Liberal democratic elections can trace their lineage to ancient Athens and the Demos gathering in the town square but modern electoral system design is traced back to the mid to late 19th century in Western Europe. Until the First World War democratic parliaments were either elected using embryonic forms of list PR (much of Scandinavia and the Low Countries), the Two Round System (TRS)(France and Germany), or First Past The Post (FPTP) (Britain, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand). Australia was unique in her replacement of colonially inherited FPTP with the Alternative Vote (AV) in 1918, see The Alternative Vote in Australia.

The table below illustrates the spread and dispersion of electoral systems in nation states between 1945 and 1995 and is based on data from International IDEAs Handbook of Voter Turnout 1945-1997: A Global Report on Political Participation. This covers not merely 'democracies,' but all nation states that have experienced 'multi-party' competitive elections.

In 1945 80% of the 'democratic world' predominantly elected its parliaments by Proportional Representation (PR) methods. Most used forms of list PR but the Republic of Ireland and Malta used the Single Transferrable Vote (STV) form of PR. Only Britain, the U.S.A., Canada, and New Zealand elected their parliaments by FPTP. By 1950 Indian independence and the independence of two smaller Caribbean countries increased the number of FPTP systems to 6, but PR systems remained hegemonic with nearly three-quarters of the total. In 1950 Japan used Single Non-Transferrable Vote (SNTV) and Germany had adopted Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP) representation after the Second World War. In 1960, with increasing numbers of Caribbean and African states gaining independence from Britain, the number of FPTP cases rose, but PR still accounted for nearly two-thirds of all cases, while FPTP was merely a quarter.

The tide of colonial independence through the 1960's led many African states to experiment with multi-party elections, and the Anglophone African countries almost all used FPTP electoral systems. By 1970 a third of all countries were using single member district FPTP systems while the number using list PR had fallen to less than half. Between 1980 and 1995 the real growth systems were parallel systems and the French Two-Round system. By 1995 these two relatively rare systems made up nearly one-quarter of the electoral systems of over 150 nation states.

The Historical Evolution of Electoral System Use