How are elections conducted in the United Kingdom votes?

Answer 1

The country is divided into approx 635 constituencies. Each constituency votes separately. Each voter in each constituency votes for one candidate to be the Member of Parliament (MP) for that constituency. The candidates have to put down a deposit (to keep the list short) which they lose if only a few people vote for them. The candidates are only allowed to spend a limited amount on publicity so that the rich do not have an advantage. The party which gets most MPs elected forms the government and can stay in power for 5 years maximum before having another general election. The Prime Minister is selected by the MPs of the majority ruling party.

Answer 2

Like most countries in Europe, the United Kingdom does not hold direct elections for its government or Prime Minister - instead, its only major national elections are legislative ones, the results of which indirectly determine who will hold power.

Once every five years (though elections can be held earlier in exceptional circumstances), citizens of the UK have the opportunity to vote to chose who they want to represent them in the House of Commons - the lower and more powerful chamber of the British Parliament. This is known as a general election.

For the purposes of this election, the United Kingdom is divided into several hundred - currently 650, though the exact number varies from decade to decade - parliamentary constituencies. Each of these constituencies has around 70,000 voters in them on average, though they can vary considerably in physical size; the smallest constituency is a mere 7.35 kilometers squared, whilst the largest is over 12,000 kilometers squared.

Each of these constituencies elects a single Member of Parliament to take a seat in the House. Numerous candidates - most from political parties - run in each constituency, hoping to win the right to represent its voters in Parliament. Voters are only entitled to vote in one constituency each, even if they have homes in multiple seats. In the 2010 election, an average of 6 candidates ran in each constituency, with over 4,000 running across the country.

Unlike some nations, UK election campaigns are quite brief. All though most major party candidates campaign on a local basis all year round, the parties themselves only campaign in earnest in the two or three months leading up to a general election. The bulk of national campaigning only takes place in the last three to four weeks before election day, with the most intense period of activity being the ten days leading up to - and including - polling day. Parties typically campaign until as late as 7 or 8pm on election day.

When voting day comes, citizens go to the polls between 7am and 10pm and cast a single vote for the candidate they want to represent their constituency. Most voters cast ballots along party-political lines, usually in support of one of the three major parties: the Labour Party (centre-left), the Conservative Party (centre-right) and the Liberal Democrats (centrist).

When polls close at 10pm, votes counting begins immediately. The candidate who wins the most votes - even if he or she wins less than 50% of the vote - is subsequently elected to be the Member of Parliament for that constituency. Because Labour and the Conservatives have both a strong core vote and are able to win over a large number of moderate, unaligned swing voters, this system overwhelmingly favours candidates from those parties and leads to their dramatic over-representation. Elections are thus portrayed chiefly as a national contest between Labour and the Conservatives.

Vote counting in the UK is a very serious undertaking. The UK has one of the fastest hand-counting systems in the world; at the 2010 election, it took volunteers only 16 hours to count and record all 29million plus votes cast. As a result of this speedy counting, if there is to be a transfer of power as the result of an election, a new government is usually in office by late afternoon on the day after election day.

The results of a general election usually determine who forms the next government. In order to form a government, a Prime Minister and Cabinet must have the support of more than half of all the Members of Parliament - this means the Conservative and Labour parties fight to win at least 326 of the 650 parliamentary constituencies, in order to ensure they can form a government on their own. It is rare that neither of these parties wins more than half the seats in the House at a general election; it has only happened three times since the end of the Second World War (in 1951, February 1974 and 2010 - though in 1951 the Conservatives had an allied party who pushed them over the winning line). It is usually apparent which party has a majority of seats, if either, by the early hours of the day after the election; the leader of the winning party becomes Prime Minister and appoints the rest of the Government, usually from members of his own party. The Prime Minister is also a Member of Parliament themselves. British voters usually vote for on partisan rather than personality lines as a result of this system.

General elections are thus an indirect way of determining the government, and most voters treat them as such. The 2010 general election marked the first time two parties - the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats - formed a government together, because the Conservative Party had fallen too far short of the winning margin to govern alone comfortably for even a brief period of time.

It is worth noting that the British electoral system, which does not require winning candidates to win over 50% of the vote to be elected, means that UK governments are rarely elected by over 50% of the voting public. In 1997, Tony Blair led the Labour Party to the biggest landslide for an incoming government in modern history, winning 419 of 659 seats (63.5% of the total) - but this was achieved with just 43% of the popular vote; considered a strong share by modern UK standards. At the 2005 election, Blair won a third majority government with just 35% of the vote.