The streets of Gorton and Denton will be much quieter this week after the flashmob of party activists has now departed. Last Thursday’s poll saw a historic win for the Greens and their first ever parliamentary by-election victory. This prompted widespread debate about the collapse of two-party politics and the suitability of Westminster’s First Past the Post voting system to cope with the new multi-party electoral reality.

The risk with by-elections is always overinterpretation. They are a snapshot of a single constituency, and voters can often behave differently in a one-off, mid-term by-election compared to a general election. However, the Gorton and Denton result reinforced a trend we have been seeing for over a year now: that voting intention is splitting between multiple parties in a way we’ve not seen before in British politics. This trend emerged in the 2024 General Election, where four parties received over 10 per cent of the vote for the first time ever. We now have five parties polling consistently at over 10 per cent.

This has profound implications for Westminster’s First Past the Post system, which is designed for a two-party system and cannot cope with multi-party politics. We saw this at the last general election, where it produced the most disproportional result in British history. The danger we now face is the risk of it behaving in an even more chaotic and distorting way at the next election. This is not just a concern held here at the ERS.

First Past the Post is ‘creaking at the seams’

After the Gorton and Denton result, the Institute for Government said the by-election showed the voting system is “creaking at the seams”, and it is time to “seriously consider whether our electoral system is fit for purpose”.

It warned: “If casting a vote starts to feel more like participating in a lottery than making a positive and principled decision, then voters are going to become ever more frustrated. This is dangerous. At the very least it will drive down turnout and engagement, at the worst it will undermine the legitimacy of the future governments it delivers.”

The visible wobbling of First Past the Post has prompted some supporters of the status quo to come to its defence in recent days, such as Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff. In a reasoned column, she laid out what she saw as the pros and cons of the system versus switching to a proportional one for Westminster, citing that she feels First Past the Post does a good job ‘keeping extremists out’ and that proportional representation would not remove some of the grubbier aspects of politics.

The ‘extremist’ point is an often cited one, but it skips over the fact that we have proportional systems in Scotland and Wales and no ‘extremist’ parties represented in either of those parliaments.

Opponents of PR will also often point to countries that have proportional systems but not particularly stable politics. It is not hard to find outliers, as pretty much every democratic country has some form of PR. They forget to mention the vast majority of relatively stable countries with PR, from Germany to New Zealand to the Republic of Ireland. Or that PR, far from being some exotic import, has been in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for decades. This is not something new to the UK, just SW1.

France is cited as a cautionary tale for electoral reform, although this is a red herring, as France doesn’t have a proportional system (i.e. one that aims to accurately represent how people voted) but effectively two rounds of First Past the Post. It may sound like a technical point, but it is important.

People clearly want a politics that better reflects their lives

The next question often asked is ‘what kind of governments would that produce?’ That should be up to the voters of this country. It should be simple: People vote, parliament represents that vote accurately, and politicians deal with the mandate they are given. The only bias the voting system should have is to the voter.

Meanwhile, public support for electoral reform is growing in this country, as the British Social Attitudes survey has recorded a consistent majority in support in recent years. There is a clear desire from the public for a politics that better reflects their lives. A good place to start is a parliament that properly reflects how they voted.

What is clear is that pressure will only continue to build on a Westminster voting system that simply cannot cope with the reality of multi-party politics. People are already voting as if we have PR, it’s time for a voting system that accurately represents that in Parliament.

Do you think parliament should represent how we vote?

Add your name to our call for proportional representation

As the year draws to an end, we’ve had a look through the stats to see which of our articles were the most popular with you, our supporters. So if you missed them the first time around, here are our top 5 most-read articles of 2025!

5. What’s wrong with First Past the Post?

From giving us unrepresentative parliaments, to causing chaos across local and national elections, it’s undeniable: our voting system is broken. First Past the Post needs to be scrapped – and replaced with the fair, proportional system of STV. In this article, we explain exactly why.

 

4. How would proportional representation work in the UK?

There are a variety of possible PR voting systems including the Single Transferable Vote (STV), which is our preferred electoral system. In this article, we ask what could voters expect to see if PR – specifically, the Single Transferable Vote – is introduced in the UK? 

