Social Studies I

The British Electoral System

UK General Election System

The UK General Elections are held when Parliament is dissolved by the Queen of the UK and the Commonwealth, and all seats in
the House of Commons, become vacant. It is the Prime Minister - who is in charge of the ruling party - that has to call for a general
election and must do so at least every five years. There are 650 seats in the House of Commons and each one is won in a
constituency, which is a certain geographical location in the UK, usually a city or town. Each voter has one vote for a candidate who
is either standing with a party or independently. The candidate with the most amount of votes grabs the seat and becomes the
Member of Parliament (MP) for that constituency.

The UK uses a system called 'first past the post’ whereby the party which gains the most amount of seats is declared the winner.
However the winning party needs to gain an overall majority of over 50% of the votes to avoid a hung parliament. With 650 seats in
the House of Commons it would need to get 326 seats to prevent this. In a hung parliament the party that ends up in power will not
be able to pass laws without the support of other parties. The governing party would then either need to form a coalition with
smaller parties or run as a minority party or negotiate with the smaller parties in order to get laws passed. Crucially under the 'first
past the post' system the party with the most votes can end up losing the election. This happened in the general election in 2005
when the Conservatives got the majority of the votes but Labour won. There have been calls to replace this system with
‘proportional representation’ in which seats are won depending on the proportion of votes received.

By –elections are held in addition to the General Elections and occur when a seat in the House of Commons becomes vacant.
Since 2005 there have been 16 held. Unlike in some countries like the US where there is a limit on the number of terms someone
can serve as leader there is no such limit in the UK. Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher served three terms as Prime Minister
of the UK over a 12 year period.

The First Past the Post System Determines the House of Commons

Houses of Parliament - Wikimedia Commons - Arpingstone

The electoral system used through Britain is the single member constituency with simple majority, better known as the First Past
the Post system.

The Mechanics of First Past the Post

For the purposes of general elections, Britain is divided up into single constituencies. Each party who wises to contest the
constituency (also known as a seat) must put forward one candidate or representative to stand. Each voter in the constituency then
has one vote which they can cast for the candidate or representative of their choice. The candidate with the largest number of votes
is elected as the Member of Parliament for that constituency. The party which has the greatest number of elected Members of
Parliament then generally forms the government.

The Advantages of the System

As far as electoral systems go, the First Past the Post system is relatively simple and easy for voters to understand. It is also an
inexpensive system to run and its simplicity means that a result can be produced fairly quickly. Since each constituency elects only
one representative, that person is easily identified with a particular area and voters know who to approach when they have a
problem. The First Past the Post system tends to lead to one party gaining a majority in the House of Commons and so voters
know which party will form the government and so what policies to expect.

The Disadvantages of First Past the Post

The First Past the Post system is a far from perfect electoral system and, in fact, 5 main disadvantages can be identified:

1. Since the winning candidate needs only to secure a simple majority, it is possible that more people in total may have voted for
other candidates than the winner.

2. A party which regularly comes second or third in the constituency votes but that wins very few outright can find themselves with a
very high percentage of the total vote but relatively few seats.

3. It is theoretically possible that the party which forms the government may actually have won fewer total votes that their nearest
rival.

4. Since there is no uniform number of voters in a constituency, the winner in a small constituency can have received fewer votes
than the runner up in a larger constituency.

5. A number of constituencies are considered ‘safe’ for particular parties. In such cases, voters who do not support the dominant
party may feel that there is no point voting at all.
It is important to remember that all electoral systems have some disadvantages and in Britain, where tradition has dictated the use
of the First Past the Post system, the advantages of the current system are thought to outweigh the disadvantages.

References:

McLean, I. and McMillan, A. (2003) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (2nd Rev Ed.) (Oxford University Press)

Jones, B. et al (2006) Politics UK (6th Ed.) (Longman)

Kingdom, J. (2003) Government and Politics in Britain: An Introduction (3rd Ed.) (Polity Press)

Electoral Reform

On Feb.9, 2010, M.P.s voted 365 to 187 in favour of holding a referendum on changing Britain’s voting system from first-past-the-
post to an alternative vote. Under AV an M.P. would have to get 50 per cent of the first preference votes to win the seat, if this
doesn’t happen then second preference votes are counted and so on until a candidate has won half the votes. Critics of the system
complain that it can lead to the second place candidate in the first count being the outright winner after counting up the second
preferences and therefore is not a more democratic system. Proponents of the system herald a new era of politics where there will
be no safe seats and parties like the Liberal Democrats and Greens who have been unfairly represented in past elections will
benefit. In the 1983 general election with a 72 per cent turn out, the Liberal/S.D.P Alliance polled third with 26.36 per cent of the
vote. This was just 0.58 per cent less than Labour votes but translated into 13 seats to Labour’s 148.

What Is Alternative Voting?

Under the First Past The Post system, in each local electoral area (constituency) the candidate who wins the most votes wins the
right to represent the area. This means that the winner will have the most support in their local area, but across the country as a
whole a political party can win large amounts of support without seeing much return in terms of representative power.

Alternative Vote changes the system so that instead of voting for a single candidate, the voter lists their preferences in order. If no
candidate wins a clear majority of votes in the constituency, then the second-choice votes of each voter are brought into
consideration, and then the third-choices, until a clear winner is determined.