A Disproportionality Bias in the Bureau of the Regional Assembly of Madrid

Abstract

This paper analyses the voting behavior of the parliamentary groups in the Regional Assembly of Madrid to appoint the Bureau, its representative body, in all the legislatures since its inception (1983–2021). To this end, the actual result of the voting is compared with the mock result attained by following a Nash equilibrium (NE) and a d’Hondt (d’H) allocation in each vote. But the result of a d’Hondt allocation varies based on the number of stages in which the voting is performed (President, Vice-President, and Secretaries), so a bias towards disproportionality could exist as measured by the absolute index of disproportionality which calculates the number of seats non-proportionally allocated. The results show that, in view of the hypothesis on the importance of the number of seats, the NE was only followed in four of the 12 Legislatures for Vice-Presidents (it was always followed for Secretaries). Thus, parliamentary groups could gain more seats by modifying their strategies. Additionally, the absolute rate of disproportionality and the number of seats non-proportionally allocated indicate that, in general, parliamentary groups obtain voting results that are less disproportionate than they could be (due to the number of voting stages).

Keywords

• Nash equilibrium
• d’Hondt rule
• parliament
• disproportionality bias