Lesson video

Hello, my name's Mrs. Harris and I'm the person who's going to be guiding you through today's learning.

The lesson today is called How Do Elections Work? And it's part of a larger unit called How does the political system work in the UK? By the end of today's lesson, you are going to be able to say, I can explain what elections are and describe the process of a UK general election.

Some of this learning you might already know, some of it might be new and some of it might be challenging, but not to worry because I'm gonna be here to guide us both all the way through it and we'll do it together.

Let's start with the keywords then.

I'm going to say the keyword and you are going to repeat it out loud.

Are you ready? Election.

Constituency.

Prime Minister.

Our first learning cycle is called What are Elections? The United Kingdom is a democracy.

Now a really key part of a democracy is that the citizens, that's the people who live in the UK, have got the power to choose their leaders and their representatives.

It's really important that citizens get a say in who their representatives, who their leaders are, because the people that are in power, they make so many decisions that affect many, many areas of people's lives.

Now, the way that citizens in the UK get to choose their leaders is via elections.

That's when citizens vote for the person that they think is going to represent them and their interests when they're making decisions for the country.

In a democracy, these elections happen every couple of years, and this is really good because it gives voters a chance to choose the leaders that reflect what they need there and then.

So if you have the same leader for 20 years, the world could be a completely different place.

So by having them regularly, that gives voters the chance to choose who they need there and then.

And that's really important for shaping policies, laws, and the day-to-day running of a country.

So different types of election in the UK include: local elections, so they could be the ones for your town, your city, or your county leadership; it could be a general election and that's when you are choosing the people you want to sit in Parliament; it could be a devolved election, it's when you're choosing the regional leadership in Wales, in Scotland and Northern Ireland; it could be the mayor one, so that's when you're choosing the leader of the local government; and there's elections for the police and crime commissioner as well, and that's choosing the leaders of the police service in the area.

Let's have a quick check for understanding then.

So what is the name of the type of UK election that elect people into Parliament? Is it A: national elections? Is it B: General elections, or C: European elections? I'll give you five seconds to think about it.

Okay, so the answer is the type of UK election that elects people into Parliament is general election.

Yes, if you got that, well done.

Now, not everybody in the UK is eligible to vote in UK elections, and Jun's reminding us that eligible means that when you are allowed to do something, because you meet all of the criteria and the rules, for example, if you play in an under 13 football team, you can't play in that team if you are 16 because you don't meet the under 13 age criteria to be a part of that team.

And that's the same here with the UK elections.

There are rules about things like who you are, where you live, where you're from.

It also includes things like age eligibility as well.

Now the group of people who are eligible to vote, they are known as the electorate.

The right to vote is known as suffrage.

Now Andeep's telling us that in the past, suffrage was only allowed for certain groups and if you weren't in one of those groups, you didn't get to vote.

And it was mainly wealthy men who owned the land who were able to vote.

Men who were considered to be lower class and all women were not permitted to vote.

And Izzy tells us that this started to change in the 19th and 20th centuries.

It took a lot of years to get, and it wasn't until 1928 that women finally gained the same voting rights as men.

To vote in general elections in the UK today then, some of the criteria that a person has to meet is: they must be 18 or over on polling day, so on the day that the actual vote takes place; they must be registered at an address in the area they're going to vote in, and there's no fee to do that, so they have to register; they can't be legally excluded from voting, so when they're not allowed to, so that's most people in prison; and they must be a British or an Irish citizen too.

Citizens are only allowed one vote in one area.

Now this is different to local elections where some people get one vote in more than one area.

For example, if you are a student living away from your home at university, you get to have one vote where you live, university and you would get to have one vote at home.

That's for local elections, but general elections, it doesn't work like that.

And you can have one vote in the area that you are registered at living at the time.

As well as the criteria on the previous page, you are also eligible to vote if you live in Wales, Scotland, England or Northern Ireland and you're a citizen of a qualifying commonwealth country and you're allowed to live and work in the UK.

You can also vote if you are from Poland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, and that's if you are allowed to live in the UK or any other EU country, any other European Union country, if you were living in the UK, Channel Islands or the Isle of Man since the 31st of December, 2020.

So some criteria is a little bit more complicated than just age and where you live now.

Another quick check for understanding then.

So which word is missing here in both gaps? Citizens are only allowed mm vote in mm area.

This is different from local elections where some people can vote in two areas.

For example, students living away from home.

Which one word is missing in both of those gaps? I'll give you five seconds to think.

