What is first-past-the-post?
Q: What is first-past-the-post?
A: It is a voting system used by some countries to elect their governments or the members of their parliaments.
Q: How is a country divided under the first-past-the-post system?
A: The country is divided into constituencies.
Q: Who stands for the elections in the first-past-the-post system?
A: People known as candidates, each of whom usually represents a different political party, stand for the election to the country's parliament.
Q: How is the winner determined in individual constituencies under the first-past-the-post system?
A: The candidate who gets the most votes from people wins the race to be elected to a seat in parliament.
Q: What is plurality in the context of the first-past-the-post system?
A: Plurality is another name for the electoral system where the candidate who gets the most votes in a constituency wins, irrespective of whether they have the overall majority votes.
Q: What happens if a party wins over 50% of the seats?
A: They can form a majority government.
Q: What happens if no single party wins over 50% of the seats in the first-past-the-post system?
A: Either the party with the most seats can form a minority government, or a coalition government can be formed from two or more other political parties who together have over 50% of the seats.
