Pros:
- Maintains constituency link
- Voters can vote for their favourite candidate without worrying about wasting their vote so removes the need for tactical voting
- Candidates run less divisive campaigns, as they will want to become their opponent’s voters second favourite candidate.
- AV tends to reward candidates who have an appeal beyond their own party’s supporters
- With AV your constituency gets a Member of Parliament (MP) that has majority support - prevents MPs being voted in on a minority of the vote in their constituency
- Designed to deal with vote splitting. Under Westminster’s First Past the Post system, a candidate the majority dislikes can win, if the majority split their votes across multiple candidates.
- Less wasted votes
Cons:
- Keeping ONE MP per constituency means you do not achieve proportionality - not a proportional system
- Could promote bland “middle-of-the road” politics
- Sometimes seen as a stepping stone to PR but Australia adopted AV in 1918 and has never made the full transition nationally
