Comparing Electoral Systems and Their Effects

The UK does not have an electoral system. It has four, running side by side, and the specification asks you to explain why.

Body	System	In use since
House of Commons	FPTP	The modern single-member form dates from 1885
English local councils	FPTP	—
Scottish Parliament	AMS	1999
Northern Ireland Assembly	STV	1998
Scottish and Northern Irish councils	STV	2007 (Scotland); long-established in Northern Ireland
Senedd Cymru	CPLS	7 May 2026, replacing AMS

Three explanations account for the pattern, and a strong answer weighs them against each other:

1. Purpose. Westminster's system is built to manufacture a governing majority. The devolved systems were built to represent a divided electorate accurately. Different jobs, different tools.
2. Political bargaining. Every devolved system was the product of a negotiation in which somebody needed reassurance — a minority community, a junior coalition partner, or a smaller party.
3. Incumbency. Westminster is the one body whose system its own winners control. As the Financial Times put it in May 2026, parties in power have by definition won under the existing rules and have little incentive to scrap them.

Explanation 3 is the one candidates leave out, and it is the one that carries the most evaluative weight. Systems in the UK have been reformed wherever the reformers were not the beneficiaries of the old rules.

Scotland — AMS, to stop anyone winning outright. The Scottish Constitutional Convention, which designed the Parliament through the late 1980s and early 1990s, was dominated by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Labour was persuaded to accept a proportional element partly because its partners insisted, and partly because AMS made an outright SNP majority look arithmetically improbable. The design worked for a decade and then failed on its own terms: the SNP won a majority at Holyrood in 2011 and used it to secure the 2014 independence referendum. At the election of 7 May 2026 the system reverted to type, with the six largest parties returning SNP 57, Labour 17, Reform UK 17, Green 15, Conservative 12, Liberal Democrat 10 — nobody near the 65 seats a majority requires in a 129-member chamber.

Northern Ireland — STV, to guarantee both communities are heard. Under the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 the Assembly is elected by STV from five-member constituencies, and ministerial posts are then shared out among parties in proportion to their Assembly strength. Proportionality here is not a preference but a precondition of peace: an FPTP Assembly would hand near-total control to whichever community was locally larger. The results bear the design out. In 2022 the two largest parties, Sinn Féin and the DUP, took 50% of the vote and 58% of the seats, while five smaller parties and two independents shared the rest. Since 3 February 2024 Michelle O'Neill of Sinn Féin has been First Minister and Emma Little-Pengelly of the DUP deputy First Minister.

Wales — AMS, then CPLS. The Senedd used AMS from 1999. It was then expanded from 60 to 96 members elected from 16 six-member constituencies by closed list, and that system was used for the first time on 7 May 2026. Wales is the one UK legislature in recent years to have replaced its own electoral system, and the first result under the new one removed Labour, which had led every Welsh government since 1999, from office.

The specification names voter choice as the first of three impacts. It has several distinct components, and answers score better for separating them.

Choice between parties. FPTP presents a real choice only where the seat is competitive. In a safe seat the outcome is settled before the campaign starts, which depresses turnout and diverts party resources to the marginals that decide the election.

Tactical voting. Because only the leading two candidates can realistically win, voters are pushed towards the least-bad viable option rather than their preference. An Electoral Reform Society survey found 28% of voters voted tactically in 2024, and the campaign group Best for Britain openly advised centre-left voters on which candidate was best placed locally to beat the Conservatives. Proportional systems reduce this pressure because a vote for a smaller party can still return a member.

Wasted votes. Under FPTP a ballot counts for nothing if it went to a loser or exceeded the winner's requirement. In a seat won on 34% of the vote, around 70% of the ballots fall into one of those categories.

Choice between candidates of the same party. This is where the four systems separate most sharply, and it cuts against the proportional systems as often as for them.

