Romania’s 2024 parliamentary election

Parliament by ID card: Romania’s 2024 deputies, shared among counties by the ID-card addresses of 1 January 2015

Ilfov, the county around Bucharest, has one deputy per 112,967 residents; Tulcea has one per 47,749. Each county’s number of deputies (308 home seats of 331) matches exactly, and only, how many people had their ID-card address there on 1 January 2015. The population by domicile, meaning by ID-card address, is 2.9 million higher than the number of people who live in Romania (INS, 1 January 2023).

● = one deputy

Each dot is a deputy#

The map shows the 308 deputies elected on 1 December 2024 in Romania’s 41 counties and in Bucharest, each in its own county. How many seats each county gets is written in an annex to Law 208/2015, the parliamentary election law.

Four more seats belong to Romanians living abroad, the group on the left of the map, and 19 to national minorities. In all, the Chamber has 331 deputies.

The count was made from ID cards, in January 2015#

The law gives one deputy per 73,000 inhabitants, plus one for a remainder above half that, with at least four per county. By “inhabitants” it means the population by domicile: people counted at the address in their identity card, wherever they actually live.

Applied to the figures of Romania’s National Institute of Statistics (INS) for every year from 2008 to 2026, the rule reproduces the annex exactly, in all 42 constituencies, only for 1 January 2015.

Counties that do not match the annex, by year of the figures

92008
709
610
411
412
313
214
02015
316
617
718
919
1220
1221
1422
1523
1424
1625
162026

0 = all 42 match

For 2024, the law called for 2023 figures#

The same law says seats are based on the population on 1 January of the year before a regular election. For the 2016 election that meant 2015. The annex was never changed afterwards, so the 2020 and 2024 elections ran on the same numbers.

On 2023 ID cards there would have been 301 deputies, not 308, and 15 constituencies would have had a different number: Iași and Ilfov with two more each, Bucharest with one more, while 12 counties would have had one fewer each. Dashed circles are missing seats; hollow dots are extra seats.

The ID-card population is 2.9 million higher than the number of people living in Romania#

Domicile is the address in the ID card, and INS says where a person actually lives plays no part in counting it. On 1 January 2023 Romania had 21,953,617 people by domicile and 19,055,228 by usual residence: the people who live in the country.

Counting the people who live in each county, the same rule would give 268 deputies, 40 fewer. Of those, 7 come from the old figures and 33 from the gap between ID-card addresses and where people live. Ilfov is the only county with more residents than ID-card addresses: its residents would give it 8 seats; it has 5.

The same 308 seats, shared by the people who live there#

If Parliament kept 308 home deputies but shared the seats by the people in each county, 13 constituencies would change. Ilfov would have 9 deputies instead of 5.

Călărași, Cluj, Dâmbovița and Timiș would gain one each. Brăila, Bucharest, Buzău, Caraș-Severin, Galați, Neamț, Vaslui and Vâlcea would lose one each.

How far each county is from the European rule#

The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s advisory body on constitutional and electoral law, recommends that a seat should represent no more than 10% above or below the average, and certainly not more than 15%, except in special circumstances: a concentrated minority or a thinly populated administrative unit. The distribution of seats must be reviewed at least every ten years.

Measured on the law’s own criterion, the 2023 ID-card population, a deputy from Ilfov represents 39% more people than the average, and one from Iași 16% more. Tulcea, Covasna and Sălaj are below −15% because of the legal minimum of four deputies: without it they would have three each. The Code allows exceptions for thinly populated units, but does not say whether a minimum of four qualifies. Counting the people who live there, Ilfov’s gap reaches +83%, and Caraș-Severin, which has five deputies, is at −21%.

At the 2024 election the annex’s figures were 9.9 years old. If the annex stays as it is, the next regular election, due in 2028, would run on figures almost 14 years old.

below −15%: too many deputies−15…−10%±10%+10…+15%above +15%: too few deputies

Romanians abroad: 4 deputies for 775,509 votes#

Romanians abroad cast 775,509 votes for the Chamber of Deputies, or 193,877 per deputy. In Tulcea it was 20,017 per deputy, 9.7 times fewer. There is no counted population of Romanians abroad, so votes are the only common measure.

If all 312 seats were shared by the votes cast in 2024, Romanians abroad would have 25 deputies. The number depends on turnout, so another election would give another result.

Your county’s deputies#

Choose a county on the map or from the list. The buttons above the map change the count.

County

Does this change how many seats each party wins?#

Parties win seats in two stages. First, in each constituency, every party above the electoral threshold takes one seat for every whole “quota” of votes. The votes left over in all 43 constituencies are then pooled nationally and shared out among the parties. That is how 124 of the 312 seats were allocated in 2024.

So a vote cast in Ilfov or abroad still counts towards its party even where the constituency has too few deputies. What the annex decides is how many deputies come from your county, and how many people each of them represents.

The Senate: the same annex#

Senators are shared out the same way, one per 168,000 inhabitants with at least two per county. Their numbers also match the ID-card population of 1 January 2015, but equally that of 2012–2016, so on their own they could not date the annex. On 2023 ID cards, 7 counties would have a different number of senators: Iași, Ilfov, Suceava and Timiș one more each; Constanța, Mureș and Olt one fewer each.

