First-past-the-post voting

In a first-past-the-post (FPTP or FPP; sometimes formally called single-member plurality voting or SMP) electoral system, voters cast their vote for a candidate of their choice, and the candidate who receives the most votes wins, even if they received less than half of the votes. FPTP is a plurality voting method, and is primarily used in systems that use single-member electoral divisions.

The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the English-speaking world and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (December 2019)

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Most modern democracies use forms of proportional representation (PR). However FPTP is still used in about a quarter of the world's countries, mostly in the English-speaking world (the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Canada and other countries in the British Commonwealth). The ACE Electoral Knowledge Network describes India's use of FPTP as a "legacy of British colonialism".[1] FPTP is also used in Belarus.[2][3] FPTP was used in South Africa during the apartheid era; however the country switched to PR at the end of apartheid.[4][5][6]

FPTP can be used for single- and multiple-member electoral divisions. In a single-member election, the candidate with the highest number (but not necessarily a majority) of votes is elected. In a multiple-member election (or multiple-selection ballot), each voter casts (up to) the same number of votes as there are positions to be filled, and those elected are the highest-placed candidates corresponding to that number of positions. For example, if there are three vacancies, then voters cast up to three votes and the three candidates with the greatest number of votes are elected.

The Electoral Reform Society is an independent campaigning organisation based in the United Kingdom that advocates abolishing FPTP for all 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.

In the US, 48 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia use FPTP to choose the electors of the Electoral College (which in turn elects the president); Maine and Nebraska use a variation where the electoral vote of each congressional district is awarded by FPTP, and the statewide winner is awarded an additional two electoral votes. In states that employ FPTP, the presidential candidate gaining the greatest number of votes wins all the state's available electors (seats), regardless of the number or share of votes won, or the difference separating the leading candidate and the first runner-up.[7]

The multiple-round election (runoff) voting method uses the FPTP voting method in each of two rounds. The first round, held according to Block Voting rules, determines which candidates may progress to the second and final round.

Illustration

Under a first-past-the-post voting method, the highest polling candidate is elected. In this real-life illustration from 2011, Tony Tan obtained a greater number of votes than any of the other candidates. Therefore, he was declared the winner, although the second-placed candidate had an inferior margin of only 0.35% and a majority of voters (64.8%) did not vote for Tony Tan:

e • d Summary of the 27 August 2011 Singaporean presidential election results[8][9][10]

Candidate	Symbol	Results
		Votes	% of valid votes
Tony Tan		745,693	35.20
Tan Cheng Bock		738,311	34.85
Tan Jee Say		530,441	25.04
Tan Kin Lian (Loses deposit)		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

Effects

The effect of a system based on plurality voting spread over a number of separate districts is that the larger parties, and parties with more geographically concentrated support, gain a disproportionately large share of seats, while smaller parties with more evenly distributed support gain a disproportionately small share. It is more likely that a single party will hold a majority of legislative seats. In the United Kingdom, 19 of the 24 general elections since 1922 have produced a single-party majority government; for example, the 2005 general election results were as follows:

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

In this example, Labour took a majority of the seats with only 36% of the vote. The largest two parties took 69% of the vote and 88% of the seats. In contrast, the Liberal Democrats took more than 20% of the vote but only about 10% of the seats. FPTP wastes less votes when it is used in two-party contests.

Waste of votes and minority governments are more likely when large groups of voters vote for three, four or more parties as in Canadian elections. Canada uses FPTP and only two of the last six federal Canadian elections produced single-party majority governments.

Purported benefits

The neutrality of this section is disputed. (July 2020)

Supporters of FPTP argue that its concept is easy to understand, and ballots can more easily be counted and processed than those in preferential voting systems. ^{[citation needed]} However, in practice, tactical voting considerations can make it difficult for voters because they may have to guess which candidate has the best chance of winning.

FPTP often produces governments which have legislative voting majorities[11], thus providing such governments the legislative power necessary to implement their electoral manifesto commitments during their term in office. This may be beneficial for the country in question in circumstances where the government's legislative agenda has broad public support (albeit potentially divided across party lines), or at least benefits society as a whole. However handing a legislative voting majority to a government which lacks popular support can be problematic where said government's policies favour only that fraction of the electorate that supported it (particularly if the electorate divides on tribal, religious or urban/rural lines).

