Fresh from re-electing Emmanuel Macron as president on 24 April 2022, French voters are now returning to the polls on the 12 and 19 June to elect a new parliament. Historically, presidential and legislative elections were held on two separate cycles. But this could lead to ‘cohabitation’ – where the President was of a different party or bloc to the parliamentary majority and Prime Minister. Since 2002, they have been lined up so that elections to the National Assembly happen shortly after the new presidential term begins.

This has, thus far, eliminated cohabitation, but has led to a sustained and significant decline in turnout for legislative elections – the French electorate don’t seem that enthused about having to go to the polling station four times in three months.

The Voting System

The 577 deputies of the French National Assembly are elected by the non-proportional Two-Round System in single-member constituencies – with 539 elected in France, 27 representing France’s ‘overseas’ territories and 11 chosen by French citizens living abroad. French citizens living in Britain make up the overwhelming majority of the ‘third overseas residents’ group, though it also contains Ireland and the Nordic and Baltic countries.

However, the Two-Round System that is used to elect the National Assembly differs slightly from the ‘standard’ version that is used to elect the French President. If no candidate wins a majority of votes in the first round, the top two candidates still proceed to a second ‘run-off’ election, but additional candidates can also get through if they win votes equivalent to 12.5% of registered voters – which, given average turnouts over the last 20 years, translates to roughly a quarter of votes.

Having multiple candidates in a second round is quite rare and, even when it does happen, the third-placed candidate can drop out. But, if they don’t, these constituencies are often decided by a plurality rather than a majority of voters. Aube’s first constituency, surrounding the town of the town of Bar-sur-Aube, was the only seat to have a three-way run-off in 2017, being won by Macron’s En Marche on just 36% of the vote.

In the unlikely event of a second-round election ending in an exact tie, the seat is awarded to the older candidate – a quirk of French politics dating back to the 18^th century.

End of an Era?

But the continued use of the Two-Round Vote for the National Assembly is contentious. It is incredibly bad at translating France’s multi-party system into seats – frequently producing highly disproportional results (France’s recent elections have managed to be even less proportional than Britain’s!) and leaving large chunks of voters with little or no representation. These results have been blamed for France’s increasing polarisation and unusual levels of extraparliamentary opposition.

During the presidential election campaign, a pledge to introduce some form of proportionality to the National Assembly became a rare point of unity between the main candidates. We’ll have to wait to see if the promise is fulfilled. Similar pledges have been made before, though not against a background of such clear and widespread discontent at the French political system.

A shift to PR wouldn’t be particularly alien to France, who already use proportional or semi-proportional systems to elect their regional councils, municipal councils with over 1,000 inhabitants and France’s members of the European Parliament.

The Parties

Just shy of three dozen individual parties sit in the 2017 National Assembly. It is also relentlessly unstable. 15 years ago, roughly two-thirds voted for the Socialists and the UMP (now the Republicans). In April, their candidates got just 7% between them in the presidential first round.

2017 French National Assembly Results

Source: https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Elections/Les-resultats/Legislatives/elecresult__legislatives-2017/(path)/legislatives-2017//FE.html

Parties often campaign together in ad hoc alliances and sit as parliamentary groups in the National Assembly, rather than as individual parties. And just because two parties are in the same electoral alliance, that doesn’t mean they’ll sit together in the same group.

The ‘presidential majority’ alliance in this election is the centre-right Ensemble, which is primarily comprised of Macron’s La République En Marche! and the smaller, centrist MoDem. In 2017, the alliance won a 123-seat majority from less than a third of the first-round vote. Although polling even lower this time, the combination of the Two-Round Vote with their relative centrism could still hand them a majority.

Their main opposition is the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (NUPES), an alliance of all significant left-of-centre parties. It hopes to build on the unexpectedly strong performance of left-wing populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the presidential first round and enforce cohabitation on Macron. Aside from Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, the other key parties in the bloc are The Greens, the centre-left Socialist Party and the Communist Party.

