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Sri Lanka Parliamentary Election Seat Calculator

Enter each party's votes in any of the 22 districts and see exactly how many parliamentary seats they win. Applies the official 5% cut-off, the bonus seat, and the Hare-quota largest-remainder method. No signup, sources cited below.

By Induwara AshinsanaUpdated Jun 14, 2026
Allocate district seats225-seat system

Picks the gazetted seat count. You can override it below.

Editable, 1–22. Auto-filled from the district.

4/20 rows
Try an example
Most seats

Party A wins 6 of 10 seats

With 520,000 votes (52%), including the bonus seat for polling highest. Then Party B 3, Party C 1.

Total valid votes
1,000,000
5% cut-off (votes)
50,000
Groups below this win nothing
Qualified votes
960,000
Sum of groups ≥ 5%
Hare quota
106,667
Qualified votes ÷ (seats − 1)

Seat allocation

Seats reconcile to 10
Party / groupVotes%≥ 5%?Seats
Party A+bonus520,00052%6
Party B350,00035%3
Party C90,0009%1
Party D40,0004%no0
Total10

Allocates seats to parties/groups only — not preferential (manape) candidate order or the 29 National List seats. Sources: Parliament of Sri Lanka & the Parliamentary Elections Act No. 1 of 1981.

How it works

Sri Lanka elects 225 Members of Parliament: 196 from the 22 electoral districts and 29 from the National List. This calculator handles the district seats — one district at a time — using the proportional method set out in the Parliamentary Elections Act No. 1 of 1981 and summarised by the Parliament of Sri Lanka. The method runs in four steps on the votes you enter.

  1. Total valid votes.Add up every group's votes in the district to get V.
  2. 5% cut-off. Compute the threshold T = 0.05 × V. Any group whose votes fall below T is disqualified and wins no seat. The qualified groups' votes are summed to Vq.
  3. Bonus seat. The qualified group with the most votes is awarded one seat outright before the rest are shared.
  4. Hare quota for the rest. The remaining S − 1 seats (where Sis the district's seat count) use the quota Q = Vq ÷ (S − 1), called the resulting number. Each qualified group takes ⌊votes ÷ Q⌋ seats. Any seats still unfilled go one at a time to the groups with the largest remainders until all S − 1 are placed.

Each group's final seats are its quota seats plus the bonus seat if it was the leader. By construction the seats always sum to the district's total, and the calculator shows that reconciliation check on every run as a built-in cross-check. Because everything is computed from the votes you type, the result is fully auditable — the "show the working" panel lists each step with the actual numbers.

A subtle but important point: the bonus group also competes in the quota step, so it usually wins several quota seats on top of its bonus. And the largest-remainder rule is what lets a smaller qualified party take a seat even when its vote total is below a full quota — it simply needs a bigger leftover than its rivals once the whole-quota seats are handed out.

Worked examples

10-seat district, one party below 5%

  1. Votes: A 520,000 · B 350,000 · C 90,000 · D 40,000
  2. Total valid V = 1,000,000 → 5% cut-off T = 50,000
  3. D has 40,000 < 50,000 → disqualified (0 seats)
  4. Qualified votes Vq = 960,000 · Bonus seat → A (highest)
  5. Remaining seats = 10 − 1 = 9 · Quota Q = 960,000 ÷ 9 = 106,666.67
  6. Whole seats: A ⌊4.87⌋=4, B ⌊3.28⌋=3, C ⌊0.84⌋=0 (sum 7)
  7. 2 seats left → largest remainders A (93,333) & C (90,000) get +1
  8. Quota seats: A 5, B 3, C 1 · add bonus to A
  9. Final: A 6, B 3, C 1, D 0 → total 10 ✓

5-seat district, a sub-5% group squeezed out

  1. Votes: P 96,000 · Q 70,000 · R 26,000 · S 8,000
  2. Total valid V = 200,000 → 5% cut-off T = 10,000
  3. S has 8,000 < 10,000 → disqualified (0 seats)
  4. Qualified votes Vq = 192,000 · Bonus seat → P (highest)
  5. Remaining seats = 5 − 1 = 4 · Quota Q = 192,000 ÷ 4 = 48,000
  6. Whole seats: P ⌊2.0⌋=2, Q ⌊1.46⌋=1, R ⌊0.54⌋=0 (sum 3)
  7. 1 seat left → largest remainder R (26,000) gets +1
  8. Quota seats: P 2, Q 1, R 1 · add bonus to P
  9. Final: P 3, Q 1, R 1, S 0 → total 5 ✓

Boundary case: a group sitting exactly on 5%

  1. Votes: W 600,000 · X 350,000 · Y 50,000 (8-seat district)
  2. Total valid V = 1,000,000 → 5% cut-off T = 50,000
  3. Y has exactly 50,000 = 5% → qualifies (cut-off is 'less than 5%')
  4. Qualified votes Vq = 1,000,000 · Bonus seat → W (highest)
  5. Remaining seats = 8 − 1 = 7 · Quota Q = 1,000,000 ÷ 7 = 142,857.14
  6. Whole seats: W ⌊4.2⌋=4, X ⌊2.45⌋=2, Y ⌊0.35⌋=0 (sum 6)
  7. 1 seat left → largest remainder X (64,286) gets +1
  8. Quota seats: W 4, X 3, Y 0 · add bonus to W
  9. Final: W 5, X 3, Y 0 → total 8 ✓ (Y qualifies yet wins no seat)

Frequently asked questions

Sources & references

The allocation method and the 22-district seat magnitudes were last cross-checked against the Parliament of Sri Lanka electoral-system page and the Election Commission's gazetted apportionment on 2026-06-14. The two worked examples above reconcile by hand, and every run asserts the seat total equals the district's seat count.

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