Question

In the united states, the legislative candidate with the greater number of votes wins the seat and the loser gets nothing. some european countries practice _____, in which small parties that win a certain number of votes can earn a few seats.

Answer 1

Proportional representation

In a system using proportional representation, rather than a single party winning and the other party gaining no representation, there are some legislative seats that are divided proportionally according to the percentage of votes won by each party in the election process.  Typically this is done in some sort of regional or super-district manner, since you can't vote for a single representative of a specific district and then divide that single seat proportionally.