The other interesting battle is for third place. Le Pen’s National Rally might have secured a record result in the presidential election and are, indeed, polling at a clear third place in vote terms. But the Two-Round System will make it difficult to translate this support into more than a small parliamentary group.

Instead, the third largest bloc is likely to be the Union of the Right and Centre (UDC), largely made up of the conservative Republicans and the moderate UDI. In the event that neither Ensemble nor NUPES win a majority, Macron will likely have to turn to the UDC parties for parliamentary support.

Join the ERS today to support our work

Many countries use a bicameral political system – meaning that they have two chambers in their parliament. These parliaments are comprised of a lower house where the government is formed and day-to-day politics is carried out, like the House of Commons, and an upper house that scrutinises and revises legislation, like the House of Lords. Upper houses are sometimes referred to as second chambers or senates.

But while all lower houses in democracies share broadly similar functions and are elected with an equal as possible ratio of voters to representatives across the country, the same is not true of upper houses. Not only do they vary in terms of powers and functions, from the powerful Senates of Italy or the United States to the weak and overridable House of Lords or Austrian Federal Council, but the methods by which they are chosen differ enormously.

Some Upper Houses are directly elected

One way that an upper house is chosen is through direct popular election, though usually with a different method to that used for the lower house.

A common change in method is a different voting system. Australia, who use the majority-based Alternative Vote to elect their House of Representatives, use the proportional Single Transferable Vote to elect their Senate. While the Czech Republic, Poland, Spain and Switzerland all choose their upper houses with a non-proportional voting system in contrast to their proportionally elected lower house. There are also some, like Italy or Japan, that use the same voting system for both chambers, with some small adjustments.

Many directly elected second chambers, including Australia, Spain and Switzerland, have followed the US’s model of giving subnational units (states, provinces, etc.) equal representation regardless of population. This is designed to give less populous units a stronger voice and prevent their interests from being overridden by more populous areas. But ‘territorial representation’ can be done by other means. The Italian Senate is focused on regional representation, but it is done in proportion to population.

Elections to upper houses usually take place at the same time as elections to the lower house. Some do have longer terms, but it is by no means a universal feature. Many of those that do achieve longer terms by electing only a portion of the chamber at each election as in Australia, the US, the Czech Republic or Japan – though the latter two are elected on a different cycle to their respective lower houses.

The obvious reason for directly electing the upper house is to give it a greater level of democratic legitimacy, which enables it to better assert its own authority. It is thus not surprising that most of the more powerful upper houses are directly elected – especially those that are ‘incongruent’, i.e., have a substantively different partisan make-up to the lower house.

But the legitimacy gained through popular election is often lost through the method of election. Equal representation for subnational territories may give smaller areas parity to larger ones, but it can give a minority of the population a veto over a much larger majority – in the US Senate, small, largely rural states with one-sixth of America’s population have the same representation as the remaining five-sixths. Using a plurality or majority voting system over a proportional one also makes the chamber less representative and thus lessens its democratic legitimacy.

Upper houses that use indirect election

The other common method of choosing upper houses in Europe is through indirect election by subnational political units – often state or regional parliaments (e.g., Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands), but sometimes lower-level bodies like local councillors (France). The purpose of such chambers is often to directly represent and protect the interests of regional governments at the national level.

Although indirectly elected chambers lack the direct mandate of a popularly elected one, they are still chosen by directly elected politicians and, given the design and purpose of such political systems, it is best to think of their mandate as an extension to the one given to the regional parliaments. Most indirectly elected chambers are also appointed proportionally – both in party and population terms – avoiding some of questionable methods used to choose some directly elected upper houses.

Unlike directly elected chambers, which are often relatively powerful, there is little consensus on the strength of indirectly elected chambers. Austria’s Federal Council is very weak – other than on certain constitutional matters, it can only delay legislation as the lower house can simply override it with a simple majority vote. The Dutch Senate, on the other hand, has a full veto over the House of Representatives that cannot be bypassed.

