SciencesPo (version 1.3.9)

hamilton: The Hamilton Method of Allocating Seats Proportionally

Description

Computes the Alexander Hamilton's apportionment method (1792), also known as Hare-Niemeyer method or as Vinton's method. The Hamilton method is a largest-remainder method which uses the Hare Quota.

Usage

hamilton(parties = NULL, votes = NULL, seats = NULL, ...)
hamilton(parties = NULL, votes = NULL, seats = NULL, ...)

Arguments

parties

A vector containig parties labels or candidates in the same order of votes.

votes

A vector with the formal votes received by the parties/candidates.

seats

An integer for the number of seats to be returned.

...

Additional arguements (currently ignored)

Value

• A data.frame of length parties containing apportioned integers (seats) summing to seats.

encoding

UTF-8

Details

The Hamilton/Vinton Method sets the divisor as the proportion of the total population per house seat. After each state's population is divided by the divisor, the whole number of the quotient is kept and the fraction dropped resulting in surplus house seats. Then, the first surplus seat is assigned to the state with the largest fraction after the original division. The next is assigned to the state with the second-largest fraction and so on.

References

Lijphart, Arend (1994). Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990. Oxford University Press.

See Also

dHondt, highestAverages, largestRemainders, politicalDiversity.

Examples

votes <- sample(1:10000, 5)
parties <- sample(LETTERS, 5)
hamilton(parties, votes, seats = 4)