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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> but have never understood the system of winning seats
It’s very simple. For the purposes of a general election, the United Kingdom is split into 650 constituencies ona. geographical and population basis (each geographical constituency has a similar population, so it could be physically large enough to encompass a large rural area with numerous towns, villages and small cities, or small enough to be a small part of a large city).
Each of those constituencies holds a separate election. Whichever candidate in a given constituency gets the most votes represents that constituency in the House of Commons.
Consequently, a party could win a majority of seats by very narrow margins, and lose the seats they lose by huge margins, and thereby elect more candidates with fewer total votes.
You only vote for your riddings specific representative, if you’re American, this is similar to the House of Representatives.
Then when all that is done, the king picks the prime minister based on who they think will best have the “confidence” of the house. This is usually the leader of the party that one the most seats.
The election is not one big vote like for president in the US. It’s a bunch of smaller elections. Some of these mini elections be more or less votes.
Elections A
Party 1: 500 votes
Party 2: 300 votes
B
Party 1: 100
Party 2: 1200
C:
Party 1: 200 votes
Party 2: 100 votes
Now if you only look at the votes, party 1 got 800 and party 2 got 1600. But party 1 managed to win 2 seats to party 1s, 1 seat. So the PM will end up being party 1s leader.
It’s because of the FPTP system you mention, combined with single-member districts.
If the Red Party won 1,000 votes in the last election in your district, while the Blue Party won 800 votes, the Red Party won the seat for your district. If the Red Party increases their vote to 1,250 in the next election, while the Blue Party votes decreases to 550, that’s a relatively minor shift in votes, and *no* change in seats, the Red Party retains the seat. However, if votes shift in the other direction, with Blue Party winning 1,050 votes while Red Party wins 750 votes, that’s an equally minor shift in votes, but a massive shift in seats won as the blue party goes from 0% to 100% of the seats in your district.
If that second scenario happens nationwide, it’s likely that a vote share increase from say 48% to 51% from one election to the next, will correspond to a seat share increase from like 40% to 60%.
I have lived in the UK all my life and I can’t understand how any rational person supports the electoral system.
The answer for why it persists is partly mythology about what a proper proportional system (not the joke ones) do and mainly it is in the interests of the people who could change it to never change it.
It is said that the problem with the UK is we never had a proper revolution that overthrew the ancient power and wealth structure and I can’t argue with this.
How can US Presidential candidates win more electoral college votes than the proportion of votes they won?
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