Different elections have different systems to elect representatives.
Each system has a different name and can seem complicated. The system used to elect your representatives can have an impact on how you are represented, so it’s good to get an understanding of how each one works.
How the Senedd is elected
The Senedd uses the Additional Member System to elect its members.
There are 60 Members of the Senedd: 40 constituency members and 20 regional members.
When you vote in a Senedd election, you have two votes. You don’t have to vote for the same political party for both votes, but you can if you’d like.
With the first vote, you choose between candidates standing in your Senedd constituency by marking X next to their name. The candidate who receives more votes than any other candidate will be elected to represent you in the Senedd.
Then you cast a second vote to choose a political party to represent your Region. You’ll see a list of political parties with the names of the candidates underneath. You show your choice of political party by marking X next to your chosen political party. There are four regional members for each of the five electoral regions in Wales.
The formula used to calculate the results of regional seats is complicated, even for people who run elections!
To work out how many regional positions, or ‘seats’, each party wins, the number of votes each party gets in the regional ballot (your second vote) is divided by the number of constituency seats the party has won (your first vote), then one is added
One is added so that parties which have not won any constituencies can be included in the calculation for the regional seats.
After this calculation, the party that ends up with the highest result wins the first regional seat. To work out which parties win the remaining seats this calculation is done again, but each time any additional seats won are added in. As there are four seats per region, this is done four times. It can sometimes take a while to get the full results.
The regional seats each political party wins are filled by the candidates in the order they appear on the regional ballot paper. This order is decided by the political party.
The political party which wins the most seats across Wales forms the Government. Or sometimes, political parties or independents come together to form a Government.
How the UK Parliament is elected
MPs are elected to the House of Commons using a system called First Past the Post.
You vote for one candidate in your constituency by marking ‘X’ next to their name.
There are 650 constituencies across the UK. Most candidates will be standing for a party. Simply, the candidate with the most votes in your constituency is elected and becomes your Member of Parliament.
The political party which has most MPs elected across the whole of the UK, wins the election and becomes the Government. If the party has more seats than all the other parties added together, they have what’s called a majority, meaning they have most of the MPs.
It’s important to remember that you don’t vote for the Prime Minister. Instead, members of each political party elect their own leader. If their party wins the majority, their leader becomes Prime Minister and that person chooses who takes other senior Government positions, such as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary.
How local councils are elected
Like UK Parliament elections, the First Past the Post system is used to elect local councillors.
On your ballot paper, you’ll see a list of candidates and you’ll be asked to mark ‘X’ next to your chosen candidate, or candidates in some areas.
The candidate with the most votes becomes your representative. Some areas have two or more people representing them but the system works the same – the candidates with the most votes are the winners.