Overview

• The Province of Buenos Aires allocates its 46 deputy and 23 senate seats with the Cociente Hare formula rather than the national D’Hondt method.
• Under Hare, valid votes are divided by seats to set a quotient, parties take seats by whole quotients, and the remaining seats go to the highest vote remainders after a 3% legal floor.
• Specialists note the method tends to favor larger parties, with district magnitude driving effective thresholds that vary widely by electoral section.
• Illustrative thresholds from recent cycles include roughly 16.6% to win 1 of 6 seats in the Octava, about 5.55% for 1 of 18 in the Tercera, more than 12.5% for 1 of 8 in the Primera, and about 33.3% for 1 of 3 in the Séptima.
• In La Plata’s 2021 race (397,358 valid votes; quotient 66,226), Juntos had 46.2% and Frente de Todos 34.5% yet each took three of six seats as remainders split the final two; the Frente de Izquierda’s 31,109 votes fell short of the effective threshold.