Assess the advantages and disadvantages of the First Past the Post Electoral system

audience as almost everyone understands the instructions; and in the rare case they do not, it is extremely easy to explain. This is a fantastic advantage as the Government wants a large turnout in elections, as it’s the publics chance to vote for people we believe will serve the country well, and make the correct important decisions on our behalf. Another positive aspect is that a close relationship can be formed between an MP and the constituency; the MP can closely work with the constituency to enable that all the community is able to put forward their view. The fact that it is so simple means the results are quick to interpret; therefore we do not leave people waiting for days for the announcement of the new government. Lastly, the First Past the Post system promotes strong, majority governments; this means there is less friction between governments as it is generally one party that has the power rather than a coalition. This is achieved because parties such as Labour and Conservative do well as they gain the majority of seats due to the idea of concentration in certain areas. However, this is also said to be unfair as parties such as Liberal Democrats are not equally weighted to Labour and Conservative, as their votes are thinly spread leading to less votes than the concentrated seats gained from Labour and Conservative. For example, in 2005, the average vote for Labour was 42,000 votes, Conservative was 44,000 and for Liberal Democrats, a huge figure of 97,000! Leading on from the fact that Labour and Conservative always do well, it is also seen as a disadvantage as the concentrated seats are usually the ‘safe seats’. Safe seats can result in lazy MPs compared to the marginal seat constituencies. Also, people believe their vote does not count, which leads to poor turnouts. For example, the turnout in the 2005 general election was an appallingly low figure of just 65%! People believe strongly their vote does not count for smaller parties because our system is a ‘two party system’ meaning generally, it’s a competition between only two parties. The last negative point is that unfortunately, the system also means aswell as winning by just one vote, that a party can also lose by as little as one vote. This follows a ‘winner takes all’ idea, which is very unfair for the losing party if this situation occurred. In my opinion, although the FPTP system definitely has its advantages, I believe it is strongly outweighed by the large number of disadvantages. Although the recent referendum of 2005 suggested people are not interested in changing the electoral system, I believe this is because of a lack of knowledge to how unfair the FPTP system is. I believe if people supporting parties such as Liberal Democrats realized how many more MPs could be achieved for them by using an alternative voting system, I think they would definitely chose to change this plurality system.