- WEAK MAJORITIES
- Has been known to deliver weak majorities that give governments weak mandates.
- While the 2015 General Election did produce a single party government, the strength of its mandate is questionable – Conservatives won 330 seats with just 36.9% – only 24.4% of eligible voters endorsed the party’s policies.
- As a result, opposition parties have already proven to be willing to challenge the Government on even manifesto policies – In October 2015, Peers broke with the convention that the House of Lords should not challenge the government on financial issues by voting to delay cuts to tax credits, arguing that the Government lacked a mandate for the reforms. Equally, as FPTP is a simple plurality system, the winner in each constituency needs just one more vote than the second place candidate – many MPs have a weak individual mandate, as they are elected without the support of a majority of their constituents – In 2015, only 328 MPs (51%) had a ‘majority mandate’, while 322 MPs (49%) had a ‘minority mandate’.
- UNEQUAL
- Presence of safe seats and unequal votes.
- Before the 2015 election, the Electoral Reform Society predicted the outcome in 363 of 368 safe seats.
- Voters in these safe seats are likely to have their votes wasted if they vote for a third-party candidate.
- In 2015, parties spent a combined £129,687 in the marginal seat of Luton North, but only £5,907 in the safe seat of Bootle.
- a vote in smaller constituency is likely to be more influential than a vote in a larger constituency, therefore meaning that many votes are wasted
- in 2015, 50% of all votes go to a losing candidate and 24% also went to a candidate that had already secured enough votes to win.
- THIRD PARTIES
- Particularly unfair to third parties because it makes the distribution of support so important.
- In 2015, UKIP received over 3.8 million votes, but won only a single seat.
- In contrast, the SNP received 1.45 million votes, and won 56 seats.
- This is because UKIP’s support was divided across the 624 constituencies it fielded candidates, while the SNP’s support was concentrated in Scotland’s 59 constituencies.
- The SNP won 56 of Scotland’s 59 seats, with just 50% of the vote.
- Distribution of support would be less significant if the UK used a more proportional system, with larger, multi-member constituencies.
- UKIP came top in the 2014 European Parliament elections, which uses the more proportional Party List system.