‘First Past the Post’ (FPTP) is the colloquial name for the way we elect our MPs in the UK, and local councillors in England and Wales. The country is divided into 650 areas called ‘constituencies’ (geographical areas containing roughly similar numbers of registered voters) and the candidate who gets the most votes in each constituency wins, even if their vote falls far short of a majority. In local authority elections for multi-constituency wards the top 2 or 3 candidates are elected.
Where is this system used? FPTP is now used only in a handful of countries across the world, most with a British colonial legacy. These include the USA (with an electoral college for the Presidency*), Canada, India and some African and Caribbean states
Several countries have rejected FPTP: New Zealand introduced a Mixed Member System in 1996, and South Africa moved to a proportional list system at the end of the Apartheid era. UK devolved nations (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) have adopted PR systems rather than FPTP for their national assemblies/parliaments.
Advantages of FPTP include the fact that it is simple, and embodies a "constituency link", where people are represented by one local MP who is assumed to know the local area (not guaranteed). However, the overall allocation of parliamentary seats under FPTP does not bear a close relationship to the votes cast in an election. Because of this, FPTP usually produces governments that the majority of people did not vote for or would prefer not to win. Most recently, in the UK 2024 general election, Labour won 63% of seats, a 174 seat majority, on 33.7% of the vote. And it sometimes leads to very anomalous outcomes. In 1951, for example, the Conservative Party won an overall majority in Parliament despite getting fewer votes than the Labour Party and in 1974, Labour became the biggest party in Parliament, despite getting fewer votes than the Conservatives.
* Each state has a number of electoral votes. The candidate with the most votes in that state gets ALL that state's electoral votes for the final tally.
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