System	What the voter actually chooses
FPTP	One candidate. Party selection committees choose who is on the ballot
AMS	A constituency candidate and a party list, so voters can split their ticket between two parties
STV	Individual candidates in rank order, including ranking one candidate of a party above another
CPLS	A party, and nothing else. The party fixes the order in which its candidates take the seats

STV maximises choice; CPLS minimises it. A student who claims proportional systems give voters more choice has half the picture: the Senedd's closed list gives Welsh voters less say over who represents them than FPTP does.

The chart shows the shape of the problem better than the numbers do. For Labour the seat bar towers over the vote bar; for Reform UK and the Greens it has almost disappeared. The Liberal Democrats, whose support is regionally concentrated, are the one party whose two bars nearly match — despite polling a smaller share than Reform UK.

Worked comparison — the same votes under a different system. Modelling by the Electoral Reform Society applied the Additional Member System to the 2024 result:

Party	Actual seats (FPTP)	Modelled seats (AMS)	Change
Labour	411	236	−175
Conservative	121	157	+36
Reform UK	5	94	+89
Green	4	42	+38

Labour's 174-seat majority becomes a shortfall of roughly 90 seats. The same voters, on the same day, produce a governing majority under one system and a hung parliament under another. That is the single most persuasive piece of evidence in this content area, in either direction: it shows FPTP distorting representation, and it shows proportionality removing the clear outcome FPTP delivered.

The devolved comparison confirms it. At the Senedd election of 7 May 2026, CPLS gave Plaid Cymru 43 of 96 seats on 35.4% of the vote and the Greens 2 on 6.7% — an over-reward of 9.4 points for the largest party against Labour's 29.5 points at Westminster in 2024.

FPTP's defenders rest their case here. Since the Second World War the UK has had a single coalition government, in 2010–15. Proportional systems make coalition or minority government the norm.

Outcome	Under FPTP	Under AMS, STV or CPLS
Single-party majority	The usual result: 1979, 1997, 2019, 2024	Rare — the SNP's Holyrood majority of 2011 is the standout exception
Coalition	2010–15 Conservative–Liberal Democrat	Routine; in Northern Ireland power-sharing is compulsory, with ministries shared out in proportion to party strength
Minority government	2017–19, when the Conservatives governed with DUP confidence and supply	Common; the SNP has governed as a minority at Holyrood for long stretches

The devolved results of 7 May 2026 illustrate the pattern. In Scotland the SNP's 57 seats left it short of a majority, and John Swinney was reappointed First Minister that month. In Wales no party won a majority, Plaid Cymru finishing six seats short of the 49 needed in a 96-member Senedd, and Labour did not provide the First Minister for the first time since devolution began in 1999.

Coalitions carry their own risks, which a balanced answer must name. Devolved government in Northern Ireland broke down in 2022, and the cooperation agreement between Labour and Plaid Cymru in Wales, struck in 2021, collapsed before its term was out.

One further point that catches candidates out. No UK electoral system elects a Prime Minister. Voters elect a Parliament, and the monarch appoints whoever can command the confidence of the Commons. Andy Burnham became Prime Minister on 20 July 2026 after being elected Labour leader unopposed on 17 July, having entered the Commons at the Makerfield by-election only a month earlier. No general election took place. Whatever system Westminster used, that outcome would have been possible.

Every argument in this content area collapses into one trade-off, and the strongest essays say so explicitly.

The case that fair representation matters more:

• A government resting on 33.7% of the vote claims a mandate most voters did not give it, and the 2024 majority of 174 was built on the most disproportional result in British electoral history.
• Multi-party competition makes FPTP results increasingly arbitrary. Polling by YouGov on 6–7 September 2026 had Labour 23%, Reform UK 23%, the Conservatives 20%, the Greens 12% and the Liberal Democrats 11–12%. With five parties bunched, tiny shifts in vote share can swing enormous numbers of seats.
• A system designed for two-party politics is being asked to referee a five-party contest. That is what the results of 7 May 2026 exposed: a counting rule built for an era of two-party dominance reflects opinion less and less well as support fragments.
• Wasted votes and safe seats depress turnout, which fell to 59.7% in 2024, the lowest since 2001.

