Overhang seats can arise in elections under mixed member proportional (MMP), when a party is entitled to less seats according to party votes than it has won constituencies. These overhang seats (for missing votes) remain with the party.
The ways to deal with overhang seats are:
- take the number of overhang seats off from the other parties' seats, e.g. in the Scottish Parliament;
- just allow the overhang (German Bundestag);
- additional balance seats (New Zealand);
- non-awarding of overhang seats.
