How seats are allocated: the D'Hondt method in social elections
Once the votes are counted, how do you get from votes to seats? Social elections use the D'Hondt method, the same one used in Belgian political elections. The name sounds intimidating; the principle is simple. Here is how it works, with a worked example you can reproduce yourself.
The principle in one sentence
The D'Hondt method allocates seats between the lists based on their number of votes, but not by a simple rule of three. For each list, you compute a series of quotients (the votes divided by 1, then by 2, then by 3, and so on), rank all those quotients together in descending order, and give the seats to the highest.
It is a proportional system, with a slight advantage to large lists, exactly as for municipal or legislative elections.
A worked example
Take a CPPW with 4 seats to fill and three union lists. The votes obtained:
- List A: 1,000 votes
- List B: 600 votes
- List C: 300 votes
Step 1, Compute the quotients (votes ÷ 1, ÷ 2, ÷ 3, ÷ 4):
| Divisor | List A (1000) | List B (600) | List C (300) |
|---|---|---|---|
| ÷ 1 | 1000 | 600 | 300 |
| ÷ 2 | 500 | 300 | 150 |
| ÷ 3 | 333 | 200 | 100 |
| ÷ 4 | 250 | 150 | 75 |
Step 2, Rank all the quotients together in descending order:1000, 600, 500, 333, 300, 250, 200, 150, 150, 100, 75…
Give one seat to each of the 4 highest (because there are 4 seats):
- 1000 (List A) → seat to A
- 600 (List B) → seat to B
- 500 (List A) → seat to A
- 333 (List A) → seat to A
The 5th quotient (300, List C) gets nothing: there are no seats left.
Result:
- List A: 3 seats (quotients 1000, 500, 333)
- List B: 1 seat (quotient 600)
- List C: 0 seats (its best quotient, 300, lands in 5th place)
With 1,000 votes out of 1,900 (53%), List A gets 3 of the 4 seats (75%): that is the slight advantage to large lists inherent in D'Hondt. List C, despite its 300 votes, gets no seat because its best quotient falls just after the last seat allocated.
Why divide by 1, 2, 3…?
The idea is to measure, at each step, "which list most deserves the next seat." After receiving a seat, a list has its quotient recomputed on the next divisor, which makes it "drop" down the ranking and leaves room for the others. You repeat until the seats run out. That mechanism is what makes the allocation proportional while staying simple to compute.
How many seats to allocate?
The number of seats depends on headcount, on a legal scale: 4 seats below 101 workers, 6 from 101 to 500, and so on up to 22 above 8,000. This scale applies the same way to the Works Council and the CPPW. The larger the company, the more seats there are to allocate by the D'Hondt method.
In short
The D'Hondt method turns votes into seats through a cascade of divisions: votes ÷ 1, ÷ 2, ÷ 3…, then the seats go to the highest quotients. The system is proportional, with a slight advantage to large lists. In our 4-seat example, a list with 53% of the votes gets 3 seats, and a small list can walk away empty-handed. It is the same rule as in Belgian political elections.
For the full vocabulary of the vote, read the social elections glossary. And if you want a voting system that computes the seat allocation automatically, let's talk.
