As a bill to amend the law on the election of MPs is being processed in parliament, most people want small parties to have a chance of winning seats in the House of Representatives, as they did in the March 24, 2019 election, according to an opinion survey by the National Institute of Development Administration, or Nida Poll.
The poll was conducted on March 28-30 by telephone interviews with 1,314 people aged 18 and over of various levels of education and occupations throughout the country to compile their opinions on the law on the election of MPs being amended in parliament.
Asked whether the law should be amended in a way to give small parties a chance to win House seats, as in the 2019 election, 47.79% of the respondents said they highly agreed with this and 30.97% were in moderate agreement. On the other side, 14.54% totally disagreed with that and 5.71% fairly disagreed. The rest, 0.99%, had no comment or were not interested.
Asked whether the law should be amended to make it difficult for parties to win with a landslide, 34.78% highly agreed and 26.03% in moderate agreement. On the other side, 16.82% totally disagreed and 16.21% fairly disagreed. The rest, 6.16%, had no answer or were not interested.
Finally, when asked to choose between giving small parties a chance to win House seats and allowing big parties to win with a landslide or more than half of the available seats, a majority, 58.68%, said they wanted small parties to get a chance to win seats; 35.46% wanted big parties to win with a landslide; and 5.86 had no answer or were not interested.
The law on the election of MPs is being amended in parliament to be in line with a constitutional amendment last year that restored the two-ballot system for the next general election.
Many critics said the two-ballot system would give big parties a political advantage and would deprive small parties of a chance of winning House seats.
