Not all terms for describing electoral systems originated in political science. Some were developed (or at least popularized) by professional reformers seeking to build popular movements because legislative adoption was too hard. One of those terms is “winner-take-all.” Here is what F.A. Hermens says about it in written comments at the 1985 World Congress of the International Political Science Association.
Professor Longley makes some very perceptive remarks about factors which affected the demand for electoral change and the people who shaped it […] After an interval the energetic Enid Lakeman took over and intensified the work [of Humphreys]. She presided over a significant terminological change: The P. R. Society became The Electoral Reform Society, and the cause of reform was identified with that of P. R. Similar terminological changes were stressed: Calling plurality voting the “first past the post” system became more widespread, as did “winner take all” for majority voting. Thus the notion was conveyed that the former was as simplistic as the children’s game and the latter a grab for all there was. It is sad as well as significant that this terminology became frequent in academic writings; even the cautionary quotation marks are now all but gone.
By “majority voting,” Hermens seems to mean the two-round systems that tended to predate PR adoption on the European continent. “Majority voting” was a lifelong theme in his work.
However, in our own time, “winner take all” gets used to describe plurality allocation but not Alternative Vote (instant runoff). This inverts what Hermens observed 39 years ago about majority allocation. However, sometimes “winner take all” does get used to describe any system without multi-mark ballots. [Shrug emoj.]
(The term multi-mark comes from a 2019 book by political scientist J.S. Maloy. It is useful for alluding to the current range of proposed ballot types.)
Early exchanges like the above are fascinating because they were taking place alongside formation of APSA’s organized sections. They were shaping the scientific discourse of the decades to come.
That the terminological move began in Britain is not surprising. I have suggested elsewhere (p. 28, fn. 7) that non-list approximations of PR (like STV and cumulative voting) were all but fated to win the advocacy battle due to long-established traditions of party government in Anglo democracies. In short, reform in said democracies is prone to “rage against the machine.” That’s because incumbents didn’t — and maybe still don’t — need it to prevent coalition raids and/or shore up party discipline. On that, I recommend two papers. The first contains a short section on why early party government might close off what I call an insulating PR adoption. (These papers also cover the problem of coalition raids under Hermens’ preferred “majority system.”)
More on party government. It is not surprising that Hermens piggybacks on Longley. The latter was a scholar of comparative legislatures. (Hat tip to Dan Smith at Penn.) Legislatures generally work more smoothly when organized by parties.
As for Lakeman, it also is not surprising that she led the terminological revolution. Lakeman (1903-95) would have experienced the Liberals’ replacement by Labour as one of the United Kingdom’s two leading parties. Her Wikipedia entry notes lifelong commitment to the Liberal (later Liberal Democratic) Party. Lakeman likely would have been looking for a way to raid the majors’ coalitions — possibly on transfers under STV. Here, it may be helpful to compare a 1990s U.S. Green or the present-day Forward Party.
Further reading: Malcolm Baalman on the origins of the term “first-past-the-post.”