Why the seats were never updated#

The law contains two provisions that do not fit together. Article 5 calls for the population on 1 January of the year before an election, while the same article says the number of seats is the one in the annex. The annex is part of the law, so only another law can change it.

After the 2020 election, the OSCE/ODIHR assessment mission recommended recalculating the seats before every election, as the law requires. The bills filed in the Senate in 2020 and 2022 dealt only with the seats of Romanians abroad; neither recalculated the counties’ seats. Also in 2020, an emergency ordinance doubled the seats abroad to 8 deputies and 4 senators, but the Constitutional Court struck the whole ordinance down (Decision 150/2020), and the old annex stayed.

A bill from March 2025 that would set the seats per constituency anew (L117/2025) was rejected by the Senate in June 2025 and went to the Chamber of Deputies, which has the final say. On the official legislation portal, the law’s latest amendment took effect in October 2024 and touches neither article 5 nor the annex (checked on 30 October 2026).

How many people one deputy represents, county by county#

Residents are people usually resident in the county on 1 January 2023 (INS). Votes are those cast for the Chamber of Deputies on 1 December 2024 (AEP).

Constituency	Deputies	Residents	Residents per deputy	Gap from average (residents)	On 2023 ID cards	Same 308, by residents	Votes per deputy
Ilfov	5	564,833	112,967	+83%	7	9	46,732
Călărași	4	280,468	70,117	+13%	4	5	28,180
Cluj	10	688,844	68,884	+11%	10	11	33,871
Dâmbovița	7	477,197	68,171	+10%	7	8	29,374
Vrancea	5	333,154	66,631	+8%	5	5	27,901
Satu Mare	5	330,662	66,132	+7%	5	5	28,196
Timiș	10	658,515	65,852	+6%	10	11	30,851
Sibiu	6	391,433	65,239	+5%	6	6	30,481
Alba	5	325,838	65,168	+5%	5	5	31,954
Botoșani	6	389,815	64,969	+5%	6	6	25,567
Mureș	8	519,395	64,924	+5%	8	8	29,868
Giurgiu	4	258,751	64,688	+5%	4	4	27,073
Maramureș	7	451,728	64,533	+4%	7	7	26,587
Iași	12	774,025	64,502	+4%	14	12	27,481
Suceava	10	642,275	64,228	+4%	10	10	27,201
Teleorman	5	318,043	63,609	+3%	5	5	27,502
Olt	6	378,567	63,095	+2%	6	6	30,614
Argeș	9	565,747	62,861	+2%	8	9	30,265
Prahova	11	691,246	62,841	+2%	10	11	28,691
Ialomița	4	249,852	62,463	+1%	4	4	23,321
Gorj	5	311,301	62,260	+1%	5	5	29,985
Bihor	9	554,016	61,557	−0%	8	9	31,297
Brașov	9	552,813	61,424	−1%	9	9	29,322
Dolj	10	599,631	59,963	−3%	9	10	28,107
Bacău	10	597,504	59,750	−3%	10	10	24,602
Constanța	11	657,055	59,732	−3%	10	11	26,572
Hunedoara	6	357,563	59,594	−4%	6	6	29,748
Bucharest	29	1,724,966	59,482	−4%	30	28	30,033
Bistrița-Năsăud	5	296,140	59,228	−4%	4	5	24,912
Arad	7	410,451	58,636	−5%	6	7	26,273
Harghita	5	291,810	58,362	−6%	4	5	31,005
Mehedinți	4	231,398	57,850	−6%	4	4	28,771
Buzău	7	400,823	57,260	−7%	6	6	26,889
Vâlcea	6	340,914	56,819	−8%	5	5	26,407
Neamț	8	449,345	56,168	−9%	8	7	24,399
Brăila	5	277,021	55,404	−10%	4	4	25,568
Galați	9	494,280	54,920	−11%	9	8	24,723
Vaslui	7	371,464	53,066	−14%	7	6	20,122
Sălaj	4	210,652	52,663	−15%	4	4	25,995
Covasna	4	199,795	49,949	−19%	4	4	24,098
Caraș-Severin	5	244,904	48,981	−21%	4	4	21,889
Tulcea	4	190,994	47,749	−23%	4	4	20,017
Romanians abroad	4	–	–	–	–	–	193,877

How this was calculated, and what it does not show#

Seats are those in Annex 1 of Law 208/2015, identical in the 2015 text and in the consolidated text AEP published in October 2024. The article 5 rule was applied to the population by domicile published by INS (table POP107D) for every year from 2008 to 2026; the 2015 figures are those INS publishes today for that year.

“The people who live there” are the usually-resident population on 1 January 2023 (INS, POP105A), the same date as the domicile population used for comparison. It includes foreign citizens living in Romania, and the gap from the ID-card count cannot be split by cause: some of it is people who emigrated, some people who moved to another county without changing their ID card.

For “the same 308 seats”, seats were shared in proportion by the largest-remainder method, keeping the legal minimum of four per county. The share by votes uses every vote cast for the Chamber of Deputies, including abroad, again with the minimum of four, and depends on turnout; without the minimum, Romanians abroad would get 26 seats rather than 25.

These numbers show how many deputies each constituency has and how many people each represents. They do not show what a vote is worth to the parties: part of the seats is shared out nationally, from votes pooled across the country and abroad.