POL111H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: First-Past-The-Post Voting, Liberal Democracy, Central Canada
Document Summary
We need to look at how the rules of the electoral game" structure how the parties compete for our vote: every electoral system affects how parties compete for votes, and strategize to win support. Electoral rules are not neutral: they independently affect electoral outcomes: our electoral system is known as the first past the post system (fptp), also known as the single-member plurality electoral system. We inherited this system from britain: under fptp, the candidate who receives the most votes in a constituency on election day is elected, regardless of whether this amounts to a majority of the votes cast. In other words, the winning candidate only has to secure a plurality of the votes cast, not a majority: note, this is a winner take all system. In the 2011 election, none of the winning mps got over 50% of the vote. In the 2015 election, only 2/5 mps got over 50% of the vote.