Other Methods

Given the powers and purposes of upper houses vary so much, it is unsurprising that there are some election methods that don’t fit neatly into two categories. There are hybrids – such as the Spanish Senate, which combines direct and indirect election. The ‘unusuals’ – like the Irish Seanad, which is part indirectly elected ‘experts’, part Prime Ministerially appointed, part elected by graduates. Then there’s Germany’s Bundesrat which, although sometimes grouped with indirectly elected chambers, is appointed through state governments rather than state parliaments.

There is also the Canadian Senate, which, being entirely appointed by the Prime Minister, is probably one of the most similar to Westminster’s House of Lords. It does, however, have a fixed size of 105 and a mandatory retirement age of 75, meaning a new Senator can only be appointed when a vacancy arises. New appointments must also be made on a regional basis – with each state holding a fixed number of seats. Though there are still calls for reform, the Canadian Senate is at least not ever-expanding in size and is not dominated by certain parts of the country like the House of Lords.

And there are, of course, some countries that simply choose not to have an upper house, instead opting for a single legislative chamber. This is called ‘unicameralism’, in contrast to bicameralism, and is typically the case in smaller countries, such as New Zealand, where there are no strong subnational identities or powerful regional governments.

All 82 Free Democracies

Parline classification of principal method of delegation of upper house in the 82 countries classed by Freedom House as Free Democracies.

A Democratic Second Chamber for the UK

Around the world, countries have found different solutions to balancing democratic legitimacy and the powers of their second chambers. While the exact way the upper house is filled varies quite significantly from country to country, the one commonality between nearly all Western second chambers is that they are designed in some way to represent subnational units, be they states, provinces or regions, at the national level.

Britain remains the odd-one-out. It lacks the democratic legitimacy afforded by elections, whether direct or indirect, virtually nullifying the extent to which it can successfully exercise its scrutinising and revising functions. And it completely fails to represent the UK in all its diversity, overrepresenting some territorial units (especially London and the South East) to the detriment of the other nations, regions and localities.

Instead of a house of powerful regional representatives, we have an antiquated chamber whose membership is chosen partly by aristocrats, partly by the Church of England and largely by Prime Ministers rewarding donors and allies. We need to reform our upper house so that it can have the democratic legitimacy to do its job properly.

Sign our petition for a democratically elected House of Lords

2022 is a big year for presidential elections in Europe – with the Italian (24^th January), German (13^th February) and French presidencies (10^th April) all open over the next few months. Of course, these are very different roles – the French President has significant executive powers, while the Italian and German Heads of State are largely ceremonial, performing a similar role to our Queen. But, regardless of their constitutional functions, let’s look at how these presidents will be elected.

How are Heads of State chosen around Europe?

* Not classed as a fully free democracy by Freedom House.

Direct Election

The French President may be unusual in western Europe in being a Head of State with substantive influence over day-to-day government policy, but the presidency does stick to the norm of a popularly-elected president – it is chosen using the Two-Round System. There are a few variations to the rules of the Two-Round System, but the one used for the French President is what you might call the ‘classic’ version: If a candidate wins more than half of votes in the first round, they are elected. If not, the two candidates with the most votes proceed to a second round where the winner will take both a majority of votes and be elected.

Nearly all of Europe’s other directly elected presidents are also chosen using the Two-Round System. Ireland is one of the few to buck the trend – opting instead for the Alternative Vote, still a majority-based voting system, but one that saves them the expense of a second round of election and is in keeping with their tradition of preference voting. Other exceptions are the President of Iceland and Bosnia-Herzegovina’s three Presidents who are all elected by First Past the Post.

You might also like Four ways of electing a president – ranked from worst to best

Indirect Election

However, not all of Europe’s presidencies are directly elected. Some, including Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Latvia, are instead chosen by legislators in special sessions. Rules vary from country to country, but generally, the winning candidate requires the support of at least the majority of national legislators – though higher thresholds and representatives of subnational parliaments, governments or councils are often involved.

