Politics and Electoral Systems - Revision Questions - Explain the term First-Past-The-Post system.

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Politics and Electoral Systems  – Revision Questions

a.)

Explain the term First-Past-The-Post system.

The United Kingdom is split up into 659 sections called ‘constituencies.’  Each constituency has an MP which runners for any particular party.  For instance in the Stroud constituency David Drew runs for the Labour party.  At a general election the people of the constituency will vote for the party they want to be in gov’t.  The MP with the most votes will go to par’t.  So if David Drew wins more votes, than any other candidates, then he will go to par’t.  In order for a party to go to power they need a majority of one.  So for labour to go to power they would need one more seat (which there are 659 of) than all of the other parties put together i.e. 330 seats or more.  Constituencies, which are always, won by the same party, like the Cotswolds that is a conservative constituency, are called ‘Safe seats’ basically meaning that they will have no other party will ever really win that constituency.

First-Past-the-Post has many advantages and disadvantages.  I will list the disadvantages first.  

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The party that wins more votes nationally can still lose.  In 1951 conservative won, but labour had more votes nationally and visa-versa in February 1974 where Labour won more MP’s but conservative won more votes nationally.  In 1951 more people voted labour than ever before but conservative won the votes.  Whereas in the 2001 general election labour only got a quarter of the vote but they still had a massive win in terms of seats, this is known as a landslide.  In the UK we have a multi-party system in terms of votes, but realistically we have a two ...

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