Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mrs. Tomassi and I'm here to work through you on your citizenship lesson today.

Hopefully you've got everything you need.

You are all set to go and we will make a start.

Today's lesson title is how do elections work, and that forms part of the unit, where does power reside in the UK? Hopefully by the end of the lesson today you'll be able to describe the different types of elections and identify the key steps in an election process.

You're gonna see these keywords throughout the session and they are gonna be in bold.

So if you ever need to, you can refer back to them here.

So to start with, the first one we've got is election.

Now election is a voting process to select a person for a public position.

You then have electorate, which is all the people in an area or country who are eligible to vote.

And the last one that you'll see is manifesto.

Now, this is a set of aims and intentions by political party and its plans to achieve these goals.

So with that in mind, we will make a start our first of two learning cycles, which the first one is, what type of elections exist in the UK? Quick diagram here, distribution of power in the UK, 'cause this is part of the unit about where does power reside.

So power begins with the central or national government, which is the UK Parliament.

Now, parliament has evolved some of these powers, which means they have transferred and given some of these powers to other national and local governments, there are some examples there.

So you've got the Senedd, Welsh Parliament, Scottish Parliament, and Northern Island Assembly.

What they've also done is then transferred some of these powers to regional and local governments as well.

The reason this is relevant to today's lesson is because all of these branches of power offer elections and that is what we are talking about today.

Now these elections allow the electorate, so if you remember, they're the people that are able to vote to choose their representatives at each level of government, which determines where the power resides.

As a result of this, power is constantly shifting and evolving.

It doesn't sit in one place.

There's not just one election that's offered, we have lots of different ones, and that's what we're gonna look at now.

So we'll have a look at some of them.

So the reason elections give power to the electorate is because they allow the electorates to choose who they think will best meet their needs and ideas at the time.

They also give them a chance to vote every few years so that government stays responsible and listens to them.

Then they allow them to influence the balance of power between different political party.

Quick check for understanding now.

The electorate has not got any power in elections.

Is that true or false? That is false.

Why might that be false? The electorate has the power to choose the candidate they want to represent, and that person is held accountable to the electorate through elections that happen regularly.

Now, each branch of power have elections, and this is what we mentioned earlier when we had the diagram.

They all have different types of elections so there aren't just one.

Now, the elections that we have here in the UK include local, general elections, devolved elections, mayoral elections, London Assembly elections, and the Police and Crime Commissioner's elections.

Don't worry too much if you don't know, you're like, "Oh, well, I have no idea what some of them are," we are gonna go through them now.

So hopefully by the end of the cycle you will have an idea of what they are.

But we have Lucas here that says, well, "When I become part of the electorate, do I get to vote in all these elections?" That is a good question.

Andeep says, "Not quite, because all UK voters are eligible to vote in the general election; for other elections, the elections you can vote in depend on where you live in the UK." And then to give you an example of more of that now, we're gonna have a look at some.

So if you are an electorate in the City of Edinburgh council, then you would be able to vote in the general election, local elections and Scottish Parliamentary elections.

If we go right down south now, if you were an electorate in Brighton and Hove City Council, then you'd be able to vote in the general election, local elections, Police and Crime Commissioner elections.

Another couple of examples.

So if you were over in Cardiff council, then you'd be able to vote in the general election, local election, Senedd Welsh Parliament election and the Police and Crime Commissioner's elections.

So lots of options there.

And then finally, if you were in a London borough, you'd be able to vote in the general election, local elections, Mayor of London and the London Assembly elections.

So it's actually really important to have a look at the area that you live in and what elections are relevant to you.

Now you can have a look at this online and it will show you, you can see which elections I can vote in and it would show you what ones are relevant to the area that you live in, 'cause again, if you move area as well at all, it might change as well.

So it's always good to be up to date and go, "Okay, well actually, what is going on in my area and who are the representatives that represent me in my area?" A quick check for understanding now we've gone through that part.

So which of the following are types of elections in the UK? Is it A, general election, B, local government, C, European elections.

It's A and B.

We've got Lucas here that says, "European elections are held by the European Union, the EU, to select members of European Parliament, MEPs, so since leaving the EU, UK citizens can no longer vote in EU elections." So previously this was the case, but now that the UK is no longer part of the EU, they can't vote in these elections.

We are gonna move on now to local government elections.

Now the purpose of these is to choose the local counsellors who make decisions for your area.

However, in some parts of Wales and Scotland, people also vote for community counsellors.

So you might hear community counsellor rather than local counsellor, but it's still relevant to the local government elections.

Now the reason that they are important is because they allow voters to choose the counsellor who represents their needs and make decisions for their local community.