The Italian President is elected by a joint session of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate, as well as 58 representatives chosen by Italy’s regional councils (each get three representatives, except the tiny Aosta Valley who only get one). Unlike most elections, there are no explicit candidacies – electors are free to choose any eligible citizen, though parties will often have a preferred candidate. For the first three rounds of voting, a candidate requires two-thirds of votes to be elected, with this being reduced to a simple 50% threshold from the fourth round. Italy’s fractured party system has meant the vote has sometimes gone on for days, with the 1971 election taking 23 rounds of voting before a winner emerged.

Germany’s President is chosen by a specially convened Federal Convention comprising all members of the Bundestag and an equal number of delegates elected by the state parliaments. The election has a maximum of three rounds. In the first two, support from a majority of delegates is required, but this is reduced to a simple plurality for the third. Candidates often receive the formal support of more than one major party – for instance, parties in coalition together usually field a joint candidate. Some, such as the incumbent Frank-Walter Steinmeier of the centre-left SPD in 2017, have even been supported by all four major parties.

The Italian Presidential election will start on the 24^th of January; the incumbent Sergio Mattarella declined to seek re-election, although he was eligible to do so. The German Federal Convention meets on the 13^th of February; Frank-Walter Steinmeier is seeking re-election. The first round of the French presidential election is on the 10^th of April, with the likely second-round pencilled in for the 24^th; incumbent Emmanuel Macron is also seeking re-election.

Support the work of the ERS by joining the society

America’s presidential election is the most famous presidential election in the world. The antiquated American system of choosing a president via an electoral college is also one of the worst methods for choosing a national leader. Since 1788, many other methods have been tried – so I’ve put some of them in order from what I think are worst, to best.

Worst. System. Ever – Electoral College

Americans don’t actually vote for the president, they are voting on what to tell a group of ‘electors’. Each state has a set number of electors based on their representation in the US Congress, the votes cast by Americans tell these electors who to vote for when the electoral college elects the president.

Like much of the US constitution, this bizarre system came out of the compromises needed at the time to create a nation out of 13 disparate colonies. Southern states, with massive enslaved populations, didn’t want to be dominated by northern voters. The numbers of electors each state has was also a compromise between the states. Each state gets one elector for each member of the House of Representatives they have, plus one for each senator. As every state has two Senators, irrespective of their population, voters in smaller states have more power to decide the president than voters in larger states.

We’ve ranked the electoral college as the worst way to elect a president as…

• While everyone has one vote they aren’t equal, votes cast in Wyoming carry 3.6 times more influence than those from California. A basic element of fair elections is one person one vote and every vote being of equal value.
• While voters in Wyoming have the equivalent of 3.6 votes each. Neither candidate has even visited the state. That’s because most states give all their electors to the winner of that state. Wyoming has voted republican since the 1960s, with large margins in recent years. The 20% of Wyomingite’s who voted for Hilary in 2016 saw their votes go nowhere. Millions of votes are wasted this way.
• Sometimes the loser goes on to win the election. All first past the post elections have a risk that the team that get the most votes don’t win the election, it happens in America, the UK and New Zealand (before they ditched the system in favour of MMP).

Less terrible. First Past the Post

There is a campaign in America to scrap the electoral college and give the presidency to the popular vote winner. But while that may seem a simple solution, the experience of countries that have a straight first past the post contest for president has been mixed. As we know when using first past the post to elect MPs in the UK, while the loser won’t win, the winner doesn’t need a majority of the vote to win either. In fact, the majority of voters may be opposed to the president.

In the Philippines, their, shall we say, controversial president, Rodrigo Duterte only won 39% of the vote in 2016. In May 1992 Fidel Ramos was elected to be president of the Philippines with only 24 per cent of the popular vote. We’ve ranked first past the post as the second-worst system as…

• Democracies should generally move in the direction the majority want. A minority of voters shouldn’t be able to steer the country off course.
• Election results under first past the post are often more to do with electoral politics than voters’ preferences. Rather than trying to win voters round, candidates can try to split opposition voters between multiple candidates.

