#a level sociology coming in at the clutch with voting system knoweldge lmao

[puppetsoftomorrow]

I’m keep seeing a lot of articles dating despite getting only 5 seats, “Reform” still got millions of votes so don’t underestimate them. Exactly how are MPs elected anyway- is it winner take all or something like that?

yes we use first past the post here :) basically the country is divided into 650 constiencies. when you go to the polling station, u vote for someone to represent your contitiency - they're usually a member of a political party. if one party gets MPs in over half the constiuencies (356) then they can form a government - if they dont, then the parties can work it out to work together until they have enough MPs to get past the threshhold, which is how we got the tory-lib dem government in 2010. the leader of the party then becomes the prime minister - which is how the uk can change prime ministers without voting, and thats because we never vote for our prime ministers, they're just the leaders of the party...

anyway because of this system, if you voted for a candidate who doesn't become an MP, your vote isn't represented at all - so reform got millions of votes but basically came second in almost every seat they ran in - and getting second gets you nothing in FPTP. for aages now the smaller parties have been campaigning for a new voring system, like proportional representation, single transferable vote etc. trouble is, FPTP benefits the parties in charge, so there is zero impetus to change it.

also fun fact: the prime minister first has to go to the king and get his permission to form a government. and the king could totally say no and just disregard democracy. love that for us.