Alright, so the missing word is the word "one." Yes, that's right, citizens are only allowed one vote in one area.

If you've got that, well done.

So general elections then, these are the ones where it's electing the person to sit in Parliament.

These have to happen at least once every five years and so as I've said, this is when citizens will choose from the list of candidates and they vote for the person that is going to represent them in the UK Parliament.

Jun's telling us the UK is split into 650 smaller geographical areas and the name for these areas is called constituencies.

And each constituency has one elected MP to represent that area and the people who live within it, in Parliament.

If that candidate gets the most votes, they become the Member of Parliament, or the MP, of that area.

Each constituency has roughly the same size electorate.

Remember, electorate means the people who are eligible to vote and that's to make sure the representation is fair and equal.

For example, if you had one constituency and there were only 10,000 people living there and a different constituency with 100,000 people living there, both areas only get one MP.

So the people living in an area with 1000,000 other people, they're not going to get quite the same representation as the area with only 10,000.

So to try and keep it fair and equal then, if you take the whole of the UK electorate, that's every eligible person to vote and you divide it into 650.

So that's the constituency numbers.

Then the average would be 73,393 eligible people per constituency.

Well you can't divide the UK exactly by that.

So what they have to do is take the constituencies and try to get as close to 73,393 voters per area.

Now obviously the population changes, it sometimes gets bigger, it sometimes gets smaller, so they review constituency boundaries as things change.

And the most recent change happened in 2023.

Let's have a look at some of these constituencies then.

Well here we've got Sterling and Strathallen, that's got 77,008 under the electorate.

We've got Belfast East that's got 70,076 in electorate.

Here we've got Mid and South Pembrokeshire, there's 76,020 in theirs.

Bexleyheath and Crayford, 69,948, Amber Valley 69,510, Leeds West and Pudsey was 70,270.

So you can see it does vary.

They have to get it as close to that 73,393 as possible.

So true or false then.

The UK is split into 73,393 constituencies.

Is that true or false? I'll give you five seconds to think about it.

Okay, so the answer is.

false.

No, it doesn't have 73,393 constituencies does it? So what's the answer to that then? Can you explain it? I'll give you five seconds to think.

Hey, it's the average electorate is 73,393 people, not 73,393 constituencies.

So the UK is split into 650 constituencies.

Well done if you've got that one.

We're ready for our first task, Task A.

The first part of this is you are going to tick to say whether these statements are true or false.

So there are five statements.

Just put a tick, true or false.

So the first statement says the UK voting age is 16 plus.

To register to vote, you must pay a fee.

In the UK, general elections should take place at least every five years.

Each constituency has roughly the same sized electorate.

And the final one is there are three main types of election in the UK.

Tick to say if they're true or false.

It's a good idea to pause the video to give yourself the time to do this, and then we'll come back and go through the answers.

Hey, how did you find that? Let's go through the answers then.

Here we go.

Your answer should look like this.

Voting age is 16 plus, it's false.

To register to vote, you must pay a fee, that is false.

In the UK, general elections should take place at least every five years is true.

Each constituency has roughly the same size electorate.

That is true.

And there are three main types of election in the UK.

That is false.

So let's go to the second part of this task then.

So the false statements, you are going to rewrite them to make them true.

So there were three statements there that were false.

You need to rewrite them to make them true.

Again, it's a good idea to pause the video to give yourself the time to do this, and then we'll come back and check through the answers.

Alright, let's have a look then.

So your answers should look something like this.

It won't be the exact wording.

The idea is there.

So the UK voting age is 18, it's not 16 plus, is it? Second one is voting is free.

No registration fee is requested.

Nobody should be asked to register to vote.

No way.

And the final one, there are five main types of election, aren't there? Not three.

There's local, general, regional, mayoral and the police and crime commissioner.

Great job if you got those ones.

Now we're on to our second learning cycle, what happens during the general election process? So you might have seen something on your TV looking like this.

There is breaking news.

The general election has been announced and the Prime Minister has called the general election in just 30 days time.

So when a general election is called by the Prime Minister, there's a chain of events that is set into motion, and this is pretty much the same every single general election.

Let's have a look at it.

There are six main steps in the general election process: we have the dissolution of Parliament; we have the selection of candidates; we have the campaigning beginning; we have the new voter registration; we have the actual polling day; and then we have the winners and the results being announced.

Let's look at these in more detail.

Step one then is the dissolution of Parliament.

