Jarrett Blanc
February 20, 2006

Hamas won a powerful majority in the new Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) on January 25. With 74 out of 132 seats – 77 including independent legislators who campaigned with Hamas – they dwarf the former governing party and their closest competitor, Fatah, which has 45. Hamas continues to reject Israel’s existence and the two-state solution; they reject negotiations for a permanent peace and international peace plans like the roadmap. They support and are responsible for violent resistance, including terrorist attacks on civilian targets in Israel, and they have an Islamist political agenda that may change the face of largely secular Palestinian public life. Perhaps the responsibilities of parliament and government will change Hamas, but certainly Hamas’ new majority will change Palestine and the region in untold ways.

But to understand the full meaning of Hamas’ victory and of these elections, it is necessary to look deeper than the seat totals and analyze how Palestinians voted. This shows that while Hamas is, by a small margin, the most popular party in Palestine, its share of the popular vote is not as overwhelming as its share of the seats in the PLC. Their victory owes a great deal not only to their popularity, but to Fatah’s disorganization and poor campaign tactics.

Palestine used a “mixed” system of representation to elect the PLC. Sixty-six seats, or one-half of the total, were elected using a system of proportional representation familiar from countries like the Netherlands and regional countries like Iraq and Israel. Under this system, each voter selected a single political party and each political party won a share of the seats roughly proportional to their share of the votes. Hamas and Fatah were closely matched in this part of the election, with Hamas winning 44 percent of the vote and 29 seats to Fatah’s 41 percent and 28 seats. These totals are probably the best reflection of how popular the two parties’ polices and platforms are with the voters, and they show a closely divided electorate.

The other 66 seats were elected from 16 districts. Unlike U.S. House of Representatives districts, which each elect one member of congress, the 16 districts were each assigned a number of PLC members based on their population – the smallest have only one, the largest have nine. In each district, a voter could choose a number of candidates up to the number of available seats; so in Hebron, each voter could vote for nine candidates, in Jericho, one. This is an unusual system internationally, especially for elections in which there are well organized and highly competitive political parties. The system can have the effect of exaggerating the majority of a large and well organized party, especially if the other major parties are poorly organized.

This is exactly what happened in Palestine. Counting both official candidates and Fatah-affiliated independent candidates, Fatah had more than three candidates running for every seat. A similar calculation for Hamas shows just under one candidate for every seat. Fatah’s inability to agree on a single group of district candidates caused Fatah supporters to splinter their votes over many different candidates.

The consequences were tremendous. Fatah and Fatah-affiliated candidates won 44 percent of the votes in the districts to Hamas and Hamas-affiliated candidates’ 45 percent, but Fatah won only one-third as many seats. If the votes for the Fatah-affiliated candidates had gone to the official Fatah candidates, the party might have won as many as 18 additional seats – giving them a small plurality over Hamas, with 63 seats to 59.

These statistics in no way mean that Hamas’ victory is illegitimate. Election results are often disproportionate to the popular vote. In the United Kingdon elections last year, Labor won 35 percent of the vote to the Tories’ 32 percent, but Labor holds 55 percent of the seats and the Tories only 31 percent . Hamas ran a smarter and more disciplined campaign than its competitors, and it has been rewarded with seats.

The statistics do, however, suggest important lessons for Palestinian and international leaders. Hamas, which has proven so adept at understanding electoral politics, is no doubt analyzing the results in detail now. They will be well served to govern from the middle, showing respect for the 55 percent or so of Palestinians who voted against them. Fatah and the other parties should see that their loss was caused as much by poor tactics as by unpopular policies. There is clearly a Palestinian electorate responsive to calls for peace with Israel and a two-state solution – hopefully, a better organized opposition will run toward these moderate voters rather than trying to mimic Hamas’ more extreme positions. The international community, meanwhile, should not give up on Palestine’s democratic transition, even if it is disappointed by the results of this election. There is a constituency for peace, and the international community has a role to play in empowering these voters by supporting an independent and probing press, a vibrant civil society, democratic political parties, a strong judiciary, and the professional and non-partisan Central Election Commission that ran transparent and credible elections on January 25 and that will be expected to perform the same service four years from now.