First-past-the-post voting

Throughout the 20th century, many countries that previously used FPP have abandoned it in favor of other electoral systems, including the former British colonies of Australia and New Zealand.

Since Memphis has the most votes, it would win a FPTP election, even though it is far from the center of the state and a majority of voters would prefer Nashville.

This has been cause of criticism of FPP, many arguing that a fundamental requirement of an election system is to accurately represent the views of voters.

[6][7] Famous examples of the second-place party (in votes nationally) winning a majority of seats include the elections in Ghana in 2012, New Zealand in 1978 and 1981, and the United Kingdom in 1951.

Famous examples of the second placed party (in votes nationally) winning a plurality of seats include the elections in Canada in 2019 and 2021 as well as in Japan in 2003.

The effect of this reduces political diversity in a country because the larger parties are incentivized to coalesce around similar policies.

[9] Duverger's law is an idea in political science which says that constituencies that use first-past-the-post methods will lead to two-party systems, given enough time.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs explains: The main reason for America's majoritarian character is the electoral system for Congress.

Members of Congress are elected in single-member districts according to the "first-past-the-post" (FPTP) principle, meaning that the candidate with the plurality of votes is the winner of the congressional seat.

The first-past-the-post election tends to produce a small number of major parties, perhaps just two, a principle known in political science as Duverger's Law.

[13] Political parties operate by targeting districts, directing their activists and policy proposals toward those areas considered to be marginal, either possible to be lost or won, where each additional vote is potentially more critical and has more value.

[14][15][16] The ability of FPTP to manufacture majority governments has been cited by its supporters as an advantage over proportional representation systems.

In the latter, smaller parties may act as 'kingmakers' in coalitions using their bargaining power and therefore, arguably, their influence on policy is more than proportional to their parliamentary size.

The use of proportional representation (PR) may enable smaller parties to become decisive in the country's legislature and gain leverage they would not otherwise enjoy, although this can be somewhat mitigated by a large enough electoral threshold.

A journalist at Haaretz reported that Israel's highly proportional Knesset "affords great power to relatively small parties, forcing the government to give in to political blackmail and to reach compromises";[19][20] Tony Blair, defending FPP, argued that other systems give small parties the balance of power, and influence disproportionate to their votes.

Supporters of electoral reform generally see the kingmaker ability as a positive development, and claim that cross party ties produced by some alternatives to FPP encourage less negative campaigning and encourage more positive campaigning, as candidates are pushed to appeal to a wider group of people.

Since 2010, Fidesz has implemented other anti-democratic reforms that now mean the European Parliament no longer qualifies Hungary as a full democracy.

[30][31] When the people are fairly represented in parliament, more of those groups who may object to any potential war have access to the political power necessary to prevent it.

Following the extremely close 2000 U.S. presidential election, some supporters of Democratic candidate Al Gore believed one reason he lost to Republican George W. Bush is that a portion of the electorate (2.7%) voted for Ralph Nader of the Green Party, and exit polls indicated that more of them would have preferred Gore (45%) to Bush (27%).

[citation needed] The British Electoral Reform Society (ERS) says that regional parties benefit from this system.

[16] The ERS also says that in FPP elections using many separate districts "small parties without a geographical base find it hard to win seats".

[41] The winner-takes-all nature of FPP leads to distorted patterns of representation, since it exaggerates the correlation between party support and geography.

[44] First-past-the-post within geographical areas tends to deliver (particularly to larger parties) a significant number of safe seats, where a representative is sheltered from any but the most dramatic change in voting behavior.

[46][47] The House of Commons of England originated in the Middle Ages as an assembly representing the gentry of the counties and cities of the Kingdom, each of which elected either one or two members of parliament (MPs) by block plurality voting.

Starting in the 19th century, electoral reform advocates pushed to replace these multi-member constituencies with single-member districts.

[citation needed] The United States broke away from British rule in the late 18th century, and its constitution provides for an electoral college to elect its president.

Despite original intentions to the contrary, by the mid-19th century this college had transformed into a de facto use of FPP for each state's presidential election.

The single transferable vote in particular was invented in 1819 by Thomas Wright Hill, and first used in a public election in 1840 by his son Rowland for the Adelaide City Council in Australia.

[citation needed] Many countries which use first-past-the-post voting have active campaigns to switch to proportional representation (e.g. UK[48] and Canada[49]).

In a first-past-the-post wager, bettors would choose the single horse they thought would be the first one to make it past the finishing post.