First Past the Post (FPTP), also called plurality voting or single-member-district plurality, is an electoral system in which voters select one candidate per district and the candidate with the most votes wins, regardless of whether that candidate receives a majority of all votes cast. FPTP is among the simplest electoral systems and is widely used for legislative and executive elections around the world, most notably in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and India.

The term is sometimes used narrowly to refer only to single-winner plurality elections, and sometimes used more loosely to describe the broader category of plurality-based systems generally. Where this distinction matters, it is addressed in first-past-the-post-narrow-vs-broad-usage-debate and related pages.

FPTP remains the dominant electoral system for national legislatures among Anglophone democracies and former British colonies, including the United States House of Representatives, the UK House of Commons, the Canadian House of Commons, and the Lok Sabha in India. Most other democracies, particularly in continental Europe and Latin America, use some form of proportional representation or a mixed system instead.

Political scientists widely associate FPTP with two empirical tendencies, formalized as Duverger's Law: a tendency toward two dominant parties at the district and national level, and a tendency to produce single-party legislative majorities from a plurality, rather than a majority, of the national vote. Both tendencies are well documented but their interpretation - whether they represent strengths or weaknesses of the system - is contested and addressed below. The strength and universality of the tendency in specific cases, such as enduring multi-party competition under FPTP in Canada and India, is itself a subject of ongoing debate; see first-past-the-post-duvergers-law-consensus.

FPTP elections can produce outcomes in which the party winning the most seats receives fewer total votes nationwide than a competitor, an occurrence sometimes called a “wrong winner” election. This has occurred multiple times in U.S. presidential elections and in UK and Canadian general elections at the level of seats versus vote share. The mechanics and historical instances are addressed in first-past-the-post-history.

There is broad agreement among political scientists, independent of methodology or institutional affiliation, that FPTP mechanically tends to produce fewer viable parties than proportional systems and tends to convert vote pluralities into seat majorities (Duverger's Law and its statistical successors, such as Rae's Law). This is a consensus about mechanical tendency, not about desirability, and does not extend to agreement on the law's strength or universality in every case. See first-past-the-post-duvergers-law-consensus.

• first-past-the-post-stability-viewpoint - FPTP is valued for producing decisive, accountable single-party governments and avoiding the coalition instability associated with proportional systems.
• first-past-the-post-representation-critical-viewpoint - FPTP is criticized for underrepresenting smaller parties, wasting votes cast for losing candidates, and disconnecting national vote share from seat share.
• first-past-the-post-local-accountability-viewpoint - FPTP is defended on the grounds that single-member districts create a direct, identifiable link between a representative and a geographic constituency, unlike party-list systems.
• first-past-the-post-strategic-voting-critical-viewpoint - FPTP is criticized for incentivizing strategic voting (e.g., “lesser of two evils” voting) and for entrenching a two-party duopoly that suppresses third-party and independent competition.
• first-past-the-post-reform-skeptical-viewpoint - Proposed alternatives such as ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, or approval voting are viewed with skepticism, citing concerns about complexity, counting transparency, voter comprehension, or unintended strategic effects.
• first-past-the-post-reform-favorable-viewpoint - Alternatives such as ranked-choice voting or proportional representation are favored as better reflecting voter preferences and reducing the structural advantages FPTP confers on the two largest parties.

• first-past-the-post-gerrymandering-controversy - The drawing of single-member district boundaries under FPTP has been a recurring source of legal and political dispute in the United States, the UK, and elsewhere, particularly where district lines are alleged to be drawn for partisan or racial advantage.
• first-past-the-post-maine-alaska-rcv-adoption-controversy - The adoption of ranked-choice voting as a replacement for FPTP in U.S. states such as Maine and Alaska, and subsequent repeal efforts, has generated sustained legal and political conflict.

• first-past-the-post-history
• first-past-the-post-narrow-vs-broad-usage-debate
• first-past-the-post-duvergers-law-consensus
• Proportional Representation
• Ranked Choice Voting
• Two-Party System
• Gerrymandering

1. Maurice Duverger, *Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State*, trans. Barbara and Robert North (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1959).
2. Douglas W. Rae, *The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws* (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967).
3. Arend Lijphart, *Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries*, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).
4. Gary W. Cox, *Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).