First Past the Post System

India's method of election works like this: the entire country is divided into constituencies — 543 of them for the Lok Sabha — each of which elects exactly one representative, and the candidate who wins is simply whoever secures more votes than every other individual candidate standing in that constituency. Note carefully what this does not require: the winner does not need more than half the votes cast, only more votes than any single rival. Because the winning candidate is the one who crosses the finish line first, ahead of every other candidate, this is called the First Past the Post (FPTP) system, also known as the Plurality System — and it is the method the Indian Constitution prescribes for direct elections such as the Lok Sabha and the State Legislative Assemblies.

The gap between "most votes" and "majority of votes" can produce results that look strange on paper. The clearest illustration is the 1984 Lok Sabha election, in which the Congress party won 415 of the 543 seats — over 80% of the seats in the House, a margin no party has matched before or since. Yet the Congress party's actual vote share was only 48% — under half of all votes cast nationwide. The gap becomes even sharper for other parties: the BJP won 7.4% of the vote but only 2 seats, less than 1% of the House.

(Votes and seats won by some major parties, Lok Sabha election, 1984.) …