Wasted or Dislocated: Analysing Votes in United Kingdom, United States and Canada Plurality First-Pass-The-Post Electoral Systems

This paper focuses on plurality first-pass-the-post (FPTP) electoral systems as tools for electing legislature members. Specifically, it assesses the validity of two objections advanced against them. The first objection, raised primarily by supporters of proportional electoral systems, refers to ‘wasted votes’. The second objection, raised by the supporters of majority electoral systems, concerns the supposed inability of plurality first-pass-the-post electoral systems to secure a 50% plus one share of the votes for the winning candidate in each district. Regarding the wasted vote argument, the literature classifies as wasted those votes that do not count towards the election of any candidate. In a narrow sense, this refers to the votes for losing candidates, whereas in a broader sense also refers to surplus votes, i.e. those votes beyond the threshold for winning the seat (one vote more than the runner-up). Critics of plurality electoral systems claim that these systems produce a relevant number of wasted votes vis-à-vis proportional electoral systems. Regarding the second objection, supporters of majority electoral systems claim that plurality first-pass-the-post systems are likely to fail in securing the winning candidate for an electoral district a 50% plus one share of the votes. Instead, majority systems, having enshrined this condition in the rules and procedures, can secure this outcome in each electoral district. In support of this objection, it also could be stated that, according to Duverger’s law, plurality electoral systems are expected to generate two-party political systems and, consequently, secure that each winning candidate reaches the 50% plus one threshold. The concept of ‘dislocated votes’ will be introduced to assess this objection. With ‘dislocated votes’, I refer to those votes the winning candidate in an electoral district lacks to reach the 50% plus one threshold. The term ‘dislocated’ refers to something out of its proper place, i.e. that is not where it is expected to be: supporters of majority electoral systems argue that is precisely the case of these votes under plurality FPTP electoral systems. This paper will reject the first argument by claiming that wasted votes, as defined in the literature, rest on premises derived from the logic underpinning proportional electoral systems rather than majoritarian ones. Therefore, this argument fails to constitute a valid line of attack against plurality FPTP electoral systems. Concerning the second objection, this paper will assess its validity by analysing the presence of dislocated votes in the last general elections of four plurality FPTP electoral systems: United Kingdom, United States, and Canada. Addressing the first objection will allow us to clarify the concept of the wasted vote and its application to plurality FPTP electoral systems, whereas addressing the second objection will allow us to measure the presence and eventually quantify the gap between the winner’s share of votes and the expected threshold through the concept of dislocated votes within the electoral systems under exam.