Closed list

Closed list describes the variant of party-list systems where voters can (effectively) only vote for political parties as a whole; thus they have no influence on the party-supplied order in which party candidates are elected. If voters had some influence, that would be called an open list. Closed list systems are commonly used in party-list proportional representation, but most mixed electoral systems also use closed lists in their party list component.

Part of the Politics series
Electoral systems
Majoritarian/plurality Plurality First-past-the-post Plurality at-large (plurality block voting) General ticket (party block voting) Multi-round voting Two-round Exhaustive ballot Majority at-large (two-round block voting) Ranked / preferential systems Instant-runoff (alternative vote) Contingent vote Coombs' method Condorcet methods (Copeland's, Dodgson's, Kemeny–Young, Minimax, Nanson's, ranked pairs, Schulze, Alternative Smith) Positional voting (Borda count, Nauru/Dowdall method) Bucklin voting Oklahoma primary electoral system Preferential block voting Cardinal / graded systems Score voting Approval voting Combined approval voting Unified primary Usual judgment Satisfaction approval voting Majority judgment STAR voting
Proportional representation Party-list (open lists, closed lists, local lists) Highest averages (D'Hondt, Sainte-Laguë, Huntington–Hill) Largest remainder (Hare, Droop, Imperiali, Hagenbach-Bischoff) Proportional forms of ranked voting Single transferable vote (Gregory, Wright) CPO-STV Schulze STV Proportional forms of approval voting Proportional approval voting Sequential proportional approval voting Method of Equal Shares Phragmen's voting rules Proportional forms of cardinal voting Method of Equal Shares Biproportional apportionment Fair majority voting Weighted voting Direct representation Interactive representation Liquid democracy
Mixed systems By type of representation Mixed-member majoritarian Mixed-member proportional Non-compensatory mixed systems Parallel voting Majority bonus Compensatory mixed systems Additional member system Mixed single vote (positive vote transfer) Scorporo (negative vote transfer) Mixed ballot transferable vote Alternative Vote Plus Dual-member proportional Rural–urban proportional
Other systems and related theory Multiple non-transferable vote Semi-proportional representation Single non-transferable vote Limited voting Cumulative voting Binomial voting Double simultaneous vote Proxy voting Delegated voting Random selection (sortition, random ballot) Comparison of electoral systems Social choice theory Arrow's theorem Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem Public choice theory
Politics portal

In closed list systems, each political party has pre-decided who will receive the seats allocated to that party in the elections,[1] so that the candidates positioned highest on this list tend to always get a seat in the parliament while the candidates positioned very low on the closed list will not.

However, the candidates "at the water mark" of a given party are in the position of either losing or winning their seat depending on the number of votes the party gets. "The water mark" is the number of seats a specific party can be expected to achieve. The number of seats that the party wins, combined with the candidates' positions on the party's list, will then determine whether a particular candidate will get a seat.