On the face of it it’s quite a simple system where the winner takes all. The UK is divided into 650 constituencies (57 in Scotland). The candidate with the most votes in each constituency will become its MP.
There will be one candidate per political party on your ballot paper, with usually some independent candidates too. Voters only receive one vote and so simply put a cross next to the person they wish to become their MP. It is a simple majority voting system and so a winning candidate only needs one more vote than any of the others to be elected.
It sounds easy, but the system it marred with controversy and you will probably hear a lot of talk about wasted votes around the election. The issue with FPTP is it’s not proportional, so all the votes that were cast for other candidates other than the winner end up meaning nothing. So you could have a situation where the winning candidate gets 42% of the vote.
They got more votes than everyone else, but they also got fewer votes than all the other candidates combined. Quite often, this means the winning candidate isn’t actually who most of the electorate backed. READ MORE: Will the SNP’s Pete Wishart win seventh term as MP? Equally, the party which ends up forming the government may not actually have received the most votes.
They have just simply ended up with the most MPs. This is why you see some people calling for electoral reform and a fairer system, so that the Parliament can be more representative of the nation. Som.
