First-Past-the-Post

First-Past-the-Post

1. What is it?

   • First Past the Post is the voting system used for the election of MPs to 'seats' in the UK Parliament. The candidates who wins the most votes wins and becomes the MP for the constituency. There are 650 constituencies in the UK, each electing one MP. The party which wins over 325 of the constituencies has an overall majority and becomes the Government
     • This means that a candidate in a constituency only needs one more vote than the nearest rival to win the seat. Similarly, political parties only need to win one more seat in the House of Commons to have a majority. FPTP is used in UK General elections.
   • Used in UK General elections

2. Advantages

   • It is simple; FPTP can be summed up in one sentence- the candidate who gets the most votes wins. Other systems are a confusing mess of preferences and probabilities
   • It is efficient. It’s cheap to administer and comes with little bureaucracy. Other voting systems are more complex and will involve additional costs explaining the system and counting votes
   • FPTP prevents extremist parties like the BNP from winning seats in the House of Commons
   • FPTP is a part of British history
   • Two centuries ago, voting was limited to a privileged few. Generations of campaigners fought and died to change that. Their struggles give us the principles that lies at the heart of our democracy: we are all equal, therefore we all have an equal say in the polls
   • One person has one vote
   • FPTP has worked for years. According to the former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, ‘ “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is one of the oldest sayings in the book, and it has never been more apt than over these unnecessary plans to change the voting system’
   • FPTP has created a political system that is essentially stable as politics is dominated by just two parties. The chaos of the political system of Israel (Regional list- but the whole country is treated as one region) and Italy (Regional List) is avoided
   • First Past the Post also allows the nation to get rid of a government they don’t like. In 2010, the Conservative manifesto declared: ‘We support the first-past-the-post system… because it gives voters a chance to kick out a government they are fed with.’ This happened in 1945, 64, 79, 97 and 2010. FPTP is very efficient at delivering ‘rough justice’. Election Day is, in the words of the philosopher Sir Karl Popper, ‘judgement day’
   • FPTP usually provides strong one-party government which is accountable to the electorate. Other electoral systems, particularly Proportional Representation, make a coalition more likely. Coalitions are undemocratic because they are based on ‘behind closed doors’ policy compromises which have never been voted on by the electorate
   • Gives governments a mandate to govern
   • Governments can be held accountable for their mistakes

3. Disadvantages

   • With FPTP many votes are wasted. Wasted votes are votes for losing candidates or votes cast for winning candidates in excess of the number required for victory- a vote counts for nothing if a person does not vote for the ‘winner’ in their constituency. For example, in the UK General election of 2005, 52% of votes were cast for loosing candidates and 18% were excess votes- a total of 70% wasted votes. In 2010 the figure was 71.1%. This is perhaps the most fundamental criticism of FPTP, that a large majority of votes may play no part in determining the outcome
   • Tactical voting is supporting a party that is not a voter’s first choice but which is thought to have a better chance of victory in a particular constituency. Dr Stephen Fisher (Oxford University) believes the power if tactical voting is very strong. He estimates that in 2010 up to 9% of voters voted tactically, influencing the results of about 45 seats in the process: ‘It happens primarily when the third-placed party is quite far behind the top two, which tends to be the case in the marginal seats’. What’s more, according to John Curtice (University of Strathclyde): “In 1997, in particular, it (tactical voting) occurred on a very wide scale, typically being worth as much as 3% of the vote to the Labour party in seats it was trying to win from the Conservatives.’
   • With FPTP the number of seats won by the parties does not reflect the number of votes cast by them. For example, in 2015, UKIP won 12.6% of the vote and just a single seat. Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats 7.9% and eight seats. Clearly, people’s votes bear little relation to the number of seats won. This is generally due to the geographical distribution of a party’s support. FPTP penalises parties whose support is spread evenly across the country. UKIP polled 900,000 votes in 2010, but because its vote was geographically spread out, it didn’t come close to winning a seat
   • FPTP works to the advantage of parties whose support is concentrated in certain areas but may be weaker in other parts of the country. Such a party will win more seats than a party whose nationwide support is spread more uniformly
   • FPTP severely restricts voter choice. Parties are coalitions of many different viewpoints. If the preferred-party candidate in your constituency has views which you don’t agree, you don’t have a means of saying this at the ballot box
   • As seen in the 2017 general election, May’s failure to win a majority resulted in a hung parliament. Alex Salmond has referred to a hung parliament as a ‘people’s parliament’, however it is the complete opposite: it is a politician’s parliament. Policy is the result of post-election bargaining. The people do not get a look in. Compromises are reached which bear no relationship to what electors want, which were never placed before them, and which they may have an opportunity to pass judgement on at the next election if parties stand
   • FPTP works best when there are just two main parties, and the minor parties only secure a very small proportion of the vote. During the 1950s, the Conservatives and Labour always won at least 94% of the vote between them, and the Liberals never got more than 6%. But since 1983, the Liberals have never gained less than 18% of the vote. Only in 2017 did the percentage of people voting for either Labour or Conservative go up
   • Safe seats are the 21st century’s rotten boroughs and the situation is so bad in Britain that on average seats last changed hands between parties in the 1960s, with some super safe seats having remained firmly in one-party control since Queen Victoria’s reign.

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