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{{electiontable|United Kingdom parliamentary election, 2005}}'''Summary of the 5 May 2005 [[British House of Commons|House of Commons of the United Kingdom]] [[United Kingdom general election, 2005|election results]] (parties with more than one seat; not incl. N. Ireland) |
{{electiontable|United Kingdom parliamentary election, 2005}}'''Summary of the 5 May 2005 [[British House of Commons|House of Commons of the United Kingdom]] [[United Kingdom general election, 2005|election results]] (parties with more than one seat; not incl. N. Ireland) |
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!colspan=2|Seats<br /><small>This table indicates those parties with over one seat, mainland only</small> |
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!colspan=2|646!! !! !!27,110,727!! |
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Revision as of 16:51, 4 September 2006
A majoritarian electoral system is one which is based on single-member constituencies.
Only one member can win each constituency, which therefore means the number of votes won nationally does not equal the number of seats in the parliament. For instance, a party which wins 51% of the vote in all constituencies will win 100% of seats, but only 51% of votes.
In the simplest majoritarian system, "first past the post", the winner does not even need a majority in a constituency. Thus for instance, if a constituency votes as follows...
Labour 35% |
Conservative 33 % |
Liberal Democrat 30 % |
Other Parties 2 % |
...then Labour will take the seat and no other party will gain anything from this constituency.
Effects
The effect of a majoritarian system is that the larger parties gain a disproportionately large share of the vote, while smaller parties gain a disproportionately small share of the vote. For example, if we look at the 2005 UK General election results...
Seats This table indicates those parties with over one seat, mainland only |
Seats % | Votes % | Votes | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour Party | 356 | 55.2 | 35.3 | 9,562,122 | |
Conservative Party | 198 | 30.7 | 32.3 | 8,772,598 | |
Liberal Democrats | 62 | 9.6 | 22.1 | 5,981,874 | |
Scottish National Party | 6 | 0.9 | 1.5 | 412,267 | |
Plaid Cymru | 3 | 0.5 | 0.6 | 174,838 | |
646 | 27,110,727 |
...we see that Labour took a majority of seats, 55%, with only 35% of the vote. The largest two parties took 67.5% of votes and 86% of seats. Meanwhile, the smaller Liberal Democrat party took a fifth of votes but only about a tenth of the seats in parliament, and no other party on the mainland took more than one seat.
Evaluation
The majoritarian system is praised for producing stable majorities in parliament, but is criticised for representing only the largest parties and under-representing more minority opinions. It is considered best in countries where the ostensibly fairer proportionally representative system would produce a fragmented parliament, but which are not so unstable that an under-representation of minorities and opinion fragmentation will cause violence or disorder.