What is First-Past-the-Post?

Also known as:

• Simple majority voting. A simple majority simply means more than half the votes cast. However, since very few candidates in FPTP elections with more than two candidates achieve this, majority should be read to mean 'relative majority', rather than 'absolute majority'.
• Plurality voting. Another name for simple majority.
• Furthest past the post. Recognising that the candidate with the most votes almost never has more than 50 per cent of the votes cast, some people have suggested that thinking of the post as a starting point rather than a finishing point is more sensible and thus that 'Furthest past the post' is a more accurate name.
• Winner-takes-all, because the winner does, take all.

Real-world application of FPTP

Alternative methods of FPTP

Arguments used in support of FPTP

• It's simple to understand and thus doesn't cost much to administer and doesn't alienate people who can't count.
• It doesn't take very long to count all the votes and work out who's won, meaning results can be declared a handful of hours after polls close.
• The voter can clearly express a view on which party they think should form the next government.
• It tends to produce a two-party system (see Duverger's Law), which in turn tends to produce single-party governments, which don't have to rely on support from other parties to pass legislation.
• It encourages 'broad-church' centrist policies.
• There is a close geographical link between voters and their member of parliament.
• People are often fearful of change and slow to adapt, thus as we've got it now, so we may as well keep it.
• Election spending is geared towards only a small portion of the country, keeping costs down for our cash-strapped parties.

Arguments used against FPTP

• Representatives can get elected on tiny amounts of public support. In 2005, for example, George Galloway polled the votes of only 18.4 per cent of his constituents, yet ended up in the House of Commons. Only three MPs elected in 2005 secured the votes of more than 40 per cent of their constituents.
• It encourages tactical voting, as voters vote not for the candidate they most prefer, but against the candidate they most dislike.
• FPTP in effect wastes huge numbers of votes, as votes cast in a constituency for losing candidates, or for the winning candidate above the level they need to win that seat, count for nothing. In 2005, 70 per cent of votes were wasted in this way – that's over 19 million ballots.
• FPTP severely restricts voter choice. Parties are coalitions of many different viewpoints. If the preferred-party candidate in your constituency has views with which you don't agree, you don't have a means of saying so at the ballot box.
• Rather than allocating seats in line with actual support, FPTP rewards parties with 'lumpy' support, i.e. with just enough votes to win in each particular area. Thus, losing 4,000 votes in one area can be a good idea if it means you pick up 400 votes in another. With smaller parties, this works in favour of those with centralised support. For example, at the 2005 general election, the DUP won nine seats on 0.9 per cent of the vote, yet the Greens won no seats, despite polling almost 16,000 more votes than the DUP.
• With relatively small constituency sizes, the way boundaries are drawn can have important effects on the election result, which encourages attempts at gerrymandering.
• Small constituencies also lead to a proliferation of safe seats, where the same party is all but guaranteed re-election at each election. This not only in effect disenfranchises a region's voters, but it leads to these areas being ignored when it comes to framing policy.
• If large areas of the country are electoral deserts for a particular party, not only is the area ignored by that party, but also ambitious politicians from the area have to move away from their homeland if they want to have influence within their party.
• FPTP rewards organised minorities, deals ineffectively with the most disliked parties, ignores (and thus fails to deal with) views that don't look like challenging at the polls and can make certain areas feel neglected by the big political parties. It is therefore the only electoral system in use in the UK to have elected representatives from extremist parties. A party can be despised by 49 per cent of an electorate and still win.
• Encouraging two-party politics can be an advantage, but in a multi-party culture, third parties with significant support can be greatly disadvantaged. In the 1983 general election, the Liberal SDP alliance won 25 of the vote, but gained only 3 per cent of the seats.
• Because FPTP restricts a constituency's choice of candidates, representation of minorities and women suffers from 'most broadly acceptable candidate syndrome', where the 'safest' looking candidate is the most likely to be offered a chance to stand for election.

Other things to consider

ERS Policy on FPTP

The UK General Election of 5 May 2005: Report and Analysis