It starts with the Prime Minister visiting the monarch, so that's the king or the queen, and formally asking them to dissolve the Parliament, to end Parliament.

All the current MPs, the Members of Parliament, they lose their seats and they're no longer officially classed as being a member of Parliament, although many of them do continue doing their roles.

They continue helping people until the actual election day.

They're not allowed to do voting, they're not allowed to participate in any of the Parliamentary debates and they don't get paid either.

They don't get their salary and they don't get their allowances either.

At this point, the MPs need to decide whether they want to stand to be reelected or if they want to step back and not go up for being elected again.

Step two is the nomination of candidates.

If a person is a member of a political party, the party has to give their approval for them as a candidate.

So if I was a member of the Yellow Party, I would have to speak to them and say, "I want to be considered as an MP.

Can I stand under the name of the Yellow Party?" And the party would decide if they think I'm appropriate or not to do that.

If you get more than one person wanting to stand in one area as candidates for that party, then the party will choose whoever has the best chance of winning the seat.

Alternatively, if a person is not a member of a political party, they might choose to stand at a constituency as an independent candidate and they'll have to do all of the registration for that for themselves.

To be considered to be an MP, to be a candidate, you have to be at least 18 years old.

You have to be a British or Irish citizen or a citizen of a commonwealth country and allowed to live in the UK.

And this is interesting because there is no legal requirement to have to live or work in the constituency that you want to stand in.

This is the opposite to local elections.

In local elections, you have to live or work within that area within the last 12 months when you decide you want to be a candidate for the local government.

But for a general election to be in Parliament, you don't need to have a connection to live or to work in that area.

So theoretically, I could live in London and stand as a representative, as a candidate for a constituency in the very north of Scotland.

I mean, it's quite unusual to get that and most people do have a connection, but there is no legal requirement for that in a general election.

Step three: So once Parliament's been dissolved, once we've got the candidates chosen, that's when campaigning can begin.

Now, candidates will use lots of different methods to try and persuade the people who live in the area to vote for them.

That might be through canvassing, so going to people's houses and talking face to face.

That might be attending community events and showing the people that you are part of the area.

It might be through things like posters or flyers or leaflets, or even things like social media campaigns.

It's all about getting the message out there as to why you would be a good candidate to represent the people living in that area.

Often you'll see there'll be debates on television, so televised debates between the leaders of the main political party and millions of people watch them and they can have a real impact on the way that people decide to vote.

They're sometimes known as a bit of a make or break.

People can completely change their opinion of which party they're going to vote for based on these televised debates.

The media as well, they are covering this constantly.

You'll find it in newspapers, on TV, in magazines, all over of the coverage of the election and the campaigning leading up to it.

You'll find lots of information about manifestos.

So that's policies people have on all the key issues that people are worried about or want to be considered when they're choosing a representative.

Let's have a quick check for understanding then.

Can you put the first three steps in the order that they happen in the general election process? We've got A: campaigning begins, B: candidate is selected, and C: dissolution of Parliament.

Put these in order that they happen in the general election process.

I'll give you a few seconds to think about it.

Okay, which one comes first then? It is the dissolution of Parliament.

The one that comes second is the candidate is selected, and the third one then is campaigning can begin.

Well done.

So far then, we've had the dissolution of Parliament, we've got the candidates been selected and we've got campaigning beginning.

And the fourth step in this is new voter registration.

Now, lots of people, because the media are talking so much about the general elections, they have their attention taken towards it and lots of people want to take part in the vote.

They want to have their say, but they're not registered to do so.

So when a general election is announced, it's really important that people know how they can take part in the voting.

So to be able to vote, remember, a person has to be registered.

Once they've registered for free, they're included on the electoral register or the electoral roll.

And that means they can vote in the general election and any election after that as well.

And to register to vote, a person has to be age 16 or over.

They have to have a National Insurance number and they have to meet the national eligibility criteria as well.

You have to provide details such as your name, your address, your date of birth, and it's quite easy to do as well because people can register to vote online, which is quick and easy and takes five minutes.

Or you can do it by filling in a paper form as well.

You might have noticed here that the age that you can register to vote is actually 16, even though you can't vote until you're 18.

So with all of the media covering the general election, that can sometimes really encourage 16 and 17 year olds to get their name down on the electoral roll.

So when they turn 18, they're already registered, already ready to go and vote and have their say in that election.

Step five is the big day itself.

It's polling day where people actually do their voting.

