Talk:First Past the Post electoral system

I made some changes that I think improve this article, but there's some major reconstruction that's going to be necessary. Someone should take a swipe at making sense of this. I'm not sure exactly where to start -- RobLa

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First Past the Post is the electoral system used in the United Kingdom and in some other countries. In such a system the country (or political subdivision) is divided into constituencies, most commonly with approximately equal populations. In each such constituency when there is an election, the person with the largest number (plurality) of votes is declared the winner to represent all residents of that constituency.

Its opponents say its principal deficiencies are

• disproportional election results that may mean parties may have a different percentage of seats in parliament to their percentage votes in the general election

• its discouragement of local small parties and independents, most of whom cannot win local electoral battles, with the dominance of major parties

• Its use of Single Member constituencies (ie, only one MP elected)

Its supporters say its principal benefits are:

• stable single party government

• an absence of small parties that can force minority policies on governing parties, as happens in countries with regular coalition governments

• a clear choice between two alternative governments (Labour or the Conservatives) with the electorate knowing exactly what they are voting on, rather than post-general election negotiations that might produce governments the electorate neither expected nor wanted. (eg. In Ireland in 1992, two parties, Fianna Fáil and Labour[?], having fought the election bitterly opposing each other, then entered into government together to the surprise and bewilderment of voters.)

• maintaining a direct link between the Member of Parliament and his or her constituency. (Most proportional systems do not elect on MP from each constituency and often don't use territorial constituencies at all.)

• a simple voting mechanism, ie indicating a vote by means of an 'X' beside a person's name. (Other alternative systems may require numbers, etc)

Its Opponents say its principal flaws are:

• It produces majority governments even when the people have not voted for them

• It creates 'false' election results, producing landslides (eg, 1987, 1997, 2002) that were the creation of the electoral system, not the choice of the people

• It damages democracy by producing inaccurate national results that so lack proportionality that voters cannot be guaranteed that their will will be reflected; 25% of voters, those who voted for the SDP-Liberal Alliance in 1987 in Britain, for example, had their voices ignored when the electoral system only 'gave' them 4% of the seats.

The Liberal Democrats (UK) has long campaigned for an end to the First Past the Post system. The Conservatives support its retention. Labour, having indicated a willingness to consider change, now seems to be for maintaining the status quo.

While First Past the Post is used universally in Great Britain and Nothern Ireland for parliamentary elections, an alternative system, PR.STV[?], which offers greater proportionality and also greater complexity, is used in local government elections in Northern Ireland.

This wrong, in the UK, local election do not use a STV system. It is multiple (3) votes for the same number of seats, these are not transferable.

Ultimately, the issue of whether or not to use the First Past the Post system boils down to a simple question: which of the following is the more important?

• stability
• accuracy
• constituency link with an MP
• proportionality

Table of contents 1 An Example of First Past the Post 1.1 Results 1.2 Interpreting the Results 2 Why does First Past the Post produce Disproportional Results? 2.1 A Practical Example 3 Alternative Electoral Systems

An Example of First Past the Post

Take for example a mythical constituency, called Wikipedia North. One Member of Parliament to be elected.

Results

Candidate	Votes
Nancy Ash, Anti-Radical Party	999
John Maurice, Not So Radical Party	1000
Jean O'Leary, Radical Party	1001
Michael Yates, Independent	1000

Interpreting the Results

Under First Past the Post, Jean O'Leary would win the seat, having won more votes than each of her opponents. Her majority would be described as 1.

Critics of the First Past the Post system would point out that of the 4000 votes cast, O'Leary only got 1001, whereas a total of 2999 were cast against her for other candidates. Supporters of the First Past the Post system would say she was the most popular candidate on offer. Having got more votes, she was entitled to win the seat.

Why does First Past the Post produce Disproportional Results?

The system's disproportionality is caused by the ability of one candidate to win a seat even though the majority of votes were cast against that candidate, with he or she in the above case being the choice of marginally over 25% of the electorate. In 1987 in Britain, for example, the opposition votes were split between two parties, Labour and the SDP-Liberal Alliance, allowing the Conservatives to win seats even though the majority of voters in a particular constituency were opposed to the conservatives. If the split between Labour and the SDP-Liberal Alliance allowed the Conservatives to win more seats and so a landslide in 1987, the split between the Conservatives and the Liberal Alliance[?] in 1997 and 2002 allowed Labour to win a landslide majority. In all three cases, 1987, 1997 and 2002, the winning party actually received a percentage of the popular vote that was less than 50%.

