Strenghts and weaknesses of electoral systems used in uk

Asses the main strengths and weaknesses of the electoral systems used in the UK.

In the UK we use several different electoral systems, which all have their own strengths and weaknesses. These electoral systems are as follows; First-Past-The-Post which is used in general elections; List System, in the UK ‘Closed Regional List System’ which is used to elect members of the European parliament; AMS used in Scotland and Wales; STV used in Northern Ireland; And finally SV used for London Mayoral elections.

The FPTP is a plurality system, meaning the largest number of votes win; this as a whole could be considered a weakness as an absolute majority is not needed to win, in which case the majority of the people did not vote for the winning party, in fact more people voted against the party rather than for the party, which means a lot of the votes are wasted making the winning party unrepresentative of the people. FPTP is also really disproportionate as the number of votes cast does not always reflect the number of seats returned, which benefits the two larger parties being Labour and Conservatives, as they get more seats than they would in proportion to votes cast, however Liberal Democrats who never come first, get less seats than they would in proportion to votes cast, we can see this in the 2010 May, general election. Seeing this we can see that the smaller parties don’t stand a chance, which encourages tactical voting as many would go for their second preference knowing that their first will not win, making FPTP unrepresentative of the smaller parties, as it’s only a two and a half horse race, with Liberal Democrats stumbling behind Labour and Conservative party. FPTP is known for returning a strong single party government which would normally be strength of FPTP, however in the 2010 general election it failed to do so, creating a coalition government. Strength of FPTP is that it is simple, as all you have to do is put a cross next to the party you want to win on the ballot paper making it easy to understand and operate. FPTP creates a strong link between the voters and the MP of their constituency as most people in the constituency would of voted for the MP of the party they favoured the most.

The List System is a proportional system, suggesting that the parties and the people are all represented equally, as the votes cast are converted into seats in a highly proportional way. For example if a party wins 60% of the total votes, the top 60% of the candidates on the list are selected. One of the strengths of a list system is that it does not favour the two typical party system, we can see this in the results of the UK Election to the European Parliament in 2009, as UKIP got the second highest number of votes, where usually they’d be one of the bottom parties. It gives smaller parties a higher chance to break through, as every vote cast has the same value meaning that each party will be fairly represented. There is also a threshold usually between 1-5% of the votes the party has to win to gain any seats; this is a great way to keep away extremist parties, such as in Germany after the WW2 this was used to keep neo-Nazis from gaining power. There aren’t many weaknesses in List System, however there are a few. In a closed List System which is used in the UK, voters have no influence over the individuals of the party who are elected of the list, which is a weakness because an open list system which the UK don’t use the voters could show their preference of the individuals they’d like to be elected. Also under a list system a coalition is virtually guaranteed, which means a strong single party government will not be elected, which would make it harder for the parties in the coalition to agree to their policies.

Additional Member System is also partly a proportional. Under this system the main two Parties; Labour and Conservatives would still dominate politics however Liberal Democrats results would be more proportionate and they would be more fairly represented. This still wouldn’t help the smaller parties break through but they will still get some representation nothing major. The voter gets too votes, which gives the voters more power, and less votes are wasted as everyone had two votes so at least one of their votes may stand a chance of winning. Even though FPTP is in the mixture of AMS the results are much more proportionate than FPTP. The parties that do less well with one of the votes are awarded with better result in the other vote, and vice versa for the parties that do really well, to minimize the gap between the winner and loser parties at least a little bit, which is great for the smaller parties, but not so fair on the larger parties, as smaller parties are made to look they’ve done better than they may actually have.

STV is one of the most proportionally representative systems, known for its fairness and choice. Each constituency in Northern Ireland return 6 members, which is partially one of the strengths as more parties have a chance of being represented and gaining power, this would make everything quite a bit fairer as well as keeping peace between the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland, however this could be seen as a bad thing as 6 is quite a big number to be running once constituency which is like a coalition, therefore a lot of conflicts and disagreements could be faced. Its weakness is that it takes longer to calculate as it is quite a long process however at the end of this you get a fairer result which would be worth the waiting. The voters have a very large choice of who they want to vote for, they can vote for as many candidates as they like in order of their preference, they can also vote for candidates of the same party in order of their preference meaning that their voice is getting heard better and their point of view is getting across better as you can see what sort of people the voters want to win. The candidate must reach a quota to be elected, meaning that only those parties who people actually vote for can be elected, making it fairer as even when the other preference votes are redistributed the parties that don’t reach a quota are not worthy of being elected.

SV is a majority system. A strength this system has is that only one candidate can win and get elected, in this case a one, stable London Mayor. This again is unfair to the smaller parties as the two parties with the highest results go to the next round if more than 50% of votes have not gone to a single candidate in the first round, so smaller parties do not get any representation in this process. However it gives hope for some people to win at the same time, as if the second round goes off, the people’s second preferences can give you an absolute majority and get you elected even if you didn’t get the most votes in the first round.