If the voters think that the council is doing a good job, then they can reelect them, but if not they can choose someone else in the next election.

These elections run regularly again so it allows the local counsellor to be held accountable because if they're not doing what they think and you're like, actually you're not doing a very good job, it's probably highly unlikely you're gonna vote them back in again.

So then somebody else will come in who does want the same kind of change that you are looking for.

Bit more so when I said that they run regularly, just to explain this a bit, they take place at least every four years.

So a counsellor gets their seat, they're gonna stay in place for four years, and at the end of the four years they can choose to stand again.

If they get reelected, yep, they get to go again, but if they choose not to, then that's the end of their time.

However, when a council has all their counsellors, it doesn't necessarily mean, so say for an example, there was a county and they had 20 counsellors, it doesn't mean that there's one election for four years to run all those 20 counsellors.

It might be a case that they are split.

So actually sometimes you might see local elections happening every year.

And the reason for that is they might have electing only five counsellors this year, five counsellors next year, five counsellors the year after, et cetera.

So that's why you might see elections running a bit more often.

But again, if you're ever confused, all the information's there and you can have a look at your local area and see who is running when.

Izzy is saying here, "How old do you have to be to vote in local elections." Now the UK has devolved powers for local elections.

So actually each nation is different.

Currently in Scotland and Wales it's 16, and in England and Northern Ireland it's 18.

So there's a bit of a difference there.

There are talks of reducing it all to 16, but no one knows at the moment whether that will change.

It might evolve in the future, but at the moment they are the different ages.

We're gonna move on to general elections.

Now general elections are voting for a Member of Parliament, the MP, to represent area.

The UK has 650 areas called constituencies.

Do you know who your local MP is? If you don't, it might be worth finding out and seeing what they do for your area.

Now, when we are talking about the type of elections that exist, it's important to know here that with the general election, it is called by the Prime Minister and that is called the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022.

What happens is that the prime minister has to automatically dissolve every five years, but they could also call a general election earlier than that.

So it does happen, have to happen every five years, but they could call it early and when they call it early, they would request the dissolution of parliament and call a general election.

Moving on.

So we've also got devolved elections.

Now if you go back to the start, we were looking at this term, devolved.

Can you remember what that meant? So do you remember it's that idea of transfer of power.

Now the transfer of power in this case, we go to the different regional leaderships, which is Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

Any ideas what they're called or who represent them? We've got the Northern Irish electorates who can vote for the members of the Legislative Assemblies, so the MLAs.

You then have the Scottish electorates who vote for members of the Scottish Parliament, which are called MSPs, the Welsh electorates who vote for members of the Senedd, which is MSs.

Now we will have a look at the mayoral elections.

This one it is important to know is specifically for directly elected mayors.

This is because most areas don't have mayoral elections because the mayor has a ceremonial role.

And what that means is that the mayor hasn't got the power to make decisions.

However, some things have changed a bit and there are areas that have directly elected mayors who can make decisions.

So if you have a look at that map there, that shows you all the cities that have directly elected mayors.

And that one there's for 2021.

So you can see if it's a dark red, there's not a lot, but there are a few places.

So again, if you heard, actually you know what, I think I've got mayor in my area.

It might be good to have a look and find out is your mayor directly elected or is your mayor ceremonial? If they are directly elected, then you'll have mayoral elections and you'll get a chance to vote for that person.

If they're not, then you won't.

And that moves us on to the final type of election, looking at the Police and Crime Commissioners.

Now these exist only in England and Wales and what they are there to do is in charge of overseeing the police force in specific areas.

Any ideas why they might only exist in England and Wales? If you know anything about devolution, it will be because Northern Ireland and Scotland as part of their devolved powers have justice and policing so that there is separate and they do their own, they have their own way of doing things there.

So this is only exists for England and Wales.

And what the PCC does is they're setting priorities for local police forces, monitoring the police performance, deciding on police budget, and representing the public's views on policing and crime.

So we've gone through all of the different types of elections now.

See if you can remember them, and in this check for understanding, which type of election is missing from the list, there's local, general, mayoral, London Assembly, Police and Crime Commissioner.

It is devolved elections that was missing.

Did you manage to get that? Hopefully you did.

If you did, then we will move on to the next part.

So how the elections work is most election candidates belong to a political party, but you can stand as an independent candidate too.

We'll go through that now.

So political party are a group of people who share common views on issues, and an individual can choose to join a political party if they agree with their views, they might, when they join, pay a monthly fee to support the party and they'll be involved.

What happens then when a candidate wants to be an election, they're normally being nominated by their political party.

Did mention there that you can stand as an independent candidate too, and what that means is that you aren't affiliated, you've just got your own views and that's what you're sharing, and you're representing as an independent.

Give you a bit of an example.

Political parties, do you already know any? You might have heard them, you might hear people talking about them when we talk about the government and who's in power and who's not, any of them ring a bell, we go through some.

So we've got the biggest ones as of 2025 in the UK is Labour Party, Conservatives, Lib Dems, Green Party, Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein.

Izzy saying that like we've already said, "So some candidates are independent, which means they're not a member of the political party." It can be difficult when running a campaign as independent candidate purely because thinking, having to think about it, if you ever gone to do something and you've gone to do it on your own, you've got all of the extra work to do compared to say if you've got like a team and a group behind you who are all doing the same thing as well, it means that they can kind of bring stuff together.

So in this case, independent candidates might have less money to spend on campaigning, fewer people might know about them.

Big parties also have logos that people can recognise, independent don't, and they might have fewer volunteers to help.

However, that doesn't mean that they would never get in.

Actually there are really successful independent candidates out there.

It's just showing you that the difficulties that can come with being an independent candidate as well.

However, there are many cases that they are still really successful.

So that is a lot of talking again.

So we'll do a check for understanding now.

True or false? Candidates in elections across the UK must be part of a political party.

That is false.

Why is that false? Candidates can choose to be part of a political party or they can run as an independent candidate.

Now that moves us on to task A for today.

First part of this task, work out which election each person is voting in.

So think back to the types of elections that we've looked at.

You've got A, I'm voting for someone to oversee the police force.

B, I'm voting to elect a Member of Parliament to represent our constituents' views in parliament.

C, I'm voting for a member of the Senedd to make decisions on my behalf.

And D, I'm voting for a local counsellor to make a difference in my area.

Take some time, have a think about it.

When you think you've got it, then unpause, and we can go through them together.

How did you get on? Did you manage to work 'em out? So if you did, A, that was the Police and Crime Commissioner elections.

A little bit of a giveaway there with the talking about the police force.

The Member of Parliament is the general election.

The member of Senedd was devolved elections and specifically that's for Wales.

And then the local councillor is for the local elections.

Hopefully you found that all right, and if you did, should be able to move on to this next task.

Part two, it says, explain why local and general elections give power to the electorate.

See how you get on with that, again, unpause when you're ready and we can go through it.

How did you find that task? Now your answer could have looked something like this.

We've got local government elections give power to the electorate because these elections make sure councillors are held accountable to the electorate by only allowing councillors to hold their seat for four years.

General elections give power to the electorate by allowing it to choose MPs who will represent the electorate's views on national issues.

General elections happen at least every five years.

So the electorate can vote in MPs that reflect their priorities.

If they don't, they're unlikely to get voted back in.

Did you have something similar? Hopefully you managed to find some reason as to why the local general elections give power to the electorate.

You could have had a different reason as well and it would be perfectly fine.

That means that we're now gonna move on to the second learning cycle, which is, how does the election process work? So we've had a look at some elections, we are gonna see how they work now.

So to start with, the election process is similar across all types of elections and they follow these main steps.

So if you remember we have had looked at general, local elections, devolved elections, they do all still follow this similar process.

So to start with, you've got nomination of candidates, you've then got confirmation of manifestos, campaigning begins, we're gonna flick over now to see new voter registration, polling day, and account and results announced.

Now you might be like, "Ooh, I dunno all of them," don't worry, we're gonna go through them actually in detail now.

So to start with, most elections, any elected official, so example in the local government, that would be the local counsellor, they stay in role during the run up to the election.

The only difference is the general election.

Now if you remember earlier, what happens, and how is the general election called? Did you remember this dissolution of parliament.

When that happens, parliament becomes dissolved and all current MPs lose their seat in parliament.

They're no longer officially MPs.

That means they can't vote, they can't take out in debates, they don't receive their salary or allowances, but they can choose to stand for reelection.

Again, they don't have to if they don't want to.

So that's the only one that's a little bit different.

They no longer continue in their position.

The other elections, they do in the run up.

A quick check for understanding before we move on.

True or false, the Monarch calls a general election.

That is false.

Why? Do you remember who calls it? It is the prime minister that calls it.

They might meet the monarch to request a dissolution of parliament.

And actually it's interesting because in the past few years the prime minister, well two prime ministers, have called early general elections, and that's Boris Johnson and Theresa May.

So it is something that does happen.

So we will move on to the first part of the election process and that is nomination of candidates.

Hopefully that's quite self-explanatory in that sense that it's the case of nominating a candidate to run.

A couple of little things that happen.

If they're a member of a political party, then the party must approve them as a candidate.

