Ep. 243 Electoral systems: How do they work?

Hello and welcome to the A Level Politics Show lovely people. Before I start a quick plug for Christmas, buy your loved one or yourself a membership to plus, plus, plus. What is plus, plus, plus? It's an all-access membership to every single podcast from the A Level Politics show, the complete back catalogue of goodness, all 243 episodes from the time of recording. Now, ordinarily, it would be just 1 pound 99 a month. You can cancel any time, you still can. You can also get a seven day free trial, ordinarily, to try before you buy. But the good people at Spotify have gone a step further to spread the Christmas cheer. From November the 18th, 2026 through to December the 16th, 2026, Spotify Premium users can sign out for one month for free. That's right, a month's membership to the coolest podcast show in the world. It will be just 1 pound 99 there after unless you decide to end it. Most people don't because they like it. But what if you are the kind of person who revises better through reading, creating revision cards and testing yourself? Then why not check out Politics in Bullets, the spin-off from the A Level Politics show? Just point your browser to the A Level Politics show.co.uk. That's the A Level Politics show.co.uk. Don't forget the there. And check out hundreds of pages of revision notes that I've lovingly curated over 20 years of teaching and added to with the transcripts of podcasts like this one. Whole school and college licenses are available. But you can also buy revision notes as an individual student or teacher. Politics in Bullets revision notes are available for papers one, two, and the USA side of paper three. And you can buy all three as a bundle at a reduced price. Preview docs are available so that you know what you are buying. What's great is that once you purchase a Politics in Bullets product, you get access for life to all future updates. So once I'm done with this pod, I'll update the Politics in Bullets revision notes and all you'll have to do is revisit the site and read down the PDF that you've purchased. Oh, and in the spirit of all things Santa, I'm giving all listeners to this show and beyond 25% of all purchases to politics and Bullets. Just typing, "Couping Code Christmas 2026". That's Christmas 2026 at checkout. The code also applies to whole school and college licenses. Good day. This deal runs from now until the 8th of January 2027, teased and seized apply Merry Christmas one and all. Okay, onward would the show. (upbeat music) Okay, so today we will focus on electoral systems and specifically about how they actually work. Many students often have difficulty with understanding how different electoral systems operate and that's okay because they are complex. You are not alone. You are never alone. This pod will hopefully plug the gaps in your knowledge. I find also that the more students understand about how different systems actually work in practice, the more they're able to convey the arguments about the merits and demerits of adopting different ones. This episode that you're listening to is a kind of companion piece to all the other pods I've recorded on whether we should have electoral reform on the two party system, electoral systems and the type of government, the impact of different electoral systems on representation, et cetera, et cetera. It also serves as an update to a pod I recorded four years ago as we've had multiple elections since then and newsflash, the specification has been updated to include the introduction of the closed party list used in the Welsh Senate election in 2026. The supplementary vote has been removed from the specification because the Tories scrapped this method of electing mayors. However, I am keeping the supplementary vote or SV on this pod because Labour has bought it back for moral elections. And so I do wonder if the specification will need to be updated again soon in the not too distant future. What do all of these shenanigans mean? It's that you can't actually be directly asked about an electoral system not mentioned in the specification so you can't be asked about the supplementary vote at the moment. However, in a general question on, say, should we have PR, you can absolutely bring in all of the systems I'm going to go through. And we will cover all of the five main electoral systems used in the UK and also examine the effects that they've had on where they are used. It might be worth creating a little chart for yourself dividing up the different systems and then having a column on how each system works, perhaps jotting down a few bullet points in that one and then another column entitled Impact or Effects. This way, it will be easier for you to revise the content. Okay, here goes. Let's start with first pass the post. Put simply, first pass the post does what it says on the tin, a bit like Ron's zeal, if you know your DIY adverts from the 1990s. First pass the post is a racing analogy. The horse first pass the winning post wins the race. Its electoral system namesake does just the same. The winning candidate is the person who wins the most votes, even if it is just one more than the next candidate. In any electoral system, it is important to divide up. What voters are expected to do and then how the vote is calculated. Under first pass the post, each constituency or area elects one MP. Each party can nominate only one candidate to stand for this election. Voters have only one vote each and they choose their preferred candidate by marking an X next to the candidate's name. First pass the post is also known as a simple plurality system. The winner does not