature is the electoral system for the Congress of Deputies is the establishment of 50 provinces and 2 autonomous cities as constituency with a minimum of 2 representatives from each of them, dividing the rest of members in terms of population up to 350. This greatly affects the distribution of MPs as it produces imbalances even though attempts to compensate, so for example there is an over-representation in provinces with small populations (eg Soria and Teruel ) over-representation of highly populated provinces (Madrid, Barcelona). This fact is said sometimes that not all seats are worth the same amount of votes.
Moreover, it is also essential to the combination of the provinces with the circuscripción D'Hont Act, which is used Members allocate between the parties that have obtained more than 3% of the votes in that province. The D'Hondt system performance is relatively easy to understand through an example, click to view here.
The consequence of this electoral system is the difference in the results for a single constituency proportional system which causes the small national parties go badly hit as IU (Izquierda Unida) against the major parties get more Members with the lowest number of votes and an absolute majority allowing only 40% of the total votes, whereas parties Nationalists remain at similar values. You can see a table comparing the last two elections on the following websites:
