More than 45 million voters are called to the polls this Thursday in the UK general election.
He Labour Party, led by Keir Starmeraspires to return to power after 14 years of conservative governments.
To prevent this, the Conservative Party of the current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, devoted part of the last efforts of the campaign to trying to convince the undecided to avoid giving power to their rivals.
Labour has focused its campaign on the word “change”at a time when the country is facing significant economic and social problems.
Voters in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the four nations that make up the United Kingdom, will go to the polls with a general feeling of economic stagnation in the country, exacerbated by the high inflation of recent years that has made daily life difficult for the average citizen.
Added to this are other problems such as the lack of housing – and its increasingly exorbitant prices in London and other large cities -, Immigration, which reached record levelsor insecurity.
Another factor to take into account in the elections is the possible rise in votes for the ultra-conservative and anti-immigration party. Reform UK, by Nigel Farage.
We tell you how elections work in the United Kingdom.
In the UK, obtaining significant support from voters at the ballot box does not necessarily imply a similar proportion of seats in Parliament.
This is one of the complaints raised by the minor parties that are running in the general elections this Thursday.
According to the system first-past-the-post (single-member majority vote) which is in force, the person with the most votes in each constituency becomes a deputy, leaving candidates from other parties without representation.
For example, Reform UK is only a few points behind the ruling Conservative Party, although it finds it difficult to convert its support into seats as it is spread fairly evenly across many constituencies.
Other smaller parties, including the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, also They claim to be at a disadvantage by the system of election of deputies.
Meanwhile, defenders of the system argue that it serves to guarantee stable governments.
The United Kingdom is divided into 650 areas or constituenciesand in each of them a person is chosen a single deputy to represent its residents in Westminster.
Voters put a cross next to the name of their preferred candidate on the ballot paper.
The candidate with the most votes wins, who only has to come in first place. without the need to obtain an absolute majority of the ballots in that constituency.
The party with the most deputies wins the elections.
If that party has more MPs than all the other parties put together (called a Commons majority), it forms a government and its leader automatically becomes prime minister.
That is what happened at the last general election in 2019, when the Conservatives won 365 seats, giving the party an absolute majority and Boris Johnson continuing as prime minister.
In 2010, no party won an absolute majority in the chamber, so the Conservatives, who were the party with the most elected MPs, invited the Liberal Democrats to share power in a coalition government.
What happens to the minor parties?
Since the beginning of the election campaign, opinion polls suggest growing support for smaller parties.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has criticised the current voting system and lamented that his party is likely to will get fewer seats than those that “the number of votes should deserve.”
He added: “We are likely to see a Labour Party without a particularly high share of the vote, but with a huge number of seats.”
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey would also like a different voting system based on what he called “fair votes”.
The Green Party in England and Wales, meanwhile, is focusing its efforts on winning seats in just four constituencies that it considers viable under the current system.
Smaller parties have traditionally complained of being at a disadvantage under the system. first-past-the-post which, in his opinion, causes millions of votes not to be reflected in the composition of the House of Commons.
For example, in 2019 the Liberal Democrats won the 11.5% of the votes but they were left with less than 2% of the seats in the House of Commons.
The Green Party of England and Wales won 2.7% of the vote, which translated into just one MP.
In 2015, UKIP won 12.6% of the vote, but only one seat.
Who supports the system
Both major parties – Conservatives and Labour – support the system first-past-the-post.
They argue that it is simple, voters understand it well and it maintains a clear link between voters and their MP.
Voters, they argue, They elect deputies instead of parties and they can easily get rid of them if they want in the next election.
Since a party tends to form a majority under this system, its supporters also argue that it gives the winner the opportunity to implement its electoral programme.
They claim that Other systems often result in coalitionsmeaning that exchanges between different parties take place behind closed doors, away from the view of voters.
In a 2011 referendum, citizens overwhelmingly supported maintaining the single-member first-past-the-post system.
How it affects the way we vote
Under the current system, most parliamentarians are elected with less than 50% of the votes in their constituencymeaning more people voted for their rival candidates overall.
The detractors of the first-past-the-post They argue that this may discourage many people from voting for certain parties, because they think their ballot will be of no use.
For example, they may believe that there is no point in voting for their favourite Conservative candidate if the Labour candidate has a clear expectation of winning in their constituency.
Instead, they may resort to tactical voting: backing the person they think has the best chance of defeating their least-favored candidate, rather than supporting their first choice.
Similarly, The party with the most deputies can form a government despite the fact that the number of votes he obtained was lower than that of his rivals taken together.
For example, the Conservative Party obtained a large majority in 2019 despite obtaining less than 44% of the popular vote.
What other voting systems are there in the United Kingdom?
He first-past-the-post It is not used in parliamentary elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Instead, these elections use different versions of an alternative system called proportional representationwhich operate in various ways.
Some involve voters ranking candidates in order of preference, or selecting parties rather than individuals.
Each version of the proportional representation system has its own supporters and detractors.
All of them, in any case, seek to allocate seats among the parties in proportion to the number of votes received.
Thus, a party that obtained 30% of the votes should occupy 30% of the seats available.
And single-party majorities are less common in proportional representation, as power tends to be shared more widely among different forces.
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