First-past-the-post voting

A ballot paper for a first-past-the-post voting system, with the voter required to mark only one candidate

A first-past-the-post (abbreviated as FPTP, 1stP, 1PTP or FPP) voting method is one in which voters indicate on a ballot the candidate of their choice, and the candidate who receives most votes wins. First-past-the-post voting is one of several plurality voting methods. It is a common, but not universal, feature of electoral systems with single-member electoral divisions; in fact, first-past-the-post voting is widely practiced in close to one third of the world's countries. Some notable examples include the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, India and most of the colonies and protectorates either currently or formerly belonging to these countries.

Overview

Countries which use a first-past-the-post voting system

There is some confusion between highest vote, majority vote and plurality voting methods. All three use a first-past-the-post voting method, but there are subtle differences in the method of execution.[1] First-past-the-post voting is also used in two-round systems and some exhaustive ballots.

First-past-the-post voting methods can be used for single- and multiple-member electoral divisions. In a single-member election, the candidate with the highest number—not necessarily a majority—of votes is elected. The two-round ("runoff") voting method uses a first-past-the-post voting method in each of the two rounds. The first round determines which two candidates will progress to the second, final-round ballot.

In a multiple-member, first-past-the-post ballot, the highest-placed candidates—in order of highest vote, corresponding to the number of positions to be filled—are elected. If there are six vacancies, then the six candidates with the greatest numbers of votes are elected. A multiple-selection ballot, where more than one candidate can be voted for, is also a form of first-past-the-post voting, in which voters are allowed to cast a vote for as many candidates as there are vacant positions; the candidates with the highest number of votes are elected.

The Electoral Reform Society is a political pressure group based in the United Kingdom which advocates abolishing the first-past-the-post method (FPTP) for all national and local elections. It argues FPTP is "bad for voters, bad for government and bad for democracy". It is the oldest organisation concerned with electoral methods in the world.[2]

As of 2014, all U.S. states other than Maine and Nebraska use a winner-take-all form of simple plurality, first-past-the-post voting, to appoint the electors of the Electoral College. Under the typical method, the presidential candidate gaining the greatest number of votes wins all of the state's available electors, regardless of the number or share of votes won, or the difference separating the leading candidate and the first runner-up.[3]

Example

 Summary of the 27 August 2011 Singaporean presidential election results[4][5][6]
Candidate Symbol Results
Votes % of valid votes
Tony Tan Keng Yam 745,693 35.20
 
Tan Cheng Bock 738,311 34.85
 
Tan Jee Say 530,441 25.04
 
Tan Kin Lian 104,095 4.91
 
Valid votes 2,118,540 98.24% of total votes cast
Rejected votes 37,849 1.76% of total votes cast
Total votes cast 2,156,389 Voter turnout: 94.8% of electorate
Absent 118,384
Electorate 2,274,773

Under a first-past-the-post voting method the highest polling candidate (or a group of candidates for some cases) is elected. In this real-life example, Tony Tan obtained a greater number than the other candidates, and so was declared the winner, even though a majority of voters did not vote for him.

Effects

The effect of a system based on single-seat constituencies is that the larger parties gain a disproportionately large share of seats, while smaller parties are left with a disproportionately small share of seats. It is more likely that a single party will hold a majority of legislative seats. In the United Kingdom, 18 of the 23 general elections since 1922 have produced a single-party majority government. For example, the 2005 United Kingdom general election results in Great Britain are as follows:

Summary of the 5 May 2005 House of Commons of the United Kingdom election results (parties with more than one seat; not incl. N. Ireland)

 
Seats
This table indicates those parties with over one seat, Great Britain only		 Seats % Votes % Votes
Labour Party 35556.536.19,552,436
Conservative Party 19831.533.28,782,192
Liberal Democrats 629.922.65,985,454
Scottish National Party 61.01.6412,267
Plaid Cymru 30.50.7174,838
Others 40.65.71,523,716
628 26,430,908

It can be seen that Labour took a majority of the seats, 57%, with only 36% of the vote. The largest two parties took 69% of the vote and 88% of the seats. By contrast, the smaller Liberal Democrats party took more than a fifth of the vote but only about a tenth of the seats in parliament.

