Explanation of European Parliamentary Elections

Elections to the European Parliament are run on a regional basis. The area for which a Member of the European Parliament is elected is called an electoral region. These regions came into effect for the June 1999 elections under the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999.

England is divided into 9 electoral regions, as follows:

Eastern
East Midlands
London
North East
North West
South East
South West
West Midlands
Yorkshire and the Humber

Teignbridge falls within the South West region.

Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland are each single electoral regions, making a total of 12 electoral regions within the UK.

Registered political parties may submit a list of candidates not exceeding the number of MEPs to be elected for that region. Individual candidates may also be nominated. Voters have one vote, which they can use to vote for a party (and its list of candidates) or for an individual candidate.

Under the regional list system of voting, voters will be electing their representatives by a form of proportional representation known as the d'Hondt method.

What this means is that:

• The first seat is allocated to the registered party or individual candidate with the highest number of votes cast in the electoral region.
• The second and subsequent seats are allocated in the same way except that where a registered party has already been allocated a seat, their original total is divided by one plus the number of seats already allocated to them. For example, a party which has been allocated one seat already will have its original total divided by two.
• Any individual candidate who has been allocated a seat or any party which has been allocated as many seats as there are candidates on it's list can be excluded from the subsequent stages of the calculation.
• The seats each political party is entitled to are filled by the candidates in the order in which their names appear on their party list.