Politics 101: 'First Past the Post' Electoral System

‘First past the post’ describes the Malaysian electoral system. In each constituency, the candidate with the most number of votes in an election wins a seat in the Parliament, or the legislative assembly in a state election. The leader of the party which wins the highest number or seats, rather than the party with the highest percentage of the overall vote, is asked to form the government.

How is this possible?  The following situation explains the arithmetics.

Consider a nation in which there are only 3 constituencies, P1, P2, P3, where two political parties, A and B, are contesting.  Supppose further that each constituency has 10 voters who always come out to vote in earnest.


In the ensuing election, Party A gets 6 votes each in P1 and P2, but gets no vote whatsoever in P3.  On the other hand, Party B secures 4 votes each in P1 and P2, as well as sweeps all the 10 votes in P3. 

Altogether Party A gets only 12 votes, or 40%, whereas Party B gets 18 votes, or 60%, leading to Party B getting an overall majority of 6 votes, or 20%.


In the system, Party A is declared the winner in the election since it secures the most number of votes in each of two (out of three) constituencies, so that it secures 2 seats in a parliament of three, two-third majority at that!


Although Party A does not enjoy the overall majority, it nevertheless wins, while Party B with the overall majority still loses.


It is not hard to invent a scenario in which a party has an even bigger overall majority but still loses.  Imagine the same situation in which everything remains unchanged except that constituency P3 has 100 votes and Party B secures all.  Now Party B still loses although it garners 108 votes against 12 votes which Party B gets.  The situation, albeit a bit exaggerated, and hence improbable, is nevertheless always a possibility, as Sherlock Holmes would surely agree.

As Walter Cronkite used to say in signing off his news program, that’s the way it is.