A Practical Example

In the mythical election result above for Wikipedia North, if the Anti-Radical Party and the Not So Radical Party had arranged for one of them not to contest the election but have their voters vote for the other party, the remaining candidate would have got 1999 and so easily won the seat. But by splitting the votes of those opposed to the Radical Party, they gave the seat to the Radical Party candidate. In theory, if this exact result was replicated in 100 constituencies, the result would be

• Radical Party 100 seats
  • Total Vote: 100,100
• Anti-Radical Party 0 seats
  • Total Vote: 99,900
• Not So Radical 0 seats
  • Total Vote: 100,000
• Independents 0 seats
  • Total Vote: 100,000

Yet, the Radical Party would only have approximately 25% of the vote, and would only have 100 votes more in total than the Not So Radical Party, yet the latter would have one 0 seats to the Radical Party's 100. This is, of course, an extreme case. No election would produce such a dramatically disproportionate result. That First Past the Post produces disproportionality in some form is not in doubt. Its supporters argue that its benefits in terms of electoral stability and clear-cut results outweighs a degree of disproportionality.

Alternative Electoral Systems

List System[?]
Voters vote for parties whose percentage support is then used to indicate how many of a list of candidates submitted by them are elected.
Strength Absolute Proportionality
Weakness Loss of local link with voters as not based on constituencies or personal votes
Proportional Representation using the Single Transferable Vote (PR.STV)
Voters vote for candidates on ballot papers, marking '1', '2', '3' etc to indicate preferences. Those with lowest votes are eliminated and their votes re-distributed and counted. The process continues until one candidate reaches a 'quota'. This continues until all seats in a constituency are filled.
Strength - relative proportionality
Weakness - complicated. May involve multi-member constituencies.

Electoral systems can also be constructed using parts of other systems. For example, the List System & PR.STV can be combined, with two-thirds of parliamentary seats elected by PR.STV via constituencies, and the remainder filled from a List, to produce absolute or near to absolute proportionality.

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First Past the Post is ALWAYS capitalised, never written in lower case. (It is so basic students lose marks in exams if they put it in the lower case.) JTD 23:21 Feb 13, 2003 (UTC)

• There are two grammatical issues regarding this expression: hyphens and capitals.
  • According to The Random House Handbook hyphens are used in compound modifiers when they precede the modified term and the first element of the term is itself a modifier.
  • I can find no grammatical justification for generally capitalizing each element in "first-past-the-post". I have seen it both with and without capital letters, but in this regard I would prefer the authority of the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/vote2001/hi/english/voting_system/newsid_1173000/1173697.stm to that of professorial idiosyncrasy. In the case of article titles Wikipedia policy here would overide standard rules as they relate to titles. Eclecticology 01:48 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

So in other words you want students who use Wiki when learning about FPtP not to understand that it is the formal name of a system but simply to think it is merely a description of a system. If it is used as the name, it is regularly capitalised. Only if it is decribing a system is it in lower case. That's no personal idiosyncrasy, its basic english. In this case, you are not describing a system, you are naming it in the name of an article. As such, it is supposed to be in capitals, a basic grammatical rule. When it is used as the name not the description it is generally capitalised. The context decides the form in which it is used. In this context, capitalisation is a basic elementary grammatical requirement. JTD 02:00 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

It isn't the "formal name" of a system at all. It is a term drawn from horse racing to describe that kind of system by analogy with a horse race. As far as I know no legislature in any country with such a system has ever passed the likes of an act intituled "An Act To Establish a First Past the Post Electoral System". I agree that in a paper based publication these words would be capitalixed, but so would "Electoral" and "System" (which for some unknown reason JTD has chosen not to capitalize). For technical reasons, related to the linking of articles, Wikipedia has consciously chosen to overide that usual English language rule so that all words in a title except the first are begun with lower case letter unless the word would otherwise be written with a capital as with a personal name.

