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Please see the discussion on the talk page. | A majoritarian electoral system is one which is based on single-member constituencies. The term is used particularly in the famous studies of Arend Lijphart. Image File history File links Unbalanced_scales. ...
Arend DEngremont Lijphart (b. ...
It is more or less synonymous with a plurality voting system. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Plurality. ...
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 do not 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... [discuss] – [edit]
Summary of the 5 May 2005 House of Commons of the United Kingdom election results (parties with more than one seat; not incl. N. Ireland) 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 not on this chart took more than one mainland seat. The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ...
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. |
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