First-past-the-post (FPTP) is a way to decide who wins in a race or contest by seeing who gets the most votes first.
Imagine you and your friends are having a cookie-eating contest. Each of you gets to eat as many cookies as you can, but only one person will win, the one who eats the most cookies before anyone else finishes their cookies. That’s like FPTP! The first person to finish their cookies (or get the most votes) wins, even if someone else might have eaten more cookies overall.
How it works in real life
In elections, people vote for their favorite candidate. Whoever gets the most votes in a group, called a constituency, becomes the winner. It’s like having multiple cookie-eating contests at once, each with its own set of friends and cookies.
Sometimes, this means someone can win even if they didn’t get more than half the votes. It's similar to how you might win a race by just being faster than the person next to you, not necessarily the fastest of all.
Examples
- A school election where the student with the most votes wins, even if they don’t have a majority
- A race between three candidates where the one with the most votes wins, even if only 40% of people voted for them
- Choosing a class president using first-past-the-post voting
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See also
- How Can a Single Vote Decide an Election?
- How Does a Pop Vote Really Work in an Election?
- How Can a Single Vote Change the Whole Election?
- Who is Droop Quota?
- What is Single transferable voting (STV)?