As far as students are concerned Wikipedia is not a term or examination paper. Students adopt the Wikipedia conventions at their own risk. In taking my position I am not necessarily addressing students as that term is usually understood. Nevertheless it strikes me as remarkably petty that your professorial colleagues would reduce marks on this basis, when the issue would really be about understanding such a political system. Eclecticology 06:49 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

We don't "name" articles in all caps unless they're the names of people, places or such. This is not an official name. Let's PLEASE quit changing it back and forth. -- Zoe

Yep - there is no reason to have this article title in caps. It simply ain't a proper noun so it is not capitalized. Please refer to Wikipedia:naming convention (capitalization) for the rationale. --mav

First Past the Post is a proper noun. It is the formal name of a voting system. When used simply as a reference to methodology it is not capitalised. When used as a name of a voting system it is. Hence you get references to FPTP not fptb in academic texts. It is the same as Proportional System using the Single Transferable Vote (PR.STV, never pr.stv) which is capitalised when using the formal name of the system, not capitalised when describing the methodology. Electoral system in this instance is not capitalised because it is simply in this instance a descriptive phrase contextualising the name of the voting system. ÉÍREman

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"In the UK, there were only two majority governments in the 20th century."

This certainly wrong, the last five governments have been majority governments. It should probably state that there have been only two hung governments in the UK in the 20th century.

It could either be a garbled reference to the existence of two occasions when the monarch in special circumstances asked the PM to form a govt with a parliamentary majority rather than the usual request to form a govt capable of surviving in the House of Commons. The former is used when in a time of national emergency a broadbased govt is needed but the PM's own party lacked a parliamentary majority or had a tiny one. When the former is asked, it is usually a cue to form a coalition. David Lloyd George was asked to do so in 1916, hence the formation of a Liberal-Conservative coalition. Winston Churchill received a similar request in 1940, hence the formation of the Conservative-Labour coalition. Except in those war-time cases, a PM is simply asked to form a govt capable of surviving in the HofC, which can mean a minority government. ÉÍREman

Please stop screwing around with this name and making wikipedia looking like a home for illiterates. First Past the Post is the formal name of a voting system and is treated like a proper name in titles, just like President of the United States, Proportional Representation using the Single Transferable Vote, President of Ireland, etc. It is not treated as such if talking generically, just as single transferable vote if discussing the methodology of electoral systems generically is written in lower case, just as you use Pope and pope, Prime Minister and prime minister, President and president, etc, in different contexts. This is a clear definition of a clear explicit voting method, not a generic talk about voting. Students would be docked marks if they did not know when to capitalise and when to use in lower case, why can't some people on wikipedia understand the difference? ÉÍREman 01:28 May 14, 2003 (UTC)~

FYI, in case it happens again :), these pages redirect to this article: First Past the Post, First-past-the-post electoral system, First-past-the-post election system, First past the post, Relative majority and Plurality voting -- Jimregan

I know, Jim. I'm the one always setting up redirects all over the place (though I forget if I did any here). It would be nice however if students checking the information actually found that the text on the correctly named page, not the wrongly named redirect. It does not do much for the reputation of wiki if, having been told by their lecturers of the importance of capitalising the name when writing about the actual system, a student finds a supposedly credible encyclopædia then puts in the text in a form that the student has been told is wrong, and indeed worse than that, in a form that they were told if they used they would have marked docked over, because of how wrong it is. ÉÍREman 02:03 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, you did a couple. BTW, what electoral system do we have? I didn't find it on Politics of Ireland. Jimregan 02:56 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

Proportional Representation using the Single Transferable Vote (PR.STV). Unfortunately it keeps being moved to the wrong name, using the wrong capitalisation, etc. I don't what it is about wiki and electoral systems but people keep getting the capitalisation wrong, merging electoral systems that are somewhat different, getting details of them wrong. This one is at Single Transferable Vote (via a redirect at 'single transferable vote' (aaagh!)). Everytime anyone fixes it, someone screws it up again. Even getting the correct capitalisation for STV was a struggle. At this stage I have abandoned trying to fix the electoral system texts. Simply getting the titles right is frustration enough. :-) ÉÍREman 04:11 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

Aha. My Dad's a great fan of that system, it nearly got him elected to the local council :) (His main deal was litter policy, so he refused to do flyers or posters, and he's always hated canvasers. He got votes mostly by people ticking his name in case it was him :) -- Jimregan 04:28 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

