A Formal Model of the Relationship between the Number of Parties and the District Magnitude

On the basis of a formula for calculating seat shares and natural thresholds in multidistrict elections under the Jefferson-D’Hondt system and a probabilistic model of electoral behavior based on P'{o}lya’s urn model, we propose a new model of the relationship between the district magnitude and the number / effective number of relevant parties. We test that model on both electoral results from multiple countries employing the D’Hondt method (relatively small number of elections, but wide diversity of political configurations) and data based on hundreds of Polish local elections (large number of elections, but much higher degree of parameter uniformity). We also explore some applications of the proposed model, demonstrating how it can be used to estimate the potential effects of electoral engineering.