3. How many votes did Labour get in 2024?

On election night in 2024, the headlines celebrated a Labour landslide. Crowds cheered, pundits predicted a bold new direction, and the idea of a strong majority government dominated the conversation. But as the confetti settled, a quieter question lingered: how many people actually voted for Labour, and what does that mean for the stability of the government?

2. How Trudeau missed the opportunity for electoral reform in Canada

After announcing his planned resignation in January this year, Trudeau said that failing to enact electoral reform was one of the biggest regrets of his nearly decade-long tenure as Prime Minister. In this article, our Senior Research Officer, Ian, questions how and why this failure occurred and what lessons might it have for us in the UK?

1. Latest YouGov poll shows multi-party voting breaking the voting system

If there were a general election tomorrow, who would form the next government? It sounds like a simple question if you have access to the latest polls. However, the reality is very different. In our most read article of the year, we argue that we should be able to look at a poll and have a reasonable sense of how the country’s votes would translate into seats.

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Britain’s First Past the Post system was designed for a two-party age. One that pretty much everyone agrees we no longer live in. Yet even when most people voted for one of the two big parties, we still saw MPs elected with some pretty fringe views.

Of course, one person’s disgruntled ranter is another’s principled truth-teller, and in a democracy everyone should be represented, as long as they support democracy itself. But, voters need to be able to make an informed choice. On top of this, MPs with fringe views should not be able to impose their values on the rest of us. How well does First Past the Post, a system that is supposed to prioritise the views of the majority, score on these two fronts?

One party, one candidate, no real choice

Fringe parties don’t need to run in elections to have MPs with extreme opinions in parliament. Each major party can only stand one candidate per seat. On paper, that sounds tidy. In practice, it means you’re stuck with whoever your local branch picks. You might support the party’s broad values, but you have no say over which version of those values you’re getting.

You could think you’re voting for a steady, mainstream representative, only to discover your MP is fixated on a single issue, out of touch with your priorities, or pushing ideas that most people in your community reject.

There’s no safety valve, no way to choose between candidates within your preferred party – beyond joining a party and devoting all your evenings to internal selection battles. You either back them, or you don’t vote for the party at all. That’s how First Past the Post locks voters in and lets people with fringe views slip in through the cracks.

Power without popular support

Since 1931, every single-party government has been formed with under half the votes cast. In 2024, Labour won a landslide with just over a third of the public behind it. That means millions of votes go unheard, and the winners don’t need to speak for the country as a whole, just for the sliver of it that happens to be concentrated in the right seats.

But First Past the Post doesn’t care how narrow or extreme a party’s agendas is for them to benefit. They don’t have to win over most of us; they just need to squeeze through in enough key constituencies. Under First Past the Post, power comes from geography, not genuine support.

As more parties become serious contenders, the vote share needed to get elected drops. With three parties level pegging in a constituency the winner needs just over a third of the vote, with four it’s just over a quarter. A recent poll has placed 5 parties over 15% in the polls.

Parties with an agenda the majority reject can win not because most people agree with them, but because enough others disagree with each other. It’s voters that get crushed under the landslide.

Real representation, real choice

Voters shouldn’t have a take it or leave it choice. The Single Transferable Vote (STV) system of proportional representation changes this completely. Instead of one candidate per party, you can choose between several.

That means if your preferred party puts up someone who doesn’t speak for you, you can back another candidate who does, without wasting your vote. It’s also proportional, so parties only get as many seats as their support warrants. It means that extremists can’t sneak in on a split vote. To win under STV, you need broad support, not a narrow slice of it.

First Past the Post hands power to the few. STV puts power back in the hands of voters. It encourages cooperation, rewards moderation, and ensures that every community has a genuine choice.

If we want a democracy that reflects who we are, not just who shouts loudest, it’s time to move to the Single Transferable Vote.

Add your name to our call for a fair, proportional voting system

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Electoral reform took centre stage, literally, at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool this year. Andy Burnham was the lead speaker at the rally calling for reform of Westminster’s voting system, hosted by colleagues in the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform and Labour for a New Democracy.