require an absolute majority. That's 50% plus one of the votes cast. The winner simply needs to win the most votes. They achieve a simple plurality by doing so. So if you receive just one more vote than the second place candidate, you win. This system is used for elections to the Westminster Parliament for electing members of Parliament MPs. Let's look at the impact. Under first pass the post, parties that are able to concentrate their vote in a specific area are more likely to win. We call this efficiency. A party's vote is efficient if they can get just enough votes to come first in multiple constituencies to win a majority of seats. Thus, first pass the post discriminates against parties whose vote is thinly spread throughout the country. Only winning a few votes in many constituencies, but not enough to win in those constituencies. In 2024, reform UK finished second in 98 constituencies that only finished first in five. So they only got five MPs. The party's vote share was clearly not efficient. Meanwhile, in this same election, the Labour Party won 34% of the vote nationwide, but 63% of the seats to the House of Commons. They were able to concentrate their support in a majority of constituencies to come first in 411 out of 650 seats. This election is not an anomaly. Similar disproportionality can be seen in 2015 when the Tories were elected to power on 37% of the vote, winning 51% of the seats. Under a proportional system, where the percentage of seats awarded is roughly equal to the percentage of the vote received, the results in 2024 would have looked very different. Reform UK would have won around 91 seats and the Greens would have 44 seats. Labour would only have 221 seats, nowhere near a majority. You can also use data from 2024 when examining the so-called efficiency of the vote. By dividing the number of a vote, a party wins by the number of seats it wins, it is possible to conclude that it required 823,000 votes to elect a reform MP in 2024, but only 23,622 votes to elect a Labour MP. We also have to look at the impact of first-party posts on the voters themselves. Voters are only too aware of how first-party posts works. They are more likely, therefore, to choose a candidate with a chance of winning. They vote tactically, i.e. voting in favour of one candidate, even if they dislike them in order to keep the candidate they least like from winning. In 2019, thousands of Brexit party supporters lent their vote to the Tories in order to give that party a majority to get Brexit done. As many as a fifth of voters voted tactically in 2024, according to some polls, particularly Labour voters who opted Lib Dem to unseat a Tory MP in their area. This points to the fact that the current system prevents voters from choosing the party they like the most. Usually, tactical voting reinforces the two-party system as well. You get the phenomenon of safe seats, which are constituencies where support for one party is so well concentrated, so well embedded that other parties have little chance of winning and marginal seats, where there is genuine competition. Far more attention is given to marginal seats during election time, and it is also likely that the winner will have to work harder in between elections to maintain the support of voters there. Thus, in safe seats, you often get voters who feel that their vote doesn't matter, and thus turn out is often much lower than in marginal seats, and you get what you call "illetual deserts" in safe seats. That said, the winning party often wins enough seats to govern on its own with a clear mandate. In 2019, the Tory's 80 seat majority provided the government with a mandate to get Brexit done to use the campaign speak of Boris Johnson. In 2024, the Labour government won a 172 seat majority, giving it the mandate to introduce great British energy amongst other things, as well as placing VAT on private school fees, part of Labour's manifesto. First past the post tends to produce strong government. Coalition's are usually not required. The executive can dominate the legislature and pass its legislative programme. At the same time, there is a strong link between the MP and constituents as each constituency is relatively small compared to other electoral systems. And there is just one MP per constituency creating a clear line of accountability. However, first past the post does not always produce a clear and decisive result. As the 2010 election produced Britain's first coalition, that's two parties rather than one in government, since World War II. Strong one party government is the most powerful argument in favour of keeping first past the post. And this system delivered that after the 2019 and 2024 elections admittedly, yet the 2017 general election also produced a hung parliament like in 2010, where no one party had a majority of seats. This led to an unstable minority government that relied on the votes of the Democratic Unionist Party as Vernon Bogdenor said of the 2010 election. If the result is the same as proportional representation, what's the point of keeping it? And regardless of the electoral system, political stability is never guaranteed. Between 2016 to 2026, Britain has had seven MPs in 10 years. After the break, we will look at how some of the alternative systems work and consider their impact will start off with the supplementary vote. Ah, the supplementary vote. This system was, then, wasn't, and now is again used to elect a number of city and regional mayors, including the mayor of Greater Manchester in 2026. Why the back-and-forth? Well, the Conservatives scrapped SV for mayoral elections in the Elections Act 2022, perhaps because