Who can vote and how elections work, the first-past-the-post system used for general elections and its advantages and disadvantages, other voting systems used in the UK, the role of political parties, and the importance of voting and turnout.

What this dot point is asking

OCR wants you to explain who can vote and how elections are run, how the first-past-the-post system works and its strengths and weaknesses, what other voting systems are used in the UK, the role of political parties, and why voting and turnout matter. This Section 2 topic is examined through knowledge questions on the voting system and through "Explain" and "Evaluate" questions on whether first-past-the-post is fair.

Who can vote and how elections work

First-past-the-post and its advantages and disadvantages

Other systems, parties and turnout

Other UK elections use different systems: the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd use a partly proportional system, Northern Ireland and some Scottish councils use the single transferable vote (STV), and some mayoral elections have used other methods. These tend to give a fairer match between votes and seats but can produce coalitions and weaker majorities, which is the central trade-off in "evaluate" answers.

Political parties (such as the larger national parties and smaller ones) organise candidates, set out policies in manifestos and campaign for votes; the party with a Commons majority forms the government. Voter turnout, the percentage of registered voters who vote, matters because low turnout can weaken a government's legitimacy and leave some groups under-represented, which links to participation later in Section 2.

Try this

Q1. What voting system is used to elect MPs to the House of Commons? [Knowledge recall]

• Cue. First-past-the-post.

Q2. Explain one disadvantage of first-past-the-post. [Short explanation]

• Cue. It is not proportional, so a party's share of seats can differ sharply from its share of votes, and votes for losing candidates or in safe seats can feel wasted.