Now in one area, if you've got more than one person that wants to run from the same party, the political party will choose the one they think has got the best chance of winning.

Also, in a general election, they have the prospective parliamentary candidates, so those are those that are running for MPs, take part in hustings, which are events where the public can ask the candidate questions and hear their views.

If a person wants to run as an independent candidate, then they just have to register themselves.

They don't have to be nominated by the political party, they can just register and run.

Next, once that is done and you know who the candidates are, there'd be a confirmation of manifestos.

Now a manifesto is the way political parties let voters know what they'll do when they come into power.

So they might pick policies that they'll prioritise.

You might hear like people saying, "Oh yeah, I wanna do make sure we prioritise healthcare or education," dah dah, dah.

That probably you'll find has come from their manifesto.

And you can see each party or candidate's manifesto in their campaign.

Now what they try and do with these manifestos is that's what they will do, use to persuade people to vote for them by saying, "Okay look, come vote for me because this is what I want." So in this process what they do is they write and they finalise the manifestos.

So everyone's got their manifestos sorted and then they can use these during the campaign.

We've got nomination of candidates.

And then do you remember the next one? We've got the manifestos being confirmed.

Now it's time to start campaigning.

When campaigning begins, there are many different methods that can be used.

Canvassing, any ideas what that is? So canvassing, a bit like the picture there, maybe you might go to door to door, you might see people, and speak to them and try and explain what it is you want to do, other ways, attending community events, flyers, social media campaigns.

There are lots of different methods that electorates can do.

Have you ever seen people campaigning? You might have seen even on TV there's one.

So actually like the general and devolved elections, televised debates take part between the leaders of main political parties that might be asked questions and then people can watch them and that can also impact the way people vote.

And as well, especially with the general devolved elections, even actually local elections and stuff with local media, the media does provide extensive coverage of the elections, party manifestos and key issues.

So there's always ways to find out about what is going on.

So the campaign has begun, the new voter registration will be there.

Now what this is for is for people that haven't voted before or haven't registered to vote, and what they do is they get added to the electoral register, which means they become an electorate, and then their eligible voter, they can vote in the next election and the future ones, you don't need to sign up again, you will just get your polling card and carry on voting it as long as no details have changed.

To register to vote, a person must be age 16 or over, have a national insurance number, meet nationality eligibility criteria, provide details, and you can register vote online or by filling in a paper form.

Izzy says there, really important, "So local devolved elections in Scotland and Wales." Do you remember what age you said you can vote? It's 16.

Now because you can vote from 16, it means you can register to vote at 14 'cause you can register to vote two years before you are able to vote.

I've just done a lot of talking at you, so true or false, you must be registered to vote in order to vote in elections.

That's true.

Once you're registered to vote, then you don't need to do it again, but it's the first time you need to do it.

So this moves us on to step five, which is polling day.

Now if you know anyone that's voted or you've seen any votes, very oddly you might have correlated that they tend to happen on a Thursday.

That's just historical that actually they pretty much all elections happen on a Thursday.

And what happens is people cast their votes by secret ballot.

So when you get to the polling station it will be hidden off so that nobody else can see who you are voting for.

That way you don't feel like you might feel like you have to vote for somebody or somebody's gonna pressure you, you get to pick who you wanna vote for, no one can see, and then you put it in the box.

They open between 7:00 and 10:00, 7:00 AM and 10:00 PM, and some people can vote by post or by proxy.

Again, the reason for this is it's allowing as many that want to the opportunity to vote.

So hopefully at some point during that day, people will be able to go and vote, which again helps to offer more power to the electorates by offering all them opportunities.

Important thing to know about the elections.

They have different voting systems. Most common is first past the post, and what happens then is any of those elections, you will go up and you just mark a cross next to the candidate that you want to vote for.

You will see that in the general election, local election, mayoral elections and the Police and Crime Commissioner elections.

Nice and simple because then it means you can find and see the winner quite clearly.

However, there are some elections that use different voting systems. So there is single transferrable vote for local elections in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Assembly elections.

This is a form of proportional representation.

So if you was to attend these elections and you were to vote, instead of having a cross in the one box, you would go and number the candidates.

So if you wanted candidate A as your number one, you'd put one, two, three, four, so on, however many candidates you would like in your order of preference.

Whereas the Scottish and Welsh Parliament and the London Assembly elections have an additional member system, which is again a little bit different.

And for there you would receive two ballots.

One that you'd mark your person on that, the candidate on there that you wanted, and on the other one you'd be picking the political party or other candidates, so you would just have two papers for that one.

So that's something to know as well because if you did go to an election and you had different papers, at least you can understand why.