Now, polling day in the UK is usually a Thursday and people cast their votes by secret ballots.

That means they're alone and in secret, nobody's allowed to watch them and they don't have to discuss it or tell anybody.

Polling stations.

So the places where you go.

That will be set and a card gets sent to your house to tell you where your polling station is, and they're open between 7:00 AM and 10:00 PM.

Some people choose to do a postal vote, so they will do it a few weeks before or sometimes they might do it by proxy and that means they send somebody that they trust to vote on their behalf.

It's a really simple process.

Voters look at the list of candidates and they put an X next to the name of the person that they want to be their MP.

Whoever gets the most votes wins the seat, and this voting system is called first-past-the-post or FPTP.

It's a really easy system for voters to understand and it makes it really easy to figure out who's won because whoever gets the most votes wins.

After 10:00 PM the vote is closed and all of the votes that have been put into the boxes as shown on our illustration here, they get sealed up and they get taken away to be counted.

And that brings us to our final step in the general election process, and that is when the winner is declared.

Now the counting of these votes takes place almost instantly after polling stations close.

Some constituents even have a race to see who can count the votes the quickest.

It normally takes place in a really big community space, often like sports halls, and candidates and their agents get to watch over the people voting to make sure that it's being done fairly and they can ask questions and really get the confidence that it's being done in a fair and transparent manner.

When the count is taking place, you've got people sitting at tables in twos and the votes get poured in front of them out of the boxes and they have to count and count and count again.

That gets checked against one list, it gets checked against another list.

It then gets verified and verified again.

And finally when they're really happy that the numbers definitely match up with the amount of votes they have versus the amount of people that have been ticked off as having taken their votes, the winner is declared.

The person that does that is the returning officer, and that's the person who's been watching the whole process to make sure that it's been done fairly all the way from the moment those boxes arrive to be counted.

The winner then officially becomes the new MP elect.

That's when they've been elected.

They haven't yet started, they haven't yet been sworn in to their role officially.

Once the election results have been confirmed, it's then the turn for each of the political parties to add up how many seats they won across the whole of the UK.

So they add up every seat for every constituency that they won.

The leader of the party who's won the most seats overall will become the Prime Minister and that Prime Minister is the head of the UK Government.

Another check for understanding.

So can you put the last three steps in the order that they happen in the election process? We have: polling day, winner is declared, and new voter registration.

Which order do these three happen in? I'll give you a few seconds to think.

So which of these three comes first then? Well, it's the new voter registration.

And the next one is polling day, the actual voting day itself.

And finally the winner is declared.

Well done if you've got those in the correct order.

And now it's time for Task B.

You are going to create a timeline of the general election period in the UK.

Now you should plot the six main stages in order.

You should include a short summary, a short explanation of what those stages are, and finally also to create an image or a symbol to represent each of those six stages.

As ever, it's a really good idea to pause the video to give yourself the time to do this, and then we'll come back and look through some possible answers together.

Okay then, the six main stages of the general election.

So your answer might have looked like this: So step one, the Prime Minister advises the monarch, the king or the queen, to end the current Parliamentary session, and then that triggers the general election.

The second stage is political parties choose their candidates to stand for election and independent candidates register themselves for election.

And the third stage is candidates campaign to win the voter support through speeches, advertising, debates, talking to the public.

You might have even mentioned about the televised debates.

The fourth step in the general election process is when eligible citizens make sure they're registered and that makes sure that they're allowed to vote to have their say.

The fifth step is that the registered voters will go to the polling stations to cast their ballot and they get to choose who they want to be their MP in their constituency.

And the final stage is when the results are announced and that reveals which candidates won each constituency.

And it shows, as well, which party will control government because remember, they add up all of the winning seats across the UK and the party with the most seats, their leader will become the leader of the government.

Amazing job if you've got those six steps in order and managed to get a short summary, which was a bit like mine.

You've worked really hard on that one.

Let's summarise our learning for today then.

A general election in the UK is when Members of Parliament, or MPs, are elected per constituency.

Each constituency has roughly the same size electorate so that representation is fair and equal.

When a general election is called by the current Prime Minister, a chain of events is set in motion.

We have the dissolution of Parliament, candidate nominations, campaigning, new voter registration, polling day, and announcing the results.

The leader of the party with the most seats will become the Prime Minister, and that is the head of the UK Government.

You've done really, really well on that lesson today of looking at how general elections work.

I hope that you'll come back and I'll see you again soon.

Well done.