Another example would be the UK General Election held on 7 May 2015:

Party Leader Votes Seats Votes per Seat
Conservative Party David Cameron 11,334,920 (36.8%)
331 (50.9%)
331 / 650
 34,244
Labour Party Ed Miliband 9,344,328 (30.4%)
232 (35.7%)
232 / 650
 40,277
UK Independence Party Nigel Farage 3,881,129 (12.6%)
1 (0.2%)
1 / 650
 3,881,129
Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg 2,415,888 (7.9%)
8 (1.2%)
8 / 650
 301,986
Scottish National Party Nicola Sturgeon 1,454,436 (4.7%)
56 (8.6%)
56 / 650
 25,972
Green Party Natalie Bennett 1,154,562 (3.8%)
1 (0.2%)
1 / 650
 1,154,562
Democratic Unionist Party Peter Robinson 184,260 (0.6%)
8 (1.2%)
8 / 650
 23,033
Plaid Cymru Leanne Wood 181,694(0.6%)
3 (0.5%)
3 / 650
 60,565
Sinn Féin Gerry Adams 176,232 (0.6%)
4 (0.6%)
4 / 650
 44,058
Ulster Unionist Party Mike Nesbitt 114,935 (0.4%)
2 (0.3%)
2 / 650
 57,468
Social Democratic & Labour Party Alasdair McDonnell 99,809 (0.3%)
3 (0.5%)
3 / 650
 33,270

Here, the Conservatives took 51% of the seats with only 37% of the vote. More significantly, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP together had fewer votes than UKIP, but each gained more seats; with fewer votes, they together managed to win 64 times the number of UKIP seats in parliament. It should be noted that the Liberal Democrats also suffered under first-past-the-post, by winning only 1% of the seats on 8% of the national popular vote.

Benefits

The benefits of FPTP are that its concept is very easy to understand, and ballots can be easily counted and processed. Alternative methods such as rank-based voting require far more work or processing power to tabulate results than a single choice.

Supporters of FPTP argue that it is the electoral method providing the best governance. It trades fairness in representation for more responsible government. Its tendency to produce majority rule allows the government to pursue a consistent strategy for its term in office and to make decisions that may be both correct and unpopular.[7]

Tony Blair, defending FPTP, argued that other systems give small parties the balance of power, and influence disproportionate to their votes.[8]

Allowing people into parliament who did not finish first in their district was described by David Cameron as creating a "Parliament full of second-choices who no one really wanted but didn’t really object to either."[9] Winston Churchill criticized the alternative vote method as "determined by the most worthless votes given for the most worthless candidates."[10]

Criticisms

Tactical voting

To a greater extent than many other electoral methods, the first-past-the-post method encourages tactical voting. Voters have an incentive to vote for one of the candidates they predict are most likely to win, even if they would prefer neither candidate to win. A vote for any other candidate is considered to be likely wasted and bear no impact or benefit on the final result they would prefer.

The position is sometimes summarized, in an extreme form, as "all votes for anyone other than the runner-up are votes for the winner." This is because by voting for other candidates, they have denied those potential votes to the second-place candidate who could have won had they received them. Following the extremely close 2000 U.S. presidential election, some supporters of Democratic candidate Al Gore believe that one reason he lost the election to Republican George W. Bush is because a portion of the electorate (2.7%) voted for Ralph Nader of the Green Party, and exit polls indicated that more of these voters would have preferred Gore (45%) to Bush (27%), with the rest not voting in Nader's absence.[11] The argument for this case is even more pronounced because the election was ultimately decided on the basis of the election results in Florida where Bush prevailed over Gore by a margin of only 537 votes (0.009%), which was far exceeded by the number of votes, 97488 (1.635%), that Nader received.

In Puerto Rico, there are three principal voter groups: the Independentistas (pro-independence), the Populares (pro-commonwealth), and the Estadistas (pro-statehood). Historically, there has been a tendency for Independentista voters to elect Popular candidates and policies. This phenomenon is responsible for some Popular victories, even though the Estadistas have the most voters on the island. It is so widely recognised that the Puerto Ricans sometimes call the Independentistas who vote for the Populares "melons", because the fruit is green on the outside but red on the inside (in reference to the party colors).

Because voters have to predict in advance who the top two candidates will be, results can be significantly distorted:

Proponents of other single-winner voting methods argue that their proposals would reduce the need for tactical voting and reduce the spoiler effect. Examples include the commonly used two-round system of runoffs and instant runoff voting, along with less tested methods such as approval voting and Condorcet methods.