Presidential elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, the Comoros Islands, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, Honduras, Iceland, Kiribati, South Korea, Malawi, Mexico, Palestine, Panama, Paraguay, the Philippines, Rwanda, Singapore, Taiwan, Tunisia, Venezuela, and Zambia are all conducted via first past the post.

Getting Better. Two Round System

An easy way to stop candidates winning on less than half the vote is to have a second round of voting with just the top two candidates. France is the most famous country to use a two-round system. The first round of voting is similar to voting in the UK: electors vote for their preferred candidate.

If a candidate gets over half the votes, they are elected. If no candidate receives an overall majority, the second round of voting takes place two weeks later with the top two candidates from the first round.

Here’s why we only ranked the two-round system as the second-best method…

• The first round has all the vote-splitting problems of first past the post. In 2017, Macron and Marine Le Pen got though to the runoff, which Macron won easily. Le Pen only made it through because the centre right was split between multiple candidates. Ifop-Fiducial polled a hypothetical second round where Macron was up against Fillon (who was 1.3% points behind Le Pen). Macron still won, but only beat Fillon by 52% to 48%. It seems a more popular candidate was excluded, and an extremist let through.
• There is no guarantee that both candidates to go through will be from different sides of the political spectrum. In 2002 French voters had the choice between right-wing incumbent Jacques Chirac and the far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen. The slogan “Vote for the crook not the fascist” became popular on the left…

Two-round systems are widely used around the world. 

Simply the Best. Preferential Vote

The problems with having two separate elections can be fixed with some clever ballot paper designs and counting methods.

Rather than asking people to vote, then come back and vote for a reduced set of candidates, with a preferential vote, voters are asked to complete a ballot paper with numbers next to each candidate. The numbers explain who they would vote for first with a 1, then who they would vote for if their favourite candidate didn’t get though with a 2, who they would vote for if neither got through with a 3 and so on.

When they count the ballots, anyone who has 50% of the first votes wins. If nobody gets 50% the person who came last is excluded and the ballots are recounted in a ‘virtual’ second round. If your favourite candidate is still in the race, you still vote for them. If your favourite has been excluded your vote goes to your second choice. This process continues until one candidate gets half the vote.

We think this is the best way to elect a president as…

• You can’t split the vote. In 2011, seven people ran for president of Ireland – after four rounds of counting we know that, poet, politician and noted dog owner, Michael D Higgins was the candidate the majority of voters preferred. In 2018 he went on to win on the first round on a landslide.
• As extremist candidates are unlikely to get second choices, the system tends to work against candidates who are polarising and help those who are broadly liked.
• Candidates are also incentivised to run less divisive campaigns, as candidates will want to become their opponent’s voters second favourite candidate.

Badly designed electoral systems shape candidates, campaigns and countries. When extreme candidates can win on minorities of the vote under First Past the Post style systems, there is little incentive to appeal to a broader electorate. Instead, elections just become about snatching slim victories and playing the system. It’s not enough to just vote for better people, we need to stop the systems that let unpopular candidates win.

If you enjoyed this blog you can support the work of the ERS as a member.

Join the ERS today

Apart from the UK, France is the only other European democracy not to use some form of proportional representation for its state-wide elections (Here’s a list of voting systems used at the state-level in Europe). Instead, French voters use the Two-Round System to elect their president and MPs, and for regional elections.

What distinguishes the way the French choose their MPs from Westminster is the fact that to get elected, a candidate needs to get more than half the votes, not just more votes than anyone else.

Many countries that directly elect their presidents, such as Austria, Columbia, Poland, Russia and Ukraine, use the Two-Round System. The system is less commonly used for electing MPs. France is an exception in this regard as it has used it on and off since 1928 for electing MPs as well.

How do elections work in France?

The main feature of the two-round system is that voting takes place on two different days. Slightly different versions are used for presidential and parliamentary elections in France – we are focusing here on presidential elections (you can find out more about elections to the National Assembly and regions on Democratic Audit).

The first round of voting is similar to voting in the UK: electors vote for their preferred candidate.

