The Advantages and Disadvantages of Using the First Past-the-Post Voting System

17 Oct 2025

by PIN Communications

First past the post (FPTP), also known as simple majority voting, winner-takes-all voting, or plurality voting, is the most basic form of voting system.

While FPTP is clear, simple and decisive in most cases, many would argue that it is anything but a representative voting system.

FPTP can also be used in multi-member electoral contexts where voters are asked to vote for as many candidates as there are vacancies. Examples include local council elections, elections of foundation trust governors and membership organisations.

In public elections, FPTP is the second most widely used voting system in the world, after Party-List PR. It is principally used in places that used to be British colonies.

FPTP is currently used to elect members of the House of Commons in the UK, both chambers of the US Congress and the lower houses in Canada and India.

The use of FPTP voting systems used to be more widespread, but many countries have now adopted other alternative voting systems.

The advantages and benefits of a FPTP voting system

It’s simple to understand.
It doesn’t cost much to administer.
It’s is fairly quick to count the votes and work out who has won; meaning results can be declared relatively quickly after the polls close.
In a political environment, FPTP enables voters to clearly express a view on which party they think should form the next government.
FPTP is ideally suited to a two-party system and generally produces single-party governments, although the 2010 UK General Election, which resulted in a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, was an obvious exception.
Single-party governments, by and large, don’t have to rely on support from other parties to pass legislation, though as the UK found, that is not always necessarily the case as the Conservative-LibDem coalition government (2010-2015) demonstrated.
Some would argue that FPTP voting systems encourage broad-church centrist policies and discourage extremist points of view.

Disadvantages and shortcomings of FPTP voting

Representatives can get elected with small amounts of public support, as the size of the winning margin is irrelevant: what matters is only that they get more votes than other candidates.
FPTP encourages tactical voting, as voters often vote not for the candidate they most prefer, but against the candidate they most dislike.
FPTP is regarded as wasteful, as votes cast in a constituency for losing candidates, or for the winning candidate above the level they need to win that seat, count for nothing.
FPTP can severely restrict voter choice. Parties are not homogenous and do not speak with one unified voice. Parties are more coalitions of many different viewpoints. If the preferred-party candidate in a constituency has views with which a voter doesn’t agree, he or she doesn’t have a means of expressing that at the ballot box.
Rather than allocating seats in line with actual support, FPTP rewards parties with what is often termed ‘lumpy’ support; that is, with just enough votes to win in each particular area. With smaller parties, this works in favour of those with centralised support.

With relatively small constituency sizes, the way boundaries are drawn can have important effects on the election result.
Having small constituencies often leads to a proliferation of safe seats, where the same party is all but guaranteed re-election at each election. This not only effectively disenfranchises a region’s voters, but it leads to these areas being ignored when it comes to framing policy.
If large areas of the country are effectively electoral deserts for any particular party, not only is the area ignored by that party, but also ambitious politicians from the area will have to move away from their locality if they aspire to have influence within their party.
Because FPTP restricts a constituency’s choice of candidates, the representation of minorities and women suffers, as the ‘safest’ looking candidate is the one most likely to be offered the chance to stand for election.
Although encouraging two-party politics can be advantageous, in a multi-party culture, third parties with significant support can often be greatly disadvantaged.

The alternative to FPTP rejected by UK voters

The Alternative Vote (AV) is a system where the voter has the chance to rank the candidates in order of preference. However, a referendum in 2011 saw UK voters reject the idea of replacing FTPT with the AV system.

The AV system is used to elect chairs of most committees in the House of Commons, the Lord Speaker and by-elections for hereditary peers in the House of Lords, whereby the voter puts a 1 by their first-choice candidate, a 2 by their second choice, and so on, until they no longer wish to express any further preferences or run out of candidates.

Candidates are elected outright if they gain more than half of the first preference votes. If not, the candidate who lost (the one with least first preferences) is eliminated and their votes are redistributed according to the second (or next available) preference marked on the ballot paper.

This process continues until one candidate has half of the votes and is elected.

Another system commonly used in the UK is the Additional Member System (AMS), which is used by:

The Scottish Parliament.
The Welsh Parliament.
The London Assembly, 25 elected members who hold the Mayor of London accountable, scrutinise policies, and investigate key issues like transport, housing, and crime.

Voters are given two votes on separate ballot papers – one for a constituency member and one for a party list.

In Scotland and Wales list members are elected by region. In London there is a single London-wide list.

Constituency votes are counted first and the members for each constituency are elected using FPTP.

Additional members are then elected by counting the party list votes in each region. The number of members elected from the list is based on the percentage of the votes cast but also considers the number of constituency members already elected in the region.

This is designed to make the result more proportional to the number of votes cast.

Compare voting systems

The Single Transferrable Vote (STV) system, a form of proportional representation (PR), is used to elect members of the Northern Ireland Assembly and in local elections in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

You can read about the advantages and disadvantages of STV in our insight.

Proportional representation (PR) is a term used to describe a range of electoral systems in which the distribution of seats corresponds closely with the proportion of the total votes cast for each party or individual candidate.

You can read about the advantages and disadvantages of PR in our insight.

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Organising an election or ballot requires structured planning, procedural accuracy, and impartial management.

PIN Communications is a leading provider of election services with a dedicated team of highly experienced professionals delivering elections, ballots, polls, referendums and AGMs for a huge range of clients in the private and public sectors.

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FAQs

Where is the first past-the-post system currently used?
First past-the-post (FPTP) is used to elect Members of Parliament to the House of Commons in the United Kingdom. It is also used in national legislatures such as the United States Congress, as well as in Canada and India. The system remains most common in countries with historical ties to British parliamentary practice.

What are the main criticisms of FPTP?
Common criticisms include its lack of proportionality, the potential for ‘wasted’ votes, and the possibility that a candidate can win with a relatively small share of the overall vote. It may also disadvantage smaller parties and encourage tactical voting, where voters select a candidate strategically rather than based solely on preference.

What is the difference between FPTP and the Alternative Vote (AV) systems?
Under FPTP, voters choose one candidate and the highest vote-getter wins. Under the Alternative Vote system, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate achieves more than 50% of first-preference votes, lower-ranked candidates are eliminated and votes redistributed until one candidate secures a majority.

How does the Additional Member System (AMS) improve proportionality?
The Additional Member System combines constituency representatives elected by FPTP with additional representatives selected from party lists. Voters cast two ballots – one for a constituency candidate and one for a political party. The list seats are allocated to better reflect overall vote share, helping to produce a more proportional outcome than FPTP alone.

What is meant by a ‘safe seat’ under FPTP?
A ‘safe seat’ refers to a constituency where one political party consistently wins by a significant margin, making it unlikely that another party will gain the seat at an election. In such areas, electoral competition may be reduced, and voters who support other parties may feel their vote has limited impact on the overall result.

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