Supporters of FPTP also argue that the use of proportional representation (PR) may enable smaller parties to become decisive in the country's legislature and gain leverage they wouldn’t otherwise enjoy. They argue that FPTP generally reduces this possibility, except where parties have a strong regional basis. However, the recent experience in the United Kingdom would suggest that small single-issue parties can exploit FPTP, as discussed below. A journalist at Haaretz noted that Israel's highly proportional Knesset "affords great power to relatively small parties, forcing the government to give in to political blackmail and to reach compromises;"[12][13] However this is more a criticism of Israel's implementation of PR (which is unusual in having a whole-country party-list system, which facilitates tiny parties) rather than the multi-member (or additional member), multiple-constituency model which is used successfully in many liberal democracies.

Criticisms

Unrepresentative

FPTP is most often criticized for its failure to reflect the popular vote in the number of parliamentary/legislative seats awarded to competing parties. Critics argue that a fundamental requirement of an election system is to accurately represent the views of voters, but FPTP often fails in this respect. It often creates "false majorities" by over-representing larger parties (giving a majority of the parliamentary/legislative seats to a party that did not receive a majority of the votes) while under-representing smaller ones. The diagram here, summarizing Canada's 2015 federal election, demonstrates how FPTP can misrepresent the popular vote.

Geographical problems

Geographical favouritism

Generally FPTP favours parties who can concentrate their vote into certain voting districts (or in a wider sense in specific geographic areas). This is because in doing this they win many seats and don't 'waste' many votes in other areas.

The British Electoral Reform Society (ERS) says that regional parties benefit from this system. "With a geographical base, parties that are small UK-wide can still do very well".[14]

On the other hand, minor parties that do not concentrate their vote usually end up getting a much lower proportion of seats than votes, as they lose most of the seats they contest and 'waste' most of their votes.[15]

The ERS also says that in FPTP elections using many separate districts "small parties without a geographical base find it hard to win seats".[14]

Make Votes Matter said that in the 2017 UK general election, "the Green Party, Liberal Democrats and UKIP (minor, non-regional parties) received 11% of votes between them, yet they shared just 2% of seats", and in the 2015 UK general election, "[t]he same three parties received almost a quarter of all the votes cast, yet these parties shared just 1.5% of seats."[16]

According to Make Votes Matter, and shown in the chart below,[17] in the 2015 UK general election UKIP came in third in terms of number of votes (3.9 million/12.6%), but gained only one seat in Parliament, resulting in one seat per 3.9 million votes. The Conservatives on the other hand received one seat per 34,000 votes.[16]

Distorted Geographical Representation

The winner-takes-all nature of FPTP leads to distorted patterns of representation, since it exaggerates the correlation between party support and geography.

For example, in the UK the Conservative Party represents most of the rural seats in England, and most of the south of England, while the Labour Party represents most of the English cities and most of the north of England. This pattern hides the large number of votes for the non-dominant party. Parties can find themselves without elected politicians in significant parts of the country, heightening feelings of regionalism. Party supporters (who may nevertheless be a significant minority) in those sections of the country are unrepresented.

In the 2019 Canadian election Conservatives won 98 percent of the seats in Alberta/Saskatchewan with only 68 percent of the vote. All but Conservatives are pretty much unrepresented; the general appearance is that all residents of those two provinces are Conservative, which is an exaggeration.[18]

Tactical voting

To a greater extent than many others, the first-past-the-post method encourages "tactical voting". Voters have an incentive to vote for a candidate who they predict is more likely to win, in preference to their preferred candidate who may be unlikely to win and for whom a vote could be considered as wasted.

The position is sometimes summarised, in an extreme form, as "all votes for anyone other than the runner-up are votes for the winner."[19] This is because votes for these other candidates deny potential support from the second-placed candidate, who might otherwise have won. Following the extremely close 2000 U.S. presidential election, some supporters of Democratic candidate Al Gore believed one reason he lost 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 them would have preferred Gore (45%) to Bush (27%).[20] This election was ultimately determined by the results from Florida, where Bush prevailed over Gore by a margin of only 537 votes (0.009%), which was far exceeded by the 97488 (1.635%) votes cast for Nader in that state.