So can you remember which of these elections use First Past The Post, A, general B, Northern Island Assembly, C, Police and Crime Commissioner.

It was A, and it's also C, Police and Crime Commissioner.

Izzy says, "Northern island Assembly use the single transferable vote system, the STV." Now we move on to the final step in the election process where the count takes place and the winner is declared.

It takes place shortly after the polling stations.

Now the candidates can be there, they can be in the hall that it's happening and they can therefore see that it is transparent and fair.

Which again is more about supporting with the power because it's making sure that it is the electorate's choice that wins.

We talked about first past the post earlier, thing with that is actually the counting's quicker and simpler because it's the candidate with the most votes that wins, some of the other elections, it might take a bit longer because there's a little bit more working out to do.

Once it's verified and checked, the winner is officially declared by the returning officer.

And that is the election process.

Then what happens? Most elections, the winner begins their role as soon as the results are announced.

In the general election, you would also have the additional step, which is the political parties that win, all the seats are added up and the leader of the party with the most seats becomes the prime minister who is the head of the UK government.

Can you rearrange the following steps into the correct order of the election process? So there you've got new voter of registration, campaigning begins, winner declared, nomination of candidates, polling day, and confirmation and manifestos.

When you think you've got the correct order, unpause, and we can check them.

Did you manage to get the right order? So we've got number one there, that's nomination of candidates, two, confirmation of manifestos, three, campaigning begins, four, new voter registration, polling day is five, and the winner declared is the final step, six.

Hopefully you are all right with that.

And then we can move on to the task here.

Can you explain what happens during each step in the electoral process? So we know what the steps are, but can you give a short explanation for each of them to explain how that happens? Take some time to think about it.

When you think you've got it, unpause, and then we'll have a look at them.

So did you manage to work out each of the steps and what happens at each? So at the nomination of candidates, step one, your answer could look like this.

During this step, independent candidates can nominate themselves and run.

Those that are part of political party will nominate themselves, but there's more than one candidate in an area, the political party will decide the candidate they believe has the best chance.

Step two, confirmation of manifestos, during this step, parties ensure that manifestos are written and finalised.

Step three, campaigning begins.

During this step, candidates begin campaigning to try to get their electorate support.

They might do this through social media campaigns.

Step four, new voter registration.

During this step, those who have not registered to vote but are eligible will complete their voter registration so they can vote.

Step five, polling day.

During this step, the electorate's able to vote for candidates who'd like to be elected.

And step six, winner declared.

During this step the votes are counted and the winning candidate are announced.

Hopefully that was okay.

And then there's a final task here.

So Jun says, "I believe that elections give the electorate more power than the candidates during the election process, and once the candidate has been elected." Write a short paragraph explaining why you agree or disagree with Jun.

So I'd first take a bit of time and just have a think whether you agree or disagree with this, with what Jun's saying, and then take some time to prepare your response.

When you're ready, unpause, and then we can have a look.

How is that? Now, if you chose to agree with Jun that the electorate holds more power, your answer could look like this.

I agree with Jun because leading up to the election, if the electorate does not agree with a candidate or a manifesto, then the people will not vote for them.

This means they will not get into power.

A candidate does have the power when elected to make decisions.

However, the power still lies with the electorate, 'cause if these people do not agree with what the elected candidate is doing, the elected candidate will not be re-elected.

Did you have something similar like that? Or did you choose to disagree with Jun? Now if you chose to disagree, you could have said, I disagree with Jun because leading up to the election, as candidates are campaigning for support, the power lies with the electorate.

Their votes select who is successful.

However, once the results have been announced, this changes.

For example, in the general election, the MP now has the power.

They can vote on laws that affect everybody and they represent the views of their constituents in the House of Commons.

Now, it doesn't matter if you chose to agree or disagree, but it's more, did you manage to justify why you believe that.

If you did, then great work and hopefully that's helped to summarise where the power is held in terms of elections.

And that brings us onto the summary of the lesson today.

There are a variety of elections in the UK including general, local, mayoral, PCC, and evolved.

Those that are registered to vote, the electorate, can vote in elections.

The elections they can vote in depend on the area they live in.

The electoral process involves candidates being nominated either through their political party or choosing to run as an independent candidate.

Candidates have manifestos and campaign to be elected.

On polling day, the electorate votes for the candidate of its choice.

The results are calculated and the winning candidate is elected.

Did that all make sense? Hopefully that's a bit of a reminder of what we've gone through in this session today.

Now, as we've brought to the end, I'm hoping that you have a bit of a better understanding of how the elections work and where the power resides.

Thank you so much for working with me today and hopefully you've got something out of the session.

Have a lovely rest of your day.