they weren't winning under it. Yet the Labour government brought back the system in the English, Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, perhaps because they thought they would win with it. That's the background, but how does it work and what are the effects? Again, divide it up into what voters do and how the vote is calculated. Each voter gets two votes, a first and second preference, and they place an X in the first preference column next to their first choice candidate, and an X in the second column next to their second choice candidate. So how is the vote calculated? There are two rounds of counting. In the first round, the first preference votes for every voter are counted. If no candidate gets over 50% of first preference votes, then a second round of counting begins. In the second round, all candidates, apart from the leading two, are eliminated. But all the ballot papers of those expressing a first preference for eliminated candidates are looked at again, and the second preferences on those ballots are examined. If those ballots contain second preferences for the two candidates still left in the race, those votes are added to their total. The winner is then the remaining candidate who has the most votes after the second round of counting. Let's use a real-life example to explain the process. In the 2026 election for the Greater Manchester Mayor, Bev Craig from Labour received 47% of the vote in the first round of counting, so not quite 50%. Sean Asley from Reform UK came second, receiving 21% of the vote. In the second round, once second preferences were included, and all the other candidates were eliminated, Craig received 66% and Asley received almost 34%. The winning candidate usually receives an absolute majority of first and second preference votes. This is why we call it a majoritarian system, as it seeks to add legitimacy to the winner by trying to ensure that they receive as close to 50% of the vote as possible. It ensures often that the least hated or most acceptable wins. This is why Bev Craig won. She was seen as the most acceptable to Manchester voters, receiving 66% of first and second preference votes. So what of the effects fewer votes are wasted under first pass, the post? Even green voters knew that their second preference vote might count, even if their first one for green candidate Geraldine Coggins, who secured 12% of first preference votes in the Greater Manchester Mayor's election, didn't. The system promotes a two-horse race and arguably reinforces the dominance of the two biggest established parties. In London, only the Conservatives and Labour have had candidates that have gone through to the second round of counting, with the one exception being Ken Livingston in 2000, who stood as an independent. Alliances with other parties are critical. Sadiq Khan won many second preference votes from green party voters in the 2021 London Mayor election, an informal pact that likely influenced his decision to introduce the ultra-low admission zone. Non-moderate parties have little chance of winning under S.V. The far-right BMP candidate won 13,000 votes in the 2016 London Mayor election and was eliminated in the first round, while in the 2026 Greater Manchester Mayor election, the Restore Britain candidate Marlon West was eliminated after receiving just 9% of first preference votes. S.V. ensures that the least hated candidate wins. Mar-Mike candidates, those you either love or loathe, have very little chance of winning. By having a second preference, voters are able to choose a candidate they don't mind. This is why Restore Britain or Reform UK have had a hard time winning, because very few people would say they don't mind Restore or they don't mind Reform. As the Tories sought to chase Reform's tail under Sunaik and Trust, maybe their party too became a bit Mar-Mike, hence why they opted to get rid of the system perhaps. One odd effect is that it is possible for the candidate who finishes second in the first round of counting to win. This occurred in the 2021 Peterborough and Cambridgeier Mayoral election. OK, we now leave plurality land, a majoritarian land, and take a trip to proportional representation land, and we will start with the closed party list. Until 2026, the Welsh Parliament or Seneth had been elected using the additional member system, which will come on to in a moment, but it switched to the closed party list at the same time as the number of seats in the Seneth was increased from 60 to 96. Under the closed party list, political parties publish a list of candidates that appear on the ballot paper. Party candidates are elected in the order that they appear on the list, so if a political party wins three seats in a constituency, the top three candidates on that list will be elected. The system is known as closed party list, because political parties not the voter decide the order of the candidates on that list, who is at the top, and therefore will likely to get elected, and who is at the bottom and therefore less likely. Voters, well what they will they do, they will have one vote. They will vote for a party rather than a specific candidate, unlike first pass the post, where voters put an X next to their preferred candidates. On the face of it, therefore, the new system gives very little choice to the voter. Indeed, less so than first pass the post. Like first pass the post, voters get only one vote. Yes, but unlike first pass the post, voters do not get to choose a specific candidate, hence the name, closed, to repeat voters vote for a party, not a candidate. Here are some more things you should know. Constituencies tend to be larger