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ÉÍREman says that "First Past the Post is the formal name of a voting system and is treated like a proper name in titles", and is mystified that anybody might think otherwise. Well, I've read a lot of books and spent way too many years in school, and I've never ever heard of a voting system's name being capitalized, formal name or no. I'm in a hotel room right now, so printed MoS is not handy, but instead of saying "every student knows this" over and over, I think we need to see some authoritative citations (never got any for Communist state, sigh, but hope springs eternal). If this naming convention is something important that wikipedians don't know but should, I don't think it's asking too much that it be documented at least as carefully as, say, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships). (It's also more efficient to point to an MoS page than to fill up talk page after talk page with repetitious verbiage. :-) ) Stan 05:26 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

I've taught the flaming thing to third level student for eight years. IF the thing is being named, it is treated as . . . a name. (surprise, surprise). If it is being talked about generically, it isn't. Learn the difference people definition and methodology, or try looking at a grammar book for how you treat formal unique names. If you talk about people generically you don't capitalise. If you talk about Stan or Jim you do because guess what? It is a unique specific reference. A name. First Past the Post is a unique reference to a unique name of a unique clearly defined system. So is Proportional Representation using the Single Transferable Vote (or PR.STV as most people call it). If you are generically talking about using a single transferable vote, it isn't capitalised. If you are talking about the Single Transferable Vote system (a specific system) you capitalise. The inability of some people to understand basic elementary rules of capitalisation is mind blowing. Is the standard of english language teaching so bad that people don't know what a capital letter is and where you use it? From some of the nutty namings on wiki it must be. No wonder Sian left wiki, saying that the standard of english appalled her! ÉÍREman 06:21 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

The capitalization situation in English is just not as simple as you're making out. For instance, there was a recent debate over capitalization of bird species names, and sensitized by that, I've been paying attention to capitalization in the information about types of fish I've been adding. Guess what? The most authoritative sources online, such as fishbase.org, as well as the published papers, don't tend to capitalize, even for the proper name of a single species of fish. So either we have lots of research icthyologists that are not as well-educated as your third level students, which I grant is a possibility :-), or else they - and the editors of their journals - don't agree that every name-like term has to be capitalized. Another hint is that when I saw "First Past the Post", my instantaneous reaction was "title of a book" not "name of an electoral system". Language is what its speakers make of it, not what the pedants say it is, and if you're familiar with the history of English, you know that the rules of capitalization have changed drastically over the years, and are continuing to change. In this case, I suspect that British English is clinging to an old rule that's already been abandoned in the US; here I think the preferred form would be '"first past the post" electoral system'. But now that my curiosity has been piqued, I must wait on tenterhooks until I can get to an MoS. Stan 08:59 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

It seems to me that the only authority that ÉÍREman has for his position is himself, ad hominem arguments, and analogies. At least I earlier tried reference to the Random House Hanbook and the BBC to established the contrary view. I pity the students that have been misled for the past eight years. Simply "naming" something is not a sufficient criterion for capitalizing what it is called. Lower case is the general rule in all cases unless there is a specific contrary rule. Even as I disagreed with him (and continue to disagree) about capitalizing bird names, I found his argument there stronger than it is here. There are in fact numerous bird books that do capitalize. Using capital letters in referring to a system solely by its initials does justify a back process of applying that rule when the name is given in full. A first past the post system is "de facto" in many countries, but none of them has arrived at that by passing "An Act to Implement a First Past the Post Electoral System". There is no organized First Past the Post Party in any country. Had they done so I would have viewed the matter quite differently. This is not a question of the "basic elementary rules"; elementary rules are the ones that are clear and consistent across style and grammar manuals. When most authorities don't mention the specific issue, it is hardly elementary. If ÉÍREman's students could see their professor's behaviour here on this matter they would do well to appeal the way he has marked their papers. ☮ Eclecticology 09:05 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

Mail the students a link to this discussion? Oh that would be cruel... Anyway, I foolishly drank Thai iced tea at dinner, no chance of sleep :-), so I poked around a bit more. The online style guides generally summed up with "Capitalization rules are quirky" without addressing this one directly (closest might be "cold war", which Chicago says to do in lowercase). Empirical usage according to Google is comically random; people will say "first past the post (FPTP)", the urge to capitalize the acronym being strong apparently (but there was one pedant who wrote it "FPtP"). Hyphens are extremely popular too, even the Beeb delivered "first-past-the-post (FPTP)" in http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/208611.stm. Also amusingly, the Google search for "fptp uk bbc" delivered this very talk page in the 10th position from the top, so at least the rest of the net gets to see that we're having an earnest discussion on this important topic. :-) Stan 10:01 May 14, 2003 (UTC)