An election is the procedure by which voters choose who holds an office, and a term is the fixed period that office is held before the next election. Terms, eligibility rules and the timing of elections are set by each country’s laws and constitution. PolisWatch records these mechanics — the office, the scheduled term length, and when a vote is due — as neutral facts, not as commentary on any outcome.
An electoral system is the set of rules that turns votes into seats or into a winner. The choice of system shapes results mechanically: the same votes can produce different seat counts under different rules. This is a design feature of how counting works, not evidence that one system is fairer than another; reasonable countries adopt different systems for different reasons.
Under first-past-the-post (FPTP), each district elects the single candidate with the most votes. It is simple and produces a clear local winner, and it tends to favor larger parties and concentrated support. Under proportional representation (PR), seats in a body are allocated to roughly match each party’s share of the vote, often across multi-member districts or party lists. PR tends to give smaller parties representation in proportion to their vote and frequently leads to multi-party coalitions. Many countries use mixed or other systems that combine elements of both.
PolisWatch describes which system a country uses and what it does, without ranking systems against one another. The composition that results — how seats are divided after an election — is reported from parliamentary records, and any change is shown with its date and source so the figures can be verified.