in size than under first pass the post. However, each constituency elects six representatives, aka multi-member constituencies. Unlike first pass the post, where there is just one representative per constituency. Instead, voters end up with six representatives. There are six for each of the 16 constituencies across Wales. Fun fact, the parties are allowed to list eight candidates, in case any of the elected candidates resign or die or are suspended after they've been elected. It allows the party to continue to fulfill their mandate and choose a substitute from the list placed before the voter. How is the result calculated? Well, in each constituency, the percentage of seats a party wins is equivalent to their vote share. So if a party wins one third of the vote, they will win two of the six available. This situation is different to first pass the post, where the winning candidate needs to win the most or a plurality of votes to secure the seat. What has been the impact of the closed party list? Well, the first effect relates to the level of party control. The candidates who are elected come from the party list, with those at the top of the list standing a greater chance of being elected. Who decides where a candidate is on the list? Not the voters, the party. So those at the top of the list are likely to be loyal party types, rather than five brand defenders of a constituency interest. Secondly, this system still promotes tactical voting just as much as first pass the post. There is a feeling that many Labour voters backed Clyde Cumbery to keep reform UK at bay in the 2026 Welsh Senate elections. Yet, most importantly, this CPL closed party list is more reflective of the public mood, since the number of party candidates elected from its slate of candidates in each constituency is proportional to the vote received in that constituency. So if a party received one third of the vote in a constituency, it will receive two of the six seats on offer. This is exactly what happened to Clyde Cumbery in Newport, Irwen, where it received about 31% of the vote. It got two of the six seats on offer. Nationally, Clyde Cumbery received 35.4% of the vote and 144.79% of the seats. While this result doesn't at first to appear particularly proportional, it denies any one party a winner's bonus, since it is designed to be proportional at the constituency level. On the one hand, CPL has damaged any chance of a strong majority government, Clyde Cumbery was six short of a majority following the Welsh Senate elections in 2026, yet is pushing ahead with governing as a single party. It will need to win support of other parties for each bill that it wants to progress. CPL has fallen. fail to prevent the rise in nationalism for the first time in British politics, a nationalist party that wants Welsh independence from the UK is in government in Wales, which could further tensions with Westminster in the coming years. The system has also allowed anti-immigrant populists to come second and act as the main opposition to plide. Yet, the system seems good at giving voters the choice they want. The latest election was an anti-incumben election, whereby Labour, which had held power in Wales since the establishment of devolution, was reduced to receiving just nine out of the 96 seats available. Let's now have a look at two more systems. First, a hybrid system called the additional member system. The additional member system, or AMS, is not strictly speaking a PR system. It is a hybrid system, a mix between first, past, the post and closed party list. Each voter has two votes, one for a party and one for a candidate. So you choose a candidate to represent your constituency, just like on the first past, the post, but you also choose a party. If you wanted, you could split your vote, perhaps choose a candidate from Labour to represent your constituency and a different party, who you would quite like to see have some representation in Parliament, perhaps the Greens or Lib Dems. Each constituency elects one candidate using first past the post. Two-thirds of the seats are distributed in this way. This means that if you stop at this point, AMS is no different from what Westminster looks like. But the other one-third of seats are allocated using proportional representation via a closed party list. The best way for you to visualize this is to simply draw a circle. Imagine that circle represents the Scottish Parliament, then draw a line through it, so it is split to two-thirds and one-third. So what happens in the area marked one-third? The parties who fare poorly under first past the post have their seats topped up via a closed party list system, exactly like the one we spoke about in the previous section, and seats are allocated proportionally. One-third of the seats are distributed in this way. The system is used to elect the Scottish Parliament, it is also used to elect the Greater London Assembly. But what of the effects? The results tend to reduce the winner's bonus that the winning party receives under first past the post, since the concentration or efficiency of the vote only matters in the constituency section of AMS. For this reason, the S&P have struggled to form a majority government and are forming instead a minority government. This means that they are the largest party, but still do not have over 50% of the seats, so they need to get the support from other parties to get measures through the Scottish Parliament. The party came seven seats short of a majority in the 2026 Scottish Parliamentary elections. Prior to these elections, the S&P went into coalition with the Greens, but the Greens left that coalition due