Multi-party system
In political science, a multi-party system is a political system in which multiple political parties across the political spectrum run for national elections, and all have the capacity to gain control of government offices, separately or in coalition. Apart from one-party-dominant and two-party systems, multi-party systems tend to be more common in parliamentary systems than presidential systems and far more common in countries that use proportional representation compared to countries that use first-past-the-post elections. Several parties compete for power and all of them have a reasonable chance of forming government. In multi-party systems that use proportional representation, each party wins a number of legislative seats proportional to the number of votes it receives. Under first-past-the-post, the electorate is divided into a number of districts, each of which selects one person to fill one seat by a plurality of the vote.