Under FPTP, the candidate with the highest number of votes in a constituency wins, even if they fall short of the majority. In a multi-party race, this can result in situations where a candidate can win a seat with less than 30% of votes (put differently, that’s a thumbs-down from 70% of voters). The runner-up in this example, even with a 29% vote share, wouldn’t gain any commensurate influence in legislation: The ‘winner takes all’.
In contrast, proportional representation (PR) systems seek to allocate seats in proportion to the votes secured by each party. Aggregated across the state or national level, FPTP’s imperfect translation of voter preferences into seat shares creates situations ripe for the neglect of broad-based public goods. Delhi’s results in the last two decades are clear examples of this phenomenon.
Seat share ≠ vote share
An idealized representative democracy would ensure that the eventual seat shares roughly match vote shares. However, FPTP elections are a noisy expression of voters’ preferences, and results often fall far off the line of proportionality. In the last four Delhi election, winning parties have gained a larger share of Assembly seats than votes they won.
In 2020, the Aam Aadmi Party got only 53% of votes, but won 62 of 70 seats (nearly 90%). For parties that came second or third in contests, their command on the voter base did not translate into seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 38% of the votes but only 11% of the seats. This is common across India. Among the most populous states, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh are notable examples. At the Lok Sabha level, too, small changes in vote share have translated into large swings in seats, leading to tangible changes in policymaking. In the 2024 election, the BJP’s vote share only declined 0.3 percentage points from 37.2% (2019) to 36.9%, but its seat share fell 11.4 percentage points to 44.1%. That means for the opponents, targeting just 0.3% of the voter base proved pivotal for several races.
FPTP helps larger, well-resourced parties to translate their votes into seats more efficiently. In the long term, this can lead to a consolidation of the political landscape as smaller parties increasingly focus on narrow voter bases to maximize the likelihood of winning races. Voters may also perceive these votes to be ‘wasted’ and direct their vote to larger parties, even if their preferences strongly align with smaller parties.
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Fodder for ‘clientelism’
Studies have found that FPTP can enable clientelism and vote-bank politics. If a candidate can come to power with less than half the electorate voting in their favour, they are more likely to cater to their ‘vote bank’ of specific interest groups instead of the median voter.
In his 2024 book Accelerating India’s Development, economist Kartik Muralidharan notes that FPTP creates a vicious cycle of vote-bank politics and weak state capacity. Take the example of Lalu Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi’s tenure as chief ministers in Bihar in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Despite an overall perception of poor governance, their party successfully delivered schemes to its base of Yadav and Muslim voters. As state capacity shrank, the party’s most ‘efficient’ path to victory increasingly became directing resources to its vote bank, instead of tackling public good issues, Muralidharan explains.
Voter preferences also get shaped by this choice of electoral system. In a household study in West Bengal, economist Pranab Bardhan (2024) found that while voters may benefit from both private welfare schemes (such as employment, farm input subsidies, cash transfers, etc.) and broad-based public goods programmes, they are more likely to respond positively to the former, further incentivizing politicians to pursue clientelism. He estimates that private benefits lead to a 13% greater likelihood of the head of a household voting for the incumbent candidate, while public goods have no effect.
Political scientist Carl Henrik Knutsen found in his 2010 study that globally, PR systems lead to approximately 1% higher economic growth than FPTP. Knutsen attributes this to PR’s propensity to deliver broad interest goods like universal education and property rights, which create virtuous cycles of economic activity. Guido Tabellini and Torsten Persson (2004) found that proportionally elected legislatures spend up to 8% of GDP more on social security versus FPTP legislatures. Academics have also noted that the lack of continuity between administrations under the plurality-based FPTP can lead to frequent policy reversals and a lack of long-term planning.
The fact that politicians campaigning in Delhi’s infamously polluted air have sparsely mentioned that very smog may appear baffling to a naive observer. But it’s a rational strategic response to the incentives that FPTP gives them. Parties have focused on getting the vote of interest groups with targeted schemes: cash transfers for priests and women, subsidized gas cylinders, and free utilities for tenants. Air pollution may continue to be neglected until it becomes a specific issue for party vote banks.
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Global shifts
India adopted FPTP after independence because the system is simple to understand and offers stability by ensuring a majority or coalition government even if no party wins the majority vote (the consequences in a PR system can be complicated). This stability was paramount when India was a nascent and delicate democracy, at a time when peer post-colonial powers were falling into authoritarianism. However, some feel the system may now have exceeded its use.
Most countries now follow some form of PR or mixed system. Out of 217 national legislatures listed by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, over 35% follow list-based PR, only 22% follow a purely FPTP system, and the rest have hybrid systems. Several countries moved from FPTP to PR systems over the 20th century, including Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. In the largest remaining FPTP countries, the US and the UK, there is increasing appetite for considering alternatives such as ranked choice voting due to increasing political polarization and election controversies of the past two decades (In December 2024, UK MPs voted narrowly in favour of the introduction of a private member’s bill in favour of PR, though it’s unlikely to pass through).
The call for electoral reform in India has also made its presence felt. In 2015, the 170th Law Commission report recommended a mixed-member proportional system, where the size of the Lok Sabha would be expanded by 25% to be filled by PR while the remaining seats continue under FPTP. However, reform in this space is especially challenging as it requires legislative action from the very beneficiaries of the FPTP system.
By 2031, India is expected to undergo its first national delimitation exercise since 1971. This is expected to alter the status quo on state-level representation to the detriment of states whose populations have grown more slowly and will likely stoke further conversations on the fairness of the current electoral system. By reforming the election system, Indian legislatures may be able to better cater to their constituents’ true preferences, instead of being trapped in short-termist schemes to win elections.
The author is a graduate student in policy and business at Harvard University.
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