06 May 10 UK Election Day

Today is UK Election Day.

Unlike in the US where the President is directly elected, in the UK voters simply cast their ballot for a candidate in their local constituency, not a direct vote for Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is usually the leader of the party that wins the most seats.. There are 650 of these, known as seats. The UK uses a First Past the Post system. To become an MP, a candidate simply has to win more votes than any rival in their constituency, not a majority of votes cast.

After all the ballots have been counted for each of the 650 constituencies, the leader of the party that has won the most seats is invited to Buckingham Palace to become Prime Minister and form the next Government.

To win an outright majority, one party needs more than half of the 650 seats, or at least 326. If no party has got that many seats, then the largest single party could form a minority Government. This may or may not be workable, as it would usually rely on getting support for policies from one or more of the other parties (probably in return for agreeing to supporting one of more of their policies in turn).

It could quite quickly lead to a call for another election, if this wasn’t workable. Any Government can be toppled by a vote of ‘no confidence’ and this is much more likely if no party has an overall majority.

Tags: election, general election, Politics, UK