Plurality voting
In a system based on single-member districts, it may be referred to as winner-takes-all or bloc voting. The system is still used to elect members of a legislative assembly or executive officers in only a handful of countries in the world. It is used in most elections in the United States, the lower house in India, elections to the British House of Commons and English local elections.
About Plurality voting in brief
Plurality voting is an electoral system in which each voter is allowed to vote for only one candidate, and the candidate who polls more than any other counterpart is elected. In a system based on single-member districts, it may be referred to as winner-takes-all or bloc voting. The system is still used to elect members of a legislative assembly or executive officers in only a handful of countries in the world. It is used in most elections in the United States, the lower house in India, elections to the British House of Commons and English local elections. In some jurisdictions, including France and some of the U.S. including Louisiana and Georgia, a \”two-ballot\” or \”runoff-election\” plurality system is used, which may require two rounds of voting. In the two-round system, usually the top two candidates in the first ballot progress to the second round, also called the runoff. A more structured ballot for a write-in candidate can also include a space for a candidate ; however, the base for national elections like the United Kingdom and Canada, uses single- member districts as the base. In countries with proportional representation systems, such as the UK, there is not a great incentive to produce large political parties, which contributes to a large vote for a multi-party system. In Scotland, for example, a Liberal Democrat in Scotland won a seat with just 26% of the votes cast for 1992, but the party won the election with a majority of the vote. The term ‘winner-take-all’ is sometimes also used to refer to elections for multiple winners in a particular constituency using bloc voting, or MMDP.
This system at the state-level is used for election of most of the electoral college in US presidential elections. The winner of the election is the candidate. who represents a plurality of voters or, in other words, received the largest number of votes. That makes plurality voting among the simplest of all electoral systems for voters and vote counting officials. In a multiple-member plurality election with n seats available, the winners are the n candidates with the highest numbers of votes, or some other number. The rules may allow the voter to vote. for one candidate or up to n candidates, or some othernumber. Under the plurality system, the winner of an election then becomes the representative of the entire electoral district and serves with representatives of other electoral districts. In an election for a single seat,such as for president in a presidential system, the same style of ballot is used and the winner is whichever candidate receives the largestNumber of votes in the election. In political science, the use of plurality voting with multiple, single-winner constituencies is often referred to SMDP. The combination is also variously referred to to contrast it with proportional representation systems. It is particularly prevalent in theUnited Kingdom, the United US, Canada and India and is used by 43 of the 193 countries that are members of the United Nations.
You want to know more about Plurality voting?
This page is based on the article Plurality voting published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
