Winner Take All

Most elections, whether of government officials or officers of private clubs, are decided on the winner-take-all system. It is the simplest kind of election to conduct and the easiest to understand: the person who receives the most votes wins the office being sought.

Members of Congress and most state legislators are elected under the winner-take-all rule. They run in single-member districts (which may be the whole state in the case of candidates for U.S. Senate and some U.S. House seats) and win if they receive at least a plurality of the vote.

A more complicated system, proportional representation, is more likely to give fair representation to the various racial, ethnic, and other demographic or political groups within a state or district. Under proportional representation seats are distributed among candidates in proportion to their share of the popular vote. To do this, however, requires the use of multimember districts or a similar form of multiple representation in the geographical area covered by the election. Then if a ten-member district is 40 percent African American, for example, the black community has a reasonable chance of winning four of the ten seats if it puts up a full complement of candidates.

A few states had multimember congressional districts until Congress abolished them in 1842. Some state legislative districts or city council wards still elect multiple members.

In presidential primaries, delegates to the national party conventions usually are awarded on the basis of proportional representation rather than winner-take-all. In many cases a candidate must meet a threshold rule, such as 15 percent of the vote, before winning any delegates. Some Republican primaries use winner-take-all, but the Democratic Party does not allow them.

Presidential elections are won or lost on a winner-take-all basis. The state's popular vote winner receives all of the state's electoral votes. In the electoral college, the leading candidate must receive an absolute majority of the 538 votes to become president.