to the ditching of net zero targets. This perhaps demonstrates that AMS adds in a little instability, as majority governments are so difficult to form. That said, AMS has led to governments that have still produced real policy differences. Jewish MPs were not introduced in Scotland, for example. There are a number of additional effects we need to be aware of. AMS has led to a rise in nationalism and independence movements. Scotland, like Wales, is now run by party that wants independence from the UK. Furthermore, there are two types of representative, a constituency representative and a party list representative. The party list representative has taken on leadership roles more easily because they have fewer distractions like constituents to contend with. Admittedly, smaller parties such as the Greens have participated in government. However, AMS has not prevented anti-immigrant populist parties from gaining representation. Reform UK is now the joint second largest party in the Scottish Parliament. OK, let's now move towards perhaps the most proportional system and the one that is keenly supported by the Electoral Reform Society, the single transferable vote. STV, or the single transferable vote, is the most complex system we are going to talk about today. It is used for elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly and for Scottish local elections. Voters are representative just like under the closed party list by more than one representative in multi-member constituencies. What do voters do? Well, voters rank candidates in order of preference, one, two, three, etc. So when I say it's complex, it isn't really that tough for voters to understand. It is easy as one, two, three. It is more the way results are calculated where we see that complexity come in. Even here, you can make sense of it. Winning candidates are elected by reaching a quota. This quota is effectively a formula. Votes divided by seats plus one. So if 100 people voted and there were five seats on offer, the winning candidate would require 21 votes because peeps 100 votes divided by five seats equals 20 plus one equals 21. When a winning candidate reaches this quota or threshold, they are elected. But their second and subsequent preferences are redistributed or transferred among the remaining candidates who have yet to reach the quota. The process repeats itself until all the seats are filled. Let's think of the effects. It is the most proportional system and wastes no votes. It also eliminates tactical voting as every preference of the voter is considered because it is so proportional, it always leads to a hung parliament where coalition government is guaranteed. This is an intentional effect. Northern Ireland was and still is divided along sectarian religious lines and the only way for peace and political stability to be maintained is through power sharing. STV forces parties to do this. Indeed, STV has propelled or pushed more hard line parties into power in Northern Ireland, the DUP and Sinn Fein. This works well on and on and off bases and to be fair, it's been just as off as on. From 2017 to 2020, the Northern Irish Assembly remained in gridlock with neither Sinn Fein nor the DUP able to form a coalition or willing to work together due to disagreements over a scandal involving green energy. The UK government therefore had to impose a budget on the province. Power sharing was then restored but the relationship between Sinn Fein and the DUP is an uneasy one. Indeed, after the 2022 storm on elections, Sinn Fein, a party that wants Northern Ireland to leave the UK and join a united island became the largest party. The DUP then refused to enter into coalition this time due to disagreements over the post-Brexit arrangements or the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol which kept Northern Ireland in the EU single market. It then did go into coalition once Rishisunax government put flesh on the bones of Northern Ireland's post-Brexit relationship by signing the Windsor agreement. Still though, there is a fragile truce made more difficult in 2026 by disputes over an orange order parade ban which has meant that the DUP is now refusing to cooperate with Sinn Fein at the top of government. Now let's consider, of course, that these issues are not necessarily the fault of STV. First pass the post would likely lead to one party dominance and that wouldn't work in a divided community. Equally, any electoral system would struggle to address the tensions between Protestant and Catholics in Northern Ireland. STV arguably gives the greatest chance of power sharing. No side of the sectarian divide is blaming STV for their troubles. Yet there are other technical effects. STV has arguably broken the link between a single representative and their constituents since you have larger constituencies with several representatives. Alternatively, you could say that it resource truss since most voters can point to at least one representative that they would choose in one of their preferences that they had stated on the ballot paper. Would a Catholic feel that they could speak to their Protestant representative if not, there's probably a Catholic representative that they can go to instead. STV thus may break the link between an MP and a constituency, but it also may introduce a far more significant link between every voter and the wider elected assembly. Okay, so there we have it. All five main electoral systems explained and their effects analyzed. I hope you found this pod useful. We'll continue with the electoral systems theme in my next pod when we take a look at party systems. Until the next time, though, bye-bye.