Effect on political parties

A graph showing the difference between the popular vote (inner circle) and the number of seats won by major political parties (outer circle) at the 2015 United Kingdom general election

Duverger's law is an idea in political science which says that constituencies that use first-past-the-post methods will lead to two-party systems, given enough time. Economist Jeffrey Sachs explains:

The main reason for America's majoritarian character is the electoral system for Congress. Members of Congress are elected in single-member districts according to the "first-past-the-post" (FPTP) principle, meaning that the candidate with the plurality of votes is the winner of the congressional seat. The losing party or parties win no representation at all. The first-past-the-post election tends to produce a small number of major parties, perhaps just two, a principle known in political science as Duverger's Law. Smaller parties are trampled in first-past-the-post elections.
— from Sachs's The Price of Civilization, 2011[12]

Duverger's law is rarely seen in reality, with most first-past-the-post elections resulting in multiparty legislatures, the United States being the major exception.[13][14] There is a counter-force to Duverger's Law, that while on the national level a plurality system may encourage two parties, in the individual constituencies supermajorities will lead to the vote fracturing.[15]

Wasted votes

Wasted votes are votes cast for losing candidates or votes cast for winning candidates in excess of the number required for victory. For example, in the UK general election of 2005, 52% of votes were cast for losing candidates and 18% were excess votes – a total of 70% wasted votes. This is perhaps the most fundamental criticism of FPTP, that a large majority of votes may play no part in determining the outcome. This "winner-takes-all" system may be one of the reasons why "voter participation tends to be lower in countries with FPTP than elsewhere."[16]

Gerrymandering

Because FPTP permits many wasted votes, an election under FPTP is easily gerrymandered. Through gerrymandering, constituencies are deliberately designed to unfairly increase the number of seats won by one party at the expense of another. For example, assume a hypothetical pair of parties called "Red" and "Blue". Red, the ruling party, redraws the constituency map such that blue has a small number of constituencies in which it has an overwhelming majority of votes, and a large number of constituencies where it is at a small disadvantage to Red. Red will then win a large number of constituencies by a small majority (FPTP), while many of Blue's votes will be "wasted" on getting individual large majorities (which have no practical benefit under FPTP) in a small number of constituencies.

Manipulation charges

The presence of spoilers often gives rise to suspicions that manipulation of the slate has taken place. A spoiler may have received incentives to run. A spoiler may also drop out at the last moment, inducing charges that such an act was intended from the beginning.

Smaller parties may reduce the success of the largest similar party

Under the first-past-the-post voting method, small parties may draw votes away from larger parties that they are most similar to, and therefore give an advantage to another large party that they are least similar to.

In comparison, for electoral systems using proportional representation small groups win only their proportional share of representation. However, in PR systems, small parties can become decisive in Parliament, thus gaining a power of blackmail against the Government—a problem which is generally reduced by the FPTP method, except for parties with a strong regional basis.[17][18]

Voting method criteria

Scholars rate voting methods using mathematically derived voting method criteria, which describe desirable features of a method. No ranked preference method can meet all of the criteria, because some of them are mutually exclusive, as shown by results such as Arrow's impossibility theorem and the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem.[19]

Majority criterion

Yes The majority criterion states that "if one candidate is preferred by a majority (more than 50%) of voters, then that candidate must win".[20] First-past-the-post meets this criterion (though not the converse: a candidate does not need 50% of the votes in order to win). Although the criterion is met for each constituency vote, it is not met when adding up the total votes for a winning party in a parliament.

Condorcet winner criterion

[21] The Condorcet winner criterion states that "if a candidate would win a head-to-head competition against every other candidate, then that candidate must win the overall election". First-past-the-post does not[21] meet this criterion.

Condorcet loser criterion

[21] The Condorcet loser criterion states that "if a candidate would lose a head-to-head competition against every other candidate, then that candidate must not win the overall election". First-past-the-post does not[21] meet this criterion.

Independence of irrelevant alternatives criterion

The independence of irrelevant alternatives criterion states that "the election outcome remains the same even if a candidate who cannot win decides to run." First-past-the-post does not meet this criterion.

Independence of clones criterion

The independence of clones criterion states that "the election outcome remains the same even if an identical candidate who is equally-preferred decides to run." First-past-the-post does not meet this criterion.

