Electoral System in Uk free essay sample

Elections to devolved parliaments and assemblies †¢ Elections to the  European Parliament †¢ Local elections and mayoral elections Elections are held on  Election Day, which is conventionally a Thursday. General elections have fixed dates, and must be called within five years of the opening of parliament following the last election. Other elections are held on fixed and well as well dates though in the case of the devolved assemblies and parliaments, early elections can occur in certain situations. Presently, six electoral systems are used: †¢ The single member plurality system (First Past the Post) The plurality voting system is a single-winner voting system often used to elect executive officers or to elect members of a legislative assembly which is based on single-member constituencies. †¢ The multi member plurality system Plurality-at-large voting is a non-proportional voting system for electing several representatives from a single multimember electoral district using a series of check boxes and tallying votes similar to a plurality election. We will write a custom essay sample on Electoral System in Uk or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Party list PR Party-list proportional representation systems are a family of voting systems emphasizing proportional representation (PR) in elections in which multiple candidates are elected through preferentially-ranked allocations to an electoral list. †¢ The single transferable vote The single transferable vote (STV) is a voting system designed to achieve proportional representation through preferential voting. †¢ The Additional Member System Mixed-member proportional representation, commonly abbreviated to  MMP, is a  voting system originally used to elect  representatives  to the  German Bundestag, and nowadays adopted by numerous  legislatures  around the world. MMP is similar to other forms of  proportional representation  (PR). †¢ The  Supplementary Vote Under the  Supplementary Vote, voters express a first and second choice of candidate only, and, if no candidate receives an absolute majority of first choice votes, all but the two leading candidates are eliminated and the votes of those eliminated redistributed according to their second choice votes to determine the winner. These were not political parties in the modern sense but somewhat loose alliances of interests and individuals. By the mid 19th century the Tories had evolved into the Conservative Party, and the Whigs had evolved into the Liberal Party. The Liberal and Conservatives dominated the political scene until the 1920s, when the Liberal Party declined in popularity and suffered a long stream of resignations. It was replaced as the main left-wing party by the newly emerging Labour Party, who represented an alliance between the trades unions and various socialist societies. Since then the Conservative and Labour Parties have dominated British politics, and have alternated [ lt? net]in government ever since. However, the UK is not quite a two-party system since a third party (recently, the Liberal Democrats) can prevent 50% of the votes/seats from going to a single party. The Liberals merged with the  Social Democrats  because they had very similar views and became the Liberal Democrats  which is now a sizeable party whose electoral results have improved in recent years.