How to Use proportional representation in a Sentence

proportional representation

noun
  • But with proportional representation, there would be room for new parties to grow and new coalitions to form.
    Mary Ellen Klas, Mercury News, 26 May 2026
  • But with proportional representation, there would be room for new parties to grow and new coalitions to form.
    Mary Ellen Klas, Boston Herald, 1 June 2026
  • So eight full seats of the left-wing side of Parliament have been erased and that gave more proportional representation to the right.
    Yasmeen Serhan, Time, 24 July 2023
  • This year’s vote is according to a new election law that is based on proportional representation.
    Washington Post, 6 May 2018
  • The council polls were the first to be held under a new system that combines first-past-the-post with proportional representation.
    The Economist, 15 Feb. 2018
  • The bars are a proportional representation of how far below state averages these districts scored in each year.
    Patrick O'Donnell, cleveland.com, 15 Apr. 2018
  • But the main parties got around this rule by setting up satellite parties to run on the proportional representation lists and vote with them when they got elected.
    Robert E. Kelly, Foreign Affairs, 12 Feb. 2025
  • The nine councilors are elected at large through a system known as proportional representation, in which voters rank their choices.
    Matt Stout, BostonGlobe.com, 16 July 2023
  • First, and most important, the Supreme Court has held over and over again that there is no right to proportional representation.
    Jason Torchinsky, National Review, 3 Oct. 2017
  • This year’s vote was according to a new election law providing for proportional representation for the first time.
    Washington Post, BostonGlobe.com, 7 May 2018
  • There’s nowhere in our system that’s designed to be proportional representation.
    IEEE Spectrum, 16 Mar. 2021
  • That’s one reason why none of the major parties, on either side of the Atlantic, thinks proportional representation is any good.
    Ned Temko, The Christian Science Monitor, 8 Sep. 2022
  • In Atlanta, King's hometown, the proportional representation of black-to-white workers is close to even in many fields.
    Bob Salsberg and Angeliki Kastanis, chicagotribune.com, 2 Apr. 2018
  • About a third of the members of both houses of parliament will be elected on a first-past-the-post basis; the remainder by proportional representation.
    The Economist, 31 Oct. 2017
  • That law was replaced this year with one awarding seats by proportional representation, but complications to the law worked to keep outsiders from taking a larger share.
    Philip Issa, Fox News, 7 May 2018
  • The system of proportional representation to be used in elections will diminish the power of big parties, compared with a first-past-the-post system.
    The Economist, 17 May 2018
  • One of the main sticking points was that the proposal to do away with a system that lets parties fill some seats in Congress on the basis of proportional representation.
    ABC News, 12 Mar. 2026
  • The commission will ask the political parties to provide the names of members to fill the seats won through the proportional representation system.
    Binaj Gurubacharya, Los Angeles Times, 12 Mar. 2026
  • In an unprecedented move, four Arab parties backed Gantz, but proportional representation still got the better of them.
    Nr Editors, National Review, 26 Sep. 2019
  • Full results of the election, which uses a system of proportional representation, are not expected until the weekend at the earliest.
    Jill Lawless and Peter Morrison, Anchorage Daily News, 4 May 2022
  • Perhaps the most powerful antigerontocratic reform is to get rid of winner-take-all elections and adopt a system like proportional representation.
    Peter Gosselin, Harpers Magazine, 30 June 2026
  • In this scenario, proportional representation would deliver six or even seven seats to the majority party.
    Bruce Sibley, Time, 29 May 2026
  • Their greatest priority, by far, was to move to a system of proportional representation (PR).
    John Authers | Bloomberg, Washington Post, 24 Oct. 2019
  • Some of the variance in the offspring is going to be due to the fact that the offspring don't receive a perfect proportional representation of their parent's alleles in terms of aggregate effect size.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 9 June 2011
  • Any other outcome would depart from the principle of proportional representation.
    Bruce Sibley, Time, 29 May 2026
  • Instead of electing one winner per district, proportional representation uses multi-member districts and allocates seats based on vote share.
    Duane Roberts, Oc Register, 11 Oct. 2025
  • The election that day is being fought using a new system that combines proportional representation with first-past-the-post contests in almost 40% of the seats (see article).
    The Economist, 1 Mar. 2018
  • Through a complicated process involving both first-past-the-post and proportional representation, seats in the Bundestag are distributed among the parties.
    Eloise Barry, Time, 27 Sep. 2021
  • Neuquén has five deputies in the Chamber, with three being renewed this year, and with the seats allocated via the d’Hondt formula of proportional representation.
    Baker Institute, Forbes, 13 Sep. 2021
  • This middle ground recommends modest forms of proportional representation — enough to ensure that all groups can gain some power and share in coalitions, but not so much to lead to excessive fracture or many ethnic parties.
    Washington Post, 29 Apr. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'proportional representation.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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