If a candidate gets over half the votes, they are elected and there is no second round. In practice, no presidential candidate has won in the first round since direct elections of the president were introduced in 1962.

If no candidate receives an overall majority, the second round of voting takes place two weeks later.

Only the top two presidential candidates are allowed to take part in the second round (i.e. those with the highest and second highest number of votes in the first round) – all other candidates are excluded. Given that voters can now only choose between two candidates, the winner will definitely receive more than half the votes.

The table below shows the results of the 2017 French presidential election. Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen both progressed to the second round as they received the highest and second highest number of votes, with Macron ultimately winning the election.

Results of the 2017 French Presidential Elections

Source: https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Elections/Les-resultats/Presidentielles/elecresult__presidentielle-2017/(path)/presidentielle-2017/FE.html

What is interesting to note, however, is that the Two-Round System gave Marine Le Pen (of the far-right National Front – now renamed National Rally) a considerable chance of winning the entire election and becoming president of France, just because she obtained 1.3% more than François Fillon, who was eliminated from the race altogether.

Ifop-Fiducial polled a hypothetical second round where Macron was up against Fillon. Macron still won, but only beat Fillon by 52% to 48%. It seems a more popular candidate was excluded, and an extremist let through.

This goes to show that majoritarian systems do not protect against the far-right – in fact, the one-person-takes-all nature of systems like Westminster’s First Past the Post and France’s Two-Round System can give far-right parties much more power, if they manage to reach a tipping point of success.

Another disadvantage of the Two-Round System is that it’s possible for both candidates who go through to the final round to be from the same side of the political spectrum – and to go through on a small percentage of the vote (e.g. 24% and 21% respectively for Macron and Le Pen). This means that voters from the other side of the spectrum are effectively denied a genuine choice of who to vote for and may have to pick the ‘least worst’ option.

In 2002 the slogan “Vote for the crook not the fascist” became popular as the right-wing incumbent Jacques Chirac ran against the far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen in the final round. Chirac won even though he was facing corruption allegations at the time.

The two-round system might appear to be an improvement on Westminster’s voting system as it stops results like Belfast South in 2015, where an MP was elected on 24.5%, as candidates need to get more than half the votes to be elected.

But it still does not give voters genuine choice on who to vote for. In the French National Assembly, it artificially boosts larger parties and excludes smaller ones, which in turn can foster disillusionment with the political system among their supporters.

Only the Single Transferable Vote – the ERS’s preferred system ­– enhances voter choice and guarantees a strong link between MPs and voters, while also distributing seats in parliament in a way that is fair and reflects how people voted. When used to elect one person, like a president, the system allows votes of left-wingers to steadily accumulate around the most widely accepted left-wing candidate, and the same for the right-wing candidate. Once it is down to two candidates the one with the most votes wins.

Rather than forcing voters to choose between just two parties as the two-round system does in the second round, the Single Transferable Vote helps ensure every vote counts and people’s voices are heard and represented.

After last year’s political whirlwind, attention has turned to 2017’s elections for evidence of further shocks. Voters are going to the polls in the Netherlands, in Germany but most attention is focused on France, whose election takes place in April and May, and where the far-right Marine Le Pen currently polls in first place.

On the centre-right the candidate of choice is Francois Fillon, who has been described as a French Thatcherite whereas the centre-left is very split.

To get a sense of this landscape, here’s a recent first round poll from the French pollster Ifop-Fiducial with the position on the political spectrum of the candidates.

Several things about this landscape are striking. Firstly, there are now 5 candidates polling in double digits. French politics, like politics elsewhere, is experiencing fragmentation. So while Le Pen is in first place, it is on only a little more than 1 in 4 of the population, with 74% of the population supporting candidates to her left.

Only in First Past the Post can candidates on the extreme ends of the political spectrum with low levels of support win 100% of political power. Unlike First Past the Post, however, France’s electoral system prevents a candidate from winning on such a meagre percentage of the vote. France uses a two-round system in which, if no one wins more than half the vote on election day, the two most popular candidates will go through to a second ‘run off’ round two weeks later, where voters will return to the polls to pick the President. On this polling that would lead to Le Pen vs. Fillon second round. When Ifop-Fiducial polled this hypothetical second round, they found that Fillon would win with 64% of the vote to 36% for Le Pen.

