Single Winner Systems
PR is often contrasted with single winner electoral systems. The most common of these is the winner-takes-all (or "first-past-the-post") system common in some countries of the former British empire, such as the United States, the UK, Canada and India. Most nations use the alternative systems, described as forms of "proportional representation" (see table below). Single Winner Systems tend to promote strongest two-party competition as it is in the US and in Canada. Effectively it eliminates smaller parties from parliament.
Read more about this topic: Proportional Representation
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—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)