Nepal’s latest parliamentary election has produced one of the most disproportionate results in the country’s democratic history, with a large gap emerging between the share of votes received and the number of seats won.
In the first-past-the-post race for 165 seats in the House of Representatives, the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) secured 125 seats. The party won around 44.5 per cent of the total votes but ended up with nearly 76 per cent of the seats, highlighting a significant imbalance between voter support and parliamentary representation.
The outcome reflects the nature of the direct electoral system, where winning a constituency—even by a narrow margin—delivers the entire seat. As a result, parties with concentrated support can gain far more seats than their overall vote share might suggest.
The vote distribution shows how uneven the results were for different parties. While RSP needed roughly 37,000 votes on average to secure a seat, other major parties required far more. The Nepali Congress needed over 110,000 votes per seat, nearly three times more than RSP. The CPN-UML required around 180,000 votes per seat, and the Rastriya Prajatantra Party needed more than 206,000 votes to win one seat.
Political analysts often use the Gallagher Index to measure how proportional election results are. A score closer to zero indicates a balanced result, while a score above 15 suggests significant imbalance. According to early analysis, Nepal’s latest election recorded a score of about 24.5, the highest since the country adopted its current constitution.
In comparison, the 2017 election recorded a score of 20.5, while the 2022 election was relatively balanced with a score of 9.2.
Although the proportional representation seats are still to be fully allocated, analysts say the overall result already shows how the direct voting system can dramatically amplify the success of a single party.