List of current FPTP countries

The following is a list of the countries currently following the first-past-the-post voting system.[22][23]

List of former FPTP countries

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Other uses

The Bahá'í Faith uses a form of multiple-member first-past-the-post voting among adult members to elect its governing councils at local, national, and international levels. Campaigning is prohibited.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "FairVote.org - Glossary". FairVote.
  2. ↑ "Electoral Reform Society History & Governance". Retrieved 23 October 2015.
  3. ↑ "U. S. Electoral College: Frequently Asked Questions". Retrieved 23 October 2015.
  4. ↑ Singapore Presidential Election 2011
  5. ↑ Presidential Elections Results. Singapore Elections Department. 28 August 2011.
  6. ↑ Polling Day Voter Turnout. Singapore Elections Department. 28 August 2011.
  7. ↑ Andy Williams (1998). UK Government & Politics. Heinemann. pp. 24–. ISBN 978-0-435-33158-0.
  8. ↑ P. Dorey (17 June 2008). The Labour Party and Constitutional Reform: A History of Constitutional Conservatism. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 400–. ISBN 978-0-230-59415-9.
  9. ↑ David Cameron. "Why keeping first past the post is vital for democracy." Daily Telegraph. 30 Apr 2011
  10. ↑ Larry Johnston (13 December 2011). Politics: An Introduction to the Modern Democratic State. University of Toronto Press. pp. 231–. ISBN 978-1-4426-0533-6.
  11. ↑ Rosenbaum, David E. (24 February 2004). "THE 2004 CAMPAIGN: THE INDEPENDENT; Relax, Nader Advises Alarmed Democrats, but the 2000 Math Counsels Otherwise". New York Times. Retrieved 8 May 2010.
  12. ↑ Sachs, Jeffrey (2011). The Price of Civilization. New York: Random House. p. 107. ISBN 978-1-4000-6841-8.
  13. ↑ Dunleavy, Patrick (18 June 2012). "Duverger's Law is a dead parrot. Outside the USA, first-past-the-post voting has no tendency at all to produce two party politics". blogs.lse.ac.uk.
  14. ↑ Dunleavy, Patrick; Diwakar, Rekha (2013). "Analysing multiparty competition in plurality rule elections" (PDF). Party Politics. 19 (6): 855–886. doi:10.1177/1354068811411026.
  15. ↑ Dickson, Eric S.; Scheve, Kenneth (2010). "Social Identity, Electoral Institutions and the Number of Candidates". British Journal of Political Science. 40 (2): 349–375. JSTOR 40649446. doi:10.1017/s0007123409990354.
  16. ↑ Drogus, Carol Ann (2008). Introducing comparative politics: concepts and cases in context. CQ Press. p. 257. ISBN 978-0-87289-343-6.
  17. ↑ Ilan, Shahar. "about blackmail power of Israeli small parties under PR". Haaretz.com. Retrieved 8 May 2010.
  18. ↑ "Dr.Mihaela Macavei, University of Alba Iulia." (PDF). Retrieved 8 May 2010.
  19. ↑ David Austen-Smith and Jeffrey Banks, "Monotonicity in Electoral Systems", American Political Science Review, Vol 85, No 2 (Jun. 1991)
  20. ↑ Single-winner Voting Method Comparison Chart "Majority Favorite Criterion: If a majority (more than 50%) of voters consider candidate A to be the best choice, then A should win."
  21. 1 2 3 4 Felsenthal, Dan S. (2010) Review of paradoxes afflicting various voting procedures where one out of m candidates (m ≥ 2) must be elected. In: Assessing Alternative Voting Procedures, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.
  22. ↑ "Countries using FPTP electoral system for national legislature". idea.int.
  23. ↑ "Electoral Systems". ACE Electoral Knowledge Network. Retrieved 2015-11-03.
  24. ↑ "Maine became the first state in the country Tuesday to pass ranked choice voting". 10 November 2016. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  25. ↑ Encarta-encyclopedie Winkler Prins (1993–2002) s.v. "Kiesstelsel. §1.1 Federale verkiezingen". Microsoft Corporation/Het Spectrum.
  26. ↑ Bhuwan Chandra Upreti (2010). Nepal: Transition to Democratic Republican State : 2008 Constituent Assembly. Gyan Publishing House. pp. 69–. ISBN 978-81-7835-774-4.
  27. ↑ Encarta-encyclopedie Winkler Prins (1993–2002) s.v. "Kiesstelsel. §1.1 Geschiedenis". Microsoft Corporation/Het Spectrum.
  28. ↑ "PNG voting system praised by new MP". ABC. 12 December 2003. Archived from the original on 4 January 2005. Retrieved 19 May 2015.

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