Consequences Of The First Past The Post Electoral System

What are the consequences of the First Past the Post electoral system?

First Past the Post is a form of electoral system used in the UK to elect MPs to Westminster. This form of electoral system is used around the world in countries such as the US, Canada and India, however its popularity has declined in past years with countries including Australia, New Zealand and Ireland now opting for a more proportional voting system. First Past the Post is a simplistic system that requires voters to mark a cross beside the candidate that they wish to represent them - not a party. These candidates will either be independent or belong to a political party hoping to represent their constituency. The country is divided up into 650 small geographical areas

For example, in the 2015 general election it took the UKIP party 3.86 million votes to secure one MP into the House of commons compared to only 26,000 votes for every SNP MP, 34,000 votes for every Conservative MP, 40,000 votes for every Labour MP and 299,000 for every Liberal Democrat MP (Electoral Reform Society, 2015). This clearly highlights the issue of smaller parties not being able to represent voters as often their voters are not geographical concentrated enough whilst some parties can be over represented as evident by the 2015 General Election. In Scotland the SNP, despite only receiving just under 50% of the votes, won 95% of the seats (Electoral Reform Society, 2015). With these large parties being able to achieve a high number of seats compared to votes, it is now possible to form a government based upon just over a third of the total votes. This low voter win can be seen in individual constituencies such as Belfast South in 2015 which was won with only 24.5% of total votes (Electoral Reform Society, 2017). This leads to a serious lack of representation for opposition voters who, as shown, often have a higher percentage of votes compared to those who voted for the winning candidates. This also links to the idea of safe seats in certain constituencies. Safe seats are seen as strong regarding party support and consequently parties do not feel the need to campaign in those constituencies. This has a knock-on effect to voters as they can become disengaged with voting as they feel that their vote no longer makes a difference (Electoral Reform society, 2017). Furthermore, this causes tactical voting in which voters decide to vote for a party that they may not necessarily agree with to keep a different party out. In more a more global context, the First Past the Post