Electoral Systems UK

This covers most of Topic 3 Elections and Referendums for Edexcel Paper 1: UK Politics

Hate teaching Electoral Systems?
I used to as well- no matter how I taught them- students could never remember the differences and strengths and weaknesses.

Edexcel Politics ALevel can be used for any spec
Please note: I have updated this resource in summer 2026 with the changes from the elections Act 2022 updated with changes from the Labour government.

This resource was created after 10 years of frustration! It is designed to let students explore the different systems for themselves- engaging with the ballot forms and trying to work out how they work and the strengths and weaknesses for themselves. When I used this for the first time last year the students remembered the systems so much better than ever before and were able to evaluate them really well.

Accompanying powerpoint and worksheets to go with the interactive ballot activity and card sort.

This resource covers 10-15 hours of teaching on electoral systems (depending how much exposition you do and how much time you give them for the referendums tasks) and referendums including the independent tasks a detailed evaluation of FPTP and a comparison to other electoral systems as a legacy of the Jenkins commission.

Please note: The example ballots with silly made up names or random political philosophers names on is for the class voting task to introduce the systems- I then calculated winners on the board showing them how this was done (except for STV which is just meh!) The card sort also has some ballot forms but these are actual ones rather than ones I made up. This is to match the ballot form to the descriptive cards- if you get the students to do the first task above first- they do this really well. The PP has instructions for the card sort- students tend to do it better if they tackle the cards in the colour order suggested on the slide.

It covers most of the Elections topic and guided independent research tasks on the Referendums case studies needed for potential exam questions- I have guided the research sheets around key debates e.g. whether referendums were held for political purposes or democratic purposes.
All videos except one are embedded for your convenience- the other was too large!

Also includes lots of retrieval tasks to embed/ consolidate knowledge and understanding.

If you have any questions about the resource- email me but I have tried to make the powerpoint guidance as clear as possible.

Please note: I have updated this resource in summer 2026 with the changes from the elections Act 2022 updated with changes from the Labour government.

Includes word docs, powerpoints which are editable plus PDF conversions for quick printing. PNG files are for illustrative purposes only.