Under the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) electoral system, the candidate who garners the most votes in a constituency is declared the winner, even without achieving an outright majority. In a contest with multiple parties, this can lead to scenarios where a candidate triumphed with less than 30% of the votes — a situation where 70% of the electorate did not support them. The candidate who finishes in second place, despite receiving 29% of the votes, gains no corresponding legislative power as the principle of ‘winner takes all’ prevails.
In contrast, proportional representation (PR) systems aim to distribute seats based on the percentage of votes acquired by each party. When analyzed at the state or national level, FPTP’s flawed conversion of voter preferences into actual seat allocation creates conditions that often ignore broad public goods. The electoral outcomes in Delhi over the past twenty years illustrate this issue quite well.
Seat share versus vote share
Ideally, a representative democracy would align the distribution of seats closely with the vote shares of parties. However, FPTP elections often misrepresent voter preferences, leading to a significant disparity from proportional representation. In the last four elections in Delhi, winning parties secured a disproportionately high number of Assembly seats relative to their actual vote share.
For instance, in 2020, the Aam Aadmi Party received merely 53% of the votes but won 62 out of 70 seats, achieving nearly 90% of the seats. On the other hand, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managed to capture 38% of the votes, yet only secured 11% of the seats. This phenomenon is not unique to Delhi; it is prevalent throughout India. In populous states like West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, similar trends can be observed. Even at the Lok Sabha level, minor changes in vote share can lead to significant seat allocation shifts, impacting policy outcomes. For example, in the 2024 election, the BJP experienced only a slight decline of 0.3 percentage points in its vote share from 37.2% in 2019 to 36.9%, yet its seat share plummeted by 11.4 percentage points to 44.1%. This indicates that targeting merely 0.3% of the voter base was crucial for many constituencies.
