SV

• A majoritarian system used to be usedfor London Mayoral elections (following 1998 referendum) but now Mayoral elections use FPTP (as 2024) London Assembly and PCC elections
• Elects a single candidate in a constituency
• Voters have a first and second choice.
• The first choices are counted and if there is an absolute majority, they are automatically elected. If there is no majority, all but the top 2 are eliminated and the second preferences are taken in account and redistributed, electing a winner.
• 2016 - Sadiq Khan won 44% of first choice votes then 66% of second choice, winning an overall 57% majority
• Advantage - elects a clear winner because an absolute majority is secured, different from FPTP which only secures a plurality (simple majority) and thus does not have such decisiveness
• Advantage - relatively easy to understand like FPTP
• Advantage - harder for extremist parties to break through, like FPTP
• Advantage - strong constituency links, like FPTP
• Advantage - more voter choice than FPTP so less votes are considered useless and thus wasted
• Disadvantage - large amounts of wasted votes in second count like FPTP
• Disadvantage - false majority as some second choice votes are not counted
• Disadvantage - not a lot of proportionality, like FPTP
• Disadvantage - not as simple as FPTP
• Disadvantage - single party dominance so thus two party dominance, leading to tactical voting and less representation of smaller parties. Similar to FPTP but even harder to break out of 2-party system