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Why our media is wrong to say proportional representation helps the extreme right

The UK media likes to blame far right gains elsewhere – as in Sweden’s recent election – on PR. In fact the evidence shows disproportional voting systems give more power to the extreme right.

By Owen Winter
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Hungarians protesting Orbán's election system, April 2018
Hungarians protesting Orbán's election system, April 2018

Hungarians protesting against Orbán's election system, April 2018. Image: Wiktor Dabkowski/PA Images, all rights reserved

Reading the headlines, you would be forgiven for thinking that the recent Swedish general election had been a sweeping victory for the far right. “Chilling rise of the far right in Sweden”, reads a typically ominous example.

Commentators in the Anglosphere have been quick to blame Sweden’s use of Proportional Representation - the kind of voting system that ensures Parliaments reflect how the people voted. “Democracy is weakened”, warned an editorial in the Independent, “shadows of Weimar haunt Europe’s parliamentary chambers and their systems of Proportional Representation.”

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0