Ki az „igazi” győztes? A választások néhány elméleti és gyakorlati aspektusa
Who is the real winner? Some theoretical and practical aspects of elections

Summary/Abstract: Voting is a widespread practice in the modern world’s democracies. The classification of electoral systems is not as self-evident as it may seem, because they can be categorized according to many different principles, so the choice of which one to highlight is to a great extent a matter of subjective judgment. District magnitude (the number of seats per district), voting for individual candidates or for party-lists, choosing the majority principle or proportional representation, and the proportionality of outcomes are just a few of the basic and well known criteria used to classify electoral systems. The first aim of this paper is to put forward a different and less known criterion for approaching and classifying electoral systems: the ballot structure (labelled after Douglas Rae), which seems to be one of the important dimensions of any electoral system, because it concerns whether voters can express their ranked preferences for candidates across political parties. The special effects of preferential voting systems on democracy and party systems can be monitored in the case of Australia. The second goal of this study therefore is an empirical analysis of Australian federal elections with their own peculiarities.

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