uk politics just makes no sense to me no matter how many times i get it explained by teachers. i know that first past the post leads to disproportionate votes but have never understood the system of winning seats
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Let’s imagine there are two parties, and three seats up for grabs. The party who wins two seats, wins the election.
Seat1: Party A gets 1000 votes, party B gets 900 votes. Party A wins the seat.
Seat2: Party A gets 1000 votes, party B gets 900 votes. PartyA wins the seat.
Seat3. PartyA gets 0 votes, PartyB gets 2000 votes. PartyB wins the seat.
Result: PartyA has 2 seats, PartyB has 1 seat. PartyA wins the election.
But notice: PartyA got 2000 votes overall, whereas PartyB got 3800 votes overall.
But as this is a contest where the party with most seats wins, the number of individual votes is irrelevant.
Now, scale this up to hundreds of seats and numerous parties, and that is how you win an election without winning most votes.
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