How British election races are very different from American ones

The U.K. and U.S. have a lot in common — a shared language, history, democratic ideals and values. But when it comes to politics, us Brits do things very differently from our American friends.

Those differences are plain to see as election campaigns ramp up in the U.K. and U.S., ahead of the British vote on July 4 and the U.S. ballot on Nov. 5.

Of course, our political systems encompass different electoral procedures and processes, but there are other nuances to how the Brits and Americans do political races differently. Here are a handful of them:

By the time a presidential election takes place in the United States, the electorate will have already endured months of seemingly endless electioneering — with the entire election campaign process from candidacies and the campaign trail to the actual presidential election and inauguration taking up to two years.

In the U.K., the time frame between a prime minister calling a general election to the actual vote is just six weeks. American readers might, very reasonably, read that and weep.

With such a tight window in which to win voters’ support, the leaders of Britain’s political parties dash about the U.K. on campaign “battle buses” as they try to visit as many constituencies as possible to persuade voters to elect the local party candidate as a member of Parliament (MP).

The party that wins the most seats in the House of Commons (the British Parliament) usually forms the new government and its leader becomes prime minister. It sounds simple, and usually is, unless there’s a “hung parliament” in which no political party wins a majority of seats. In that case, the largest party can either form a minority government or enter into a coalition government of two or more parties.

Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London, told CNBC that there are many historical and structural differences between the countries when it comes to politics, and reasons why American campaigns are so much longer.

“The hugeness of the election in the U.S. is a function of the massive amounts of money at play to some degree. You do have to have these long periods of fundraising alongside campaigning and we just have completely different rules and structures around that.”

Money is certainly one of biggest differences between U.K. general elections and U.S. presidential elections. Stateside, billions of dollars can be fundraised…