In Puerto Rico, there has been a tendency for Independentista voters to support Populares candidates. This phenomenon is responsible for some Popular victories, even though the Estadistas have the most voters on the island, and is so widely recognised that Puerto Ricans sometimes call the Independentistas who vote for the Populares "melons", because that 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:

• Some voters will vote based on their view of how others will vote as well, changing their originally intended vote;
• Substantial power is given to the media, because some voters will believe its assertions as to who the leading contenders are likely to be. Even voters who distrust the media will know that others do believe the media, and therefore those candidates who receive the most media attention will probably be the most popular;
• A new candidate with no track record, who might otherwise be supported by the majority of voters, may be considered unlikely to be one of the top two, and thus lose votes to tactical voting;
• The method may promote votes against as opposed to votes for. For example, in the UK (and only in the Great Britain region), entire campaigns have been organised with the aim of voting against the Conservative Party by voting Labour, Liberal Democrat in England and Wales, and since 2015 the SNP in Scotland, depending on which is seen as best placed to win in each locality. Such behaviour is difficult to measure objectively.

Proponents of other voting methods in single-member districts argue that these would reduce the need for tactical voting and reduce the spoiler effect. Examples include preferential voting systems, such as instant runoff voting, as well as the two-round system of runoffs and less tested methods such as approval voting and Condorcet methods.

Effect on political parties

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[21]

However, most countries with first-past-the-post elections have multiparty legislatures, the United States being the major exception.[22][23]

There is a counter-argument 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.[24]

It has been suggested that the distortions in geographical representation provide incentives for parties to ignore the interests of areas in which they are too weak to stand much chance of gaining representation, leading to governments that do not govern in the national interest. Further, during election campaigns the campaigning activity of parties tends to focus on marginal seats where there is a prospect of a change in representation, leaving safer areas excluded from participation in an active campaign.[25] Political parties operate by targeting districts, directing their activists and policy proposals toward those areas considered to be marginal, where each additional vote has more value.[26][27][15]

Wasted votes

Wasted votes are seen as those cast for losing candidates, and 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. On this basis 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."[28]

Gerrymandering

Because FPTP permits many wasted votes, an election under FPTP is more easily gerrymandered. Through gerrymandering, electoral areas are designed deliberately to unfairly increase the number of seats won by one party, by redrawing the map such that one party has a small number of districts in which it has an overwhelming majority of votes, and many districts where it is at a smaller disadvantage.

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 dropping out had been intended from the beginning.

Smaller parties may reduce the success of the largest similar party

This section may contain excessive or inappropriate references to self-published sources. (June 2020)

Under first-past-the-post, a small party may draw votes and seats away from a larger party that it is more similar to, and therefore give an advantage to one it is less similar to.[29]^{[better source needed]}

Safe seats

First-past-the-post within geographical areas tends to deliver (particularly to larger parties) a significant number of safe seats, where a representative is sheltered from any but the most dramatic change in voting behaviour. In the UK, the Electoral Reform Society estimates that more than half the seats can be considered as safe.[30] It has been claimed that members involved in the 2009 expenses scandal were significantly more likely to hold a safe seat.[31][32]

However, other voting systems, notably the party-list system, can also create politicians who are relatively immune from electoral pressure.

Vulnerability to manipulation by single-issue parties

Small, single-issue political parties may be able to pressurise larger parties into adopting their policy by threatening to run against the larger party (or agreeing not to run against them) in elections in marginal constituencies.[33] This technique relies on the fact that first past the post is a "winner take all" voting system, and therefore, in marginal constituencies, the larger parties may be electorally incentivised to campaign on populist policies which they might not otherwise wish to endorse.[34]

May abet extreme politics

The Constitution Society published a report in April 2019 stating that, "[in certain circumstances] FPTP can .. abet extreme politics, since should a radical faction gain control of one of the major political parties, FPTP works to preserve that party’s position....This is because the psychological effect of the plurality system disincentivises a major party’s supporters from voting for a minor party in protest at its policies, since to do so would likely only help the major party’s main rival. Rather than curtailing extreme voices, FPTP today empowers the (relatively) extreme voices of the Labour and Conservative party memberships."[35][36]

Electoral reform campaigners have argued that the use of FPTP in South Africa was a contributory factor in the country adopting the apartheid system after the 1948 general election in that country.[37][38]

Representation versus "winners" and "losers"

First past the post encourages voters to think in terms of "winners" and "losers", whereas the true purpose of democracy is representation. In countries using first past the post, it is not uncommon for 50% or more of voters to be effectively unrepresented in government because their votes are wasted due to voting for a "losing" candidate. This means that first past the post fails the fundamental requirement for a representative democracy to provide representation for all citizens in government.[39]

Suppression of political diversity

FPTP creates a powerful electoral incentive for large parties to all target similar segments of voters with similar policies. The effect of this is to reduce political diversity in a country because the larger parties are incentivised to coalesce around similar policies.[40]

