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1918 Danish Folketing election

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1918 Danish Folketing election
Denmark
← 1915 22 April 1918 April 1920 →

All 140 seats in the Folketing
71 seats needed for a majority
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/–
Venstre Klaus Berntsen 29.41 45 +2
Social Democrats Thorvald Stauning 28.66 39 +7
Social Liberals Carl Theodor Zahle 20.67 32 +1
Conservatives Emil Piper 18.29 22 New
Industry 1.30 1 New
Independents 0.40 1 +1
This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
Prime Minister before Prime Minister after
Carl Theodor Zahle
Social Liberals
Carl Theodor Zahle
Social Liberals

Folketing elections were held in Denmark on 22 April 1918,[1] the first in which women could vote. The result was a victory for Venstre, which won 45 of the 140 seats in the Folketing, which had been expanded from 114 to 140 seats. Voter turnout was 75.5%.[2]

Electoral system

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The Folketing was elected by rural–urban proportional representation. Copenhagen had 24 members elected by party-list proportional representation using the d'Hondt system, while in the rest of the country 93 members (42 in the Danish Islands and 51 in Jutland) were elected in single-member constituencies using first-past-the-post voting. There were a further 23 leveling seats to make the results more proportional.[3]

Of the 23 leveling seats, twenty (nine in the islands and eleven in Jutland) were allocated on a regional basis, and three (one in the islands and two in Jutland) were allocated based on the nationwide vote (including Copenhagen).[3] The allocation of candidates to leveling seats was based on a best-loser rule, using a form of Scorporo; in each single-member constituency a Hare quota of votes for the appropriate region was subtracted from the winner's votes and the remainders were pooled at a county level. The candidates with the highest proportion of the votes relative to the region's Hare quota were allocated the leveling seats.[3]

The 1918 elections were the only ones in Danish history to feature this mixed system.[4][5] Future elections would be entirely using proportional representation with the single-member districts not affecting the party-level results.

Results

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PartyVotes%Seats+/–
Venstre269,64629.4145+2
Social Democratic Party262,79628.6639+7
Danish Social Liberal Party189,52120.6732+1
Conservative People's Party167,74318.2922New
Industry List11,9341.301New
New Right4,7640.520New
Voters of 19184,4070.480New
Socialist Workers Party1,4100.150New
Independent Social Democracy1,0860.120New
Independents3,6220.4010
Total916,929100.00140+26
Valid votes916,92999.62
Invalid/blank votes3,4680.38
Total votes920,397100.00
Registered voters/turnout1,218,90175.51
Source: Nohlen & Stöver

References

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  1. ^ Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p524 ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7
  2. ^ Nohlen & Stöver, p537
  3. ^ a b c Saby, R. S. (1919). "Danish Parliamentary Elections of 1918". American Political Science Review. 13 (4): 656–662. doi:10.2307/1944222. ISSN 0003-0554. JSTOR 1944222.
  4. ^ The Parliamentary Electoral System in Denmark Archived 2022-01-21 at the Wayback Machine Folketing
  5. ^ Adolph, Jensen (July 1918). "Rigsdagsvalgene i April-Maj 1918 med Suppleringsvalg i Tiden 1915-18". Danmarks Statistik.