JUST four years ago we voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to stick with the “first past the post” electoral system.

I prefer to call it the “Anglo-Saxon” system, which has been copied by most of the world’s democracies.

It has a simplicity, which everyone can understand: the candidate who gets the most votes wins.

This is in contrast to continental systems which attempt to allocate seats in the legislature to parties in proportion to the votes cast for them.

In the attempt to do this they count some voters’ preferences for a second time, or apply various algorithms such as the d’Hont formula.

It is much like a sausage machine: the votes go in at one end and the result comes out at the other, but most people have no idea how the result was arrived at.

No wonder we wisely determined to stick with our own clearly understood system.

I believe we made the right choice. There is a consequence, however. Our system punishes smaller parties and disproportionately rewards larger ones.

In a continental system a small party with, say, 15 per cent of the votes, could reasonably expect to get close to 15 per cent of the seats in the legislature, it would certainly have a presence and probably would have influence on a coalition government’s programme, with a handful of ministerial posts.

Under our system, however, such a party might not ordinarily expect to get any seats at all unless it concentrated its votes in particular electoral divisions to win in them.

Under our system a party that ran a close second in every division would still end up with nothing.

In contrast a party, under our system, with, say, 40 per cent of the votes might be able to govern with a majority well in excess of 50 per cent of the seats in Parliament.

This electoral reality has disciplined each of our main political parties to reach out and form a broad consensus.

In effect, each of our larger political parties is a coalition in itself, where members may differ on some things but agree about most things. This is in contrast to continental parties which define themselves much more narrowly, but come together to form governing coalitions after an election.

While we voted overwhelmingly to keep the voting system which favours the larger parties, if the opinion polls are correct we appear to be flirting with the continental habit of voting for a host of smaller ones.

The polls currently show only 66 per cent of voters dividing evenly between Labour and Conservative, while one-third of voters divide themselves between Nationalists, Greens, UKIP and LibDems.

It is a secret ballot, and a free democracy, so people can vote for whoever they choose, and nobody will ever know. If, however, they want to determine the outcome of the election, they may need to be more savvy.

Given the nature of our electoral system and the current polling data, there will either be a Labour or a Conservative prime minister on May 8.

If people want to determine which of these two outcomes it is, they will need to vote for either of the two main parties.

If the outcome between Miliband and Cameron really doesn’t matter to them, they may as well have a flutter on one of the smaller parties.

The key requirement for the Labour and Conservative parties, therefore, has to be to persuade the voters that, who governs Britain really does matter: that it makes a big difference whether Mr Cameron or Mr Miliband is in Downing Street.

If they are successful, then fewer voters will support the minor parties, as they concentrate their votes on determining the outcome of the main contest between Labour and Conservative.

Voters now have the luxury of four months watching us politicians try to persuade them that it really does matter. Joy.