The case that effective government matters more:

• FPTP produces a government that can act. Coalition negotiation moves the choice of government from voters to party managers, and the resulting programme was in nobody's manifesto.
• Accountability is clearer. A single governing party can be blamed and removed, as in 1979, 1997 and 2024. In a coalition, responsibility is shared and therefore blurred.
• The constituency link survives. One named MP is answerable to a defined area, reinforced by the Recall of MPs Act 2015, which allows a by-election if 10% of a constituency's electors sign a petition after serious misconduct.
• Coalitions can be unstable, as Northern Ireland in 2022 and the Welsh cooperation agreement both showed.

The counter to the "effective government" case is that AMS and STV both preserve a constituency link while improving proportionality, so the choice is not as stark as FPTP's defenders present it. Making that point is worth more than another example.

Given the strength of the case against it, the interesting question is why FPTP is still here.

1. The beneficiaries hold the pen

Changing the Westminster system requires an Act of Parliament passed by MPs elected under the existing rules. In 2024 the two largest parties took 82% of the seats on 57% of the votes. Both are structurally advantaged, whichever is in office.

2. The question has been asked and answered

The 2011 referendum rejected the Alternative Vote by 67.9% to 32.1%. Reformers cannot easily demand a second national vote on electoral reform having lost the first so heavily, even though AV is not a proportional system and was nobody's first choice.

3. Governing parties lose interest on arrival

The pattern repeats: Labour was committed to examining reform before 1997 and dropped it after winning a majority of 179; the same incentive applied after 2024. Reform is attractive to a party that is losing under the current rules and unattractive to one that has just won under them.

4. The public is not mobilised

Electoral reform has rarely ranked among voters' leading concerns. Referendums on devolution, the peace settlement and EU membership drew turnouts of 60.2%, 81.0% and 72.2%; the 2011 vote on the counting method managed 42.2%.

5. The argument has genuinely strong defenders

Constituency representation, single-party accountability and the ability to eject a government decisively are real advantages, not rhetorical cover. The honest judgement is that FPTP survives because of a combination of self-interest and a defensible case — and deciding how much of each is doing the work is exactly what the 30-mark question rewards.

1. Listing systems instead of analysing effects

Section 3.3 is not about how the systems work — that is 3.1. It asks about impact on voter choice, party representation and the government formed. Structure the answer around those three effects, and the AO2 marks follow.

2. Claiming proportional systems give voters more choice

They give a wider range of parties a realistic chance. They do not automatically give voters more say over individuals: the Senedd's closed list gives none at all. Distinguish choice of party from choice of candidate.

3. Treating coalition as a failure

Coalition and minority government are ordinary outcomes across most of Europe and across most of the devolved UK. Judge them on whether they governed effectively, not on the fact that they existed.

4. Treating the modelled AMS figures as a prediction

The Electoral Reform Society's exercise reallocates the votes actually cast in 2024 under a different counting rule. Under AMS many of those voters would have behaved differently, because tactical voting is far less necessary. The modelling shows what the rule does to a fixed set of votes, not what the election would have produced.

5. Forgetting that voters do not elect a Prime Minister

The UK elects a Parliament. Andy Burnham took office on 20 July 2026 without a general election, which is a feature of the constitution rather than a fault in the electoral system — and confusing the two costs precision marks.

6. Blaming the system for what the voters did

Turnout fell to 59.7% in 2024 and support fragmented across five parties. The counting rule is only part of the explanation for either: FPTP is widely argued to depress turnout in safe seats, but it does not decide how many parties voters choose to support. Section 3.3 is about what a counting rule does to a given set of votes, so keep the two apart: say which part of an outcome came from how people voted and which part came from how the votes were converted into seats.