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Pretty poor analogies and descriptions. Not to boast, but I'm a Pol. Sci. Major, and I found the following analogy to be useful in explaining the system, and this was taught to me by one of the top 10 Pol. Sci. Professors in this country.
Imagine you have a stable of about 10 horses, all of them belonging to one farmer. Across the other side of town, there is another farmer who owns 10 horses. The town consists of 100 people, all of whom would find it desirable to own a horse. One of each set of 10 horses have shorter legs than the other horses who are all exactly the same. The horses with shorter legs are less desirable and therefore they are worth less. However, only 20 people in the town want a horse with short legs. The following week, a goose arrives in town. The goose is wearing a hat.
Not the most simple analogy, granted, but it has stood up to a fair amount of scrutiny in our lectures and even national academic debate.