Usually France’s Two Round system results in the second round featuring the most popular centre right candidate and centre left candidates. But note that there are only two centre-right candidates and Dupont-Aignan polls a mere 1.5%. It is the centre and left which is most split, with Emmanuel Macron in third.

Macron is the former economy minister of President Hollande, a centrist who has the highest approval ratings of any French politician.

Ifop-Fiducial also polled hypothetical second round results against both Fillon and Le Pen. Macron beats Le Pen by 65% to 35% and Fillon by 52% to 48%. This would seem to suggest he is what students of Social Choice Theory call the Condorcet winner, that is, the candidate who would beat all other candidates if they were the only two running and, therefore the best representative of voter views.

The Two Round System makes voters vote tactically, by predicting who would get into the second round, then changing behaviour accordingly. A strategy that left wing voters might adopt then would be to tactically vote for Macron to eliminate Fillon or Le Pen in order to have a candidate more to their taste in the second round.

But for those who back the far-left Melenchon, for instance, Macron is still fairly distant from what they really want. Such voters are thus left in the unenviable position of choosing between expressing their true views or voting against what they most dislike, based on a prediction which may be wrong.

A small tweak to the French electoral system would be to move from a two round ‘run-off system’ to an instant run off system like the Alternative Vote. In an instant run-off system French voters would say who their second, third or fourth choices were on one ballot paper, rather than having to come back two weeks later. If no candidate wins 50% of the vote the worst performing candidate is eliminated and the votes of their supporters are moved to their second favourite candidate. Thus the votes of left-wingers would steadily accumulate around the most widely accepted left-wing candidate. Once it is down to two candidates the one with the most votes wins. In this way French voters could support whoever they liked safe in the knowledge that their vote would be much less likely to contribute towards the election of a candidate they disliked. Whilst the world of multi-party politics has broken First Past the Post, even the two round system increasingly struggles to cope with the realities of modern politics.

(Updated for October 2024)

Historically there weren’t elections for the leader of the Conservative party, but, following the machinations surrounding the appointment of Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1963, elections among the MPs were brought in, in 1965.

In 1998, the system of leadership elections was altered so that Conservative MPs choose a shortlist of two candidates through a series of ballots.

The 1922 Committee (the Conservative backbench committee) set out the timetable for the contest. Every few days, a ballot is held, with the candidate with the least support eliminated after each vote. Candidates who are eliminated or withdraw are then free to urge their supporters to back another candidate. The final two candidates are then presented to the party membership, who vote – on a one member, one vote basis. The exact rules can be changed, though, and have for the recent contests.

The 2016 contest

In 2016, Conservatives candidates needed only to be nominated by a proposer and a seconder (this has now been changed). In 2016, five candidates were duly nominated before the deadline.

In 2016, the candidate with the fewest votes – Liam Fox – was eliminated in this first ballot, with Stephen Crabb withdrawing. A few days later, the process was repeated with the remaining three candidates. Michael Gove lost, resulting in a Leadsom vs May final.

Usually, the two candidates with the highest vote would then be featured on a ballot paper to be printed and posted to the roughly 130,000 Conservative Party members who have been members for three months. But in 2016, Andrea Leadsom withdrew, leaving Theresa May to become Prime Minister without a ballot of the members.

The 2019 contest

In 2019 the rules were changed due to the high number of candidates who put themselves forward. The number of proposers needed to get on the ballot was upped from two to eight MPs, and minimum support was added to each ballot.

The 2019 contest brought in cut-offs, so candidates needed at least 17 votes to pass the first ballot – if all candidates receive at least 17 votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. The second ballot had a cut-off of 33 votes, with subsequent ballots excluding the lowest scoring candidate. Once a shortlist of two candidates was reached, party members got to vote for their preferred candidate.

