Territorial Representation — Single Member Constituency and Multi Member Constituency

Your Lok Sabha constituency sends exactly one MP to Parliament, no matter how many candidates stood or how the vote split between them. It was not always designed that way everywhere, and it did not have to be — some systems send several representatives from a single, larger territorial unit instead. This topic compares the two.

In two minutes

Territorial representation organises voters into geographic constituencies, and can do this either through a single-member constituency, which elects one representative per area, or a multi-member constituency, which elects several representatives from one larger area — each with different consequences for how closely seats match votes.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Political Science – I: Political Theory and Political Organisation on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.