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Canada is a parliamentary democracy based on the Westminster System, and thus federal general elections take the form of an election to determine the composition of Parliament (the federal legislature). Unlike their neighbhours in the United States but like most of the rest of the world, Canadians do not directly elect their federal government.

At a federal election, Canadians vote to elect someone to represent the area they live in - known as a "riding" - in the House of Commons, the lower house of Canada's federal Parliament. Each riding elects one Member of Parliament to sit in the House of Commons; the candidate with the most votes in each riding is elected to represent it, even if they have less than 50% of the vote (a system known as first past the post). At the last election, there were 308 ridings, each sending a single member to the House of Commons - at the next election this will increase to 338.

All though in theory Canadians vote only for a person to represent their local area, in practice, most Canadians think of a federal election as an election to form the next government. This is because the political party which wins the most ridings across Canada usually gets to form the federal government and decide who gets to be Prime Minister of Canada. As such, in a federal election, the major political parties campaign to win an overall majority in the House of Commons by getting their candidates elected in more than half of all the ridings across Canada, guaranteeing that they get to run the country after the election.

This has the result of meaning Canadians usually vote for the candidate of the political party they want to be in government, rather than actually voting to pick a candidate to represent their local area. As such, it can be said that Canadians indirectly vote to elect their government and Prime Minister as well at a federal election.

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