Remaining mandate
A residual mandate or residual vote mandate is understood to mean a mandate that is allocated in an electoral procedure after the allocation of basic mandates in a second investigation.
Numerous electoral processes assign mandates in several steps. At the first level, for example, it is customary to assign mandates according to constituencies. As a rule, on the one hand, not all mandates are awarded, on the other hand, votes are also lost. In order to compensate for strong imbalances, unassigned mandates and residual votes (previously disregarded votes) of several constituencies in constituency associations are added and assigned there as residual mandates.
The purpose of an electoral process with remaining mandates is to give the parties mandates based on the weight of their votes and to prevent excessive preference for large groups. In order to prevent the accumulation of relatively fewer votes over a large number of constituencies and thus the allocation of mandates to very small parliamentary groups, lists that have remained below a certain percentage of votes are excluded from the residual vote procedure in numerous countries ( 5% clause, etc.) .
An example
In the Austrian National Council election in 2002, the ÖVP won 58,854 votes in the Tyrolean constituency of Innsbruck-Land, the SPÖ won 33,850 votes, the Greens 15,730 votes and the FPÖ 13,264 votes, other parties a total of 2,953 votes. There were 5 seats to be awarded in the constituency, the number of votes required for a basic seat was 26,121 for the whole of Tyrol.
This meant that only 3 basic mandates could be awarded in the constituency (ÖVP: 2, SPÖ: 1). This means that 2 mandates were not awarded. These 2 mandates were assigned to the constituency association of Tyrol, as well as the votes of the Greens (15,730) and the FPÖ (13,264) and the overhanging votes of the ÖVP (6,612) and SPÖ (7,729). Together with other remaining votes and unassigned mandates from the other 4 Tyrolean constituencies, these votes were added and awarded as remaining mandates in the second election process. Overall, of the 12 mandates to which the state of Tyrol is entitled, only 5 were granted as basic mandates and 7 as residual mandates.