The first round saw Esther McVey, Mark Harper and Andrea Leadsom eliminated and Matt Hancock withdrawing. The second ballot saw Dominic Raab eliminated, the third – Rory Stewart, the fourth – Sajid Javid and the fifth – Michael Gove. Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt went through to the members’ vote which Boris won on 66.4%.

The July-September 2022 Contest

In an effort to speed up the competition, for 2022 the number of backers that a candidate needed to get on the ballot was increased to 20, and the cut-off for the first round was 30 votes. After this, a series of ballots was held, with the lowest scoring candidate removed in each round.

Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordant, Liz Truss, Jeremy Hunt, Nadhim Zahawi, Tom Tugandhat, Kemi Badenoch and Suella Braverman all received the 20 nominations needed to stand. In the first round, Jeremy Hunt and Nadhim Zahawi both failed to reach the threshold of 30 votes and were knocked out of the contest. In the second round Suella Braverman was excluded, then Tom Tugenhat in round 3, Kemi Badenoch in round 4, then Penny Mordaunt in round 5. Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss will go to the membership ballot.

The October 2022 Contest

The second Conservative Party leadership election of 2022 was triggered by the resignation of Liz Truss after just 44 days in office. Keen to avoid a prolonged contest, the summer candidates were required to obtain 100 Conservative MP backers before they could go to a wider party membership ballot. If more than two candidates were nominated, MPs would hold a ballot to eliminate one before holding an ‘indicative vote’ of the final two before going to the wider conservative membership in a final vote.

Only two MPs publicly declared their candidacy, Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak, both of whom were unsuccessful candidates during the July-September Leadership election of 2022. When nominations closed only Sunak had over 100 nominations with Mordaunt having bowed out of the competition minutes before the deadline. As the sole candidate, Rishi Sunak became leader of the Conservative party and Prime Minister unopposed.

The 2024 Contest

This time, each candidate only needed the support of 10 MPs to get on to the ballot, including a proposer and seconder. In a new twist, applicants also had to raise £200,000 in order to progress to the final four.

In the first round of voting, Priti Patel came last and was eliminated. The second vote eliminated Mel Stride. Following Conservative Party conference, there will be two more rounds of voting for MPs, before the remaining two candidates go to the membership.

Intrigue and tactical voting

The system is ripe for intrigue and tactical voting. Given the two electorates, Conservative Party MPs may feel inclined to attempt to shape the members’ ballot on the basis of how they expect members to react to the two candidates on the ballot. For instance, in 2001, there is evidence that supporters of Iain Duncan Smith tactically voted for Ken Clarke in order to knock Michael Portillo off the ballot, feeling (rightly) that the members would reject Clarke’s Europhile views.

MPs could also pretend to support a candidate to generate a false sense of security and encourage their supporters to misjudge their tactical votes. This is perhaps a disadvantage when compared to a system where rankings occur on a single ballot, as in the Alternative Vote system, where voters have less chance to mull on the results of each round and predict which way their colleagues’ votes will split.

Although it features different electorates, the electoral system is a little like France’s two-round system combined with the Alternative Vote.  (The Conservatives use a similar system when selecting candidates.)  Moderately humorous, considering the Conservatives were so vociferously opposed to AV (a system which would have seen their majority increase by eight in 2015!).

Don’t the Conservatives support First Past the Post?

It is ironic that the Conservative Party supports First Past the Post for public elections, recently imposing it in Mayoral contests for instance, yet don’t use it for their own contest.

Attempts made to speed up the contest in 2019 and 2022 by making ad hoc rules changes, highlight the enthusiasm for electoral system design among MPs, but also their refusal to listen to experts in the field.

You could argue there are benefits to having a campaign with a limited number of candidates, as it gives each candidate the space to make their case. Considering the electorate already know the candidates personally, a faster and easier system would be for MPs to run a single STV election to select the final two to go to the membership. But where would be the backstabbing, intrigue-filled fun in that…

Enjoying this article? you can support the work of the ERS by becoming a member

Join the Electoral Reform Society today