An example of this was Brexit. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, 52% of UK voters voted to leave the European Union, and 48% voted to remain.[41] However, due to the effects of FPTP[42], both of Britain's major political parties (Labour and Conservative) pivoted from a pro Remain policy to pro Brexit, which in effect meant that in most constituencies in the UK, a pro-Brexit party would be elected, even when the constituency voted remain.[43][44]

A YouGov poll in the UK dated August 2017 found that 56% of respondents believed that nuclear weapons make the world a more dangerous place.[45] However, despite such public concerns, the three largest UK national political parties (Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems) all support the UK retaining nuclear weapons.[46] [47] [48] This apparent disconnect between UK public opinion and the policies of major UK political parties under FPTP is in stark contrast to modern liberal democracies which use proportional representation, whose governments all (with the sole exception of Israel[49]) oppose retaining nuclear weapons.

Likelihood of involvement in war

Leblang and Chan found that a country’s electoral system is the most important predictor of a country’s involvement in war, according to three different measures: (1) when a country was the first to enter a war; (2) when it joined a multinational coalition in an ongoing war; and (3) how long it stayed in a war after becoming a party to it.[50][51]

When the people are fairly represented in parliament, more of those groups who may object to any potential war have access to the political power necessary to prevent it. In a proportional democracy, war - and other major decisions - generally requires the consent of the majority.[52][53][54]

The British human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, and others, have argued that Britain entered the Iraq War primarily because of the political effects of FPTP and that proportional representation would have prevented Britain's involvement in the war.[55][56][57]

Campaigns to replace FPTP

Many countries which use FPTP have active campaigns to switch to proportional representation (e.g. UK[58] and Canada[59].) In the case of the UK, the campaign to scrap FPTP has been ongoing since at least the 1970s[60]. However in both these countries, reform campaigners face the obstacle of large incumbent parties who control the legislature and who are incentivised to resist any attempts to replace the FPTP system that elected them on a minority vote – this is summed up by the idiom "turkeys don't vote for Christmas".

In the UK, the campaign to scrap FPTP is further complicated by the laws regarding state funding of political parties (including short money rules[61]). The Labour Party, for example, receives significant funds from the UK state by virtue of it retaining its status as the Official Opposition party: in the 2018/19 financial year, the Labour Party received £7.88m, equivalent to 79%[62] of total state funding, despite receiving only 40%[63] of the popular vote in the prior general election. Under proportional representation, Labour's status as the Official Opposition party would potentially be vulnerable, and therefore its level of state funding would also be at risk, thus providing a financial incentive for Labour to retain FPTP.

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 the criteria, because some of them are mutually exclusive, as shown by results such as Arrow's impossibility theorem and the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem.[64]

Majority criterion

Y

The majority criterion states that "if one candidate is preferred by a majority (more than 50%) of voters, then that candidate must win".[65] 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

N[66]

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[66] meet this criterion.

Condorcet loser criterion

N[66]

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[66] meet this criterion.

Independence of irrelevant alternatives criterion

N

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

N

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 countries currently following the first-past-the-post voting system for their national legislatures.[67][68]

List of former FPTP countries

• Argentina (The Chamber of Deputies uses Party list PR. Only twice used FPTP, first between 1902 and 1905 used only in the elections of 1904,[69] and the second time between 1951 and 1957 used only in the elections of 1951 and 1954.)[70]
• Australia (replaced by IRV in 1918, and for the Australian Senate with STV in 1948)
• Belgium (adopted in 1831, replaced by Party list PR in 1899)—[71] the Member of the European Parliament for the German-speaking electoral college is still elected by FPTP[72]
• Cyprus (replaced by proportional representation in 1981)
• Denmark (replaced by proportional representation in 1920)
• Hong Kong (adopted in 1995, replaced by Party list PR in 1998)
• Lebanon (replaced by proportional representation in June 2017)
• Lesotho (replaced by MMP Party list in 2002)
• Malta (replaced by STV in 1921)
• Mexico (replaced by Parallel voting in 1977)
• Nepal (replaced by Parallel voting)[73]
• Netherlands (replaced by Party list PR in 1917)[74]
• New Zealand (replaced by MMP in 1996)
• Papua New Guinea (replaced by IRV in 2002)[75]
• South Africa (replaced by Party list PR in 1996)
• Tanzania (replaced by Parallel voting in 1995)
• Portugal (replaced by Party list PR)[76]

See also

• Cube rule
• Deviation from proportionality
• Plurality-at-large voting
• Approval voting
• Single non-transferable vote
• Single transferable vote

References