The drama surrounding the Greater Manchester Mayor’s perceived challenge to Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the government’s performance meant there was a thronging press pack to witness his speech calling for a reset of politics at Westminster, with a proportional voting system at its heart. He told the packed auditorium in Liverpool’s ACC:

“There is nothing more unstoppable than an idea whose time has come – and PR’s time has come.”

“There’s nothing more unstoppable than an idea whose time has come – and PR’s time has come.”

💬 @AndyBurnhamGM

🌹 #Labour4PR #Lab25 pic.twitter.com/RNaYjikrY7

— LCER (@Labour4PR) September 28, 2025

Outside the rally, proportional representation and electoral reform were frequent topics throughout the conference. This year, the ERS was in Liverpool discussing these issues with senior journalists and politicians, as well as giving briefings on democratic reform.

Multiparty politics and PR were frequent topics of discussion

The uniquely fractured state of British polling put a particular spotlight on electoral reform, as the multiparty nature of how the public is voting is straining the two-party First Past the Post system. It was pointed out that five parties are now polling at or around 10% of the vote, making First Past the Post highly volatile, as seen in the General and Local Elections.

The fluctuating polls have fuelled growing interest in how the 2026 elections will play out, where voters will cast ballots under three different systems: the proportional Additional Member System (AMS) and Closed List systems in Holyrood and the Senedd respectively, and First Past the Post in English local elections.

There was also significant focus on the potential for electoral reform in the government’s forthcoming Devolution and Elections Bills. In the former, Labour intends to roll back First Past the Post for mayoral and police commissioner elections and replace it with the preferential Supplementary Vote (SV).

The epiphany that led Andy Burnham to support PR

At an IPPR event on devolution, Andy Burnham, who sat on the panel, described how standing under SV for the first time in the mayoral elections, after years as an MP under First Past the Post, converted him to the cause of PR.

He said that for the first time he had to appeal to voters beyond Labour’s narrow base to win second-preference votes from Green and Liberal Democrat supporters. This, he said, encouraged a more collaborative approach to politics that he carried into Manchester City Hall. Mr Burnham told the audience that he’d found the public wanted political parties to work together to get things done, rather than be constantly at odds with each other.

Meanwhile, the new Housing Minister, Steve Reed, who holds the democratic reform brief, was questioned at another IPPR event about his plans for the Elections Bill. The Bill promises to expand the franchise to 16-year-olds across the UK, introduce automated voter registration (AVR), expand the forms of ID accepted at polling stations, and tighten transparency rules around political finance.

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The National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) has, this week, published the latest findings from their British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey. The survey has been conducted almost every year since its launch in 1983 and has been tracking British public opinion on a whole range of issues over the last four decades.

The latest BSA findings show that a clear majority of the population support a change to Westminster’s broken voting system – as 60% of the British public now support proportional representation.

This rise in support is no surprise. For too long, First Past the Post has distorted democracy and the 2024 general election gave us the least representative parliament in British history. This means that the way the British public is represented in Westminster looks nothing like how people actually voted.

How is this support for proportional representation measured?

Since 1983, the following BSA question about electoral reform has been asked over twenty times:

Some people say we should change the voting system for general elections to the UK House of Commons to allow smaller political parties to get a fair share of MPs.

Others say that we should keep the voting system for the House of Commons as it is to produce effective government.

Which view comes closer to your own?

We don’t agree with the view that First Past The Post (FPTP), the current voting system for UK general elections, always produces effective government. However, this is an argument often made by supporters of FPTP and is used here to produce a balanced question, alongside the pro-Proportional Representation (PR) argument that changing to such a system would produce fairer electoral outcomes.

One of the strengths of the BSA data is that the same question has been asked many times over the years, so we can be confident that any fluctuations in results reflect real changes in British public opinion.

This question on electoral reform was included in the most recent BSA survey and the data, collected in September and October 2024, features in a new BSA report chapter titled ‘Britain’s Democracy: A Health Check’, co-authored by Professor Sir John Curtice.

The question was also included in the previous BSA survey, conducted in 2023. Data from that survey revealed that support for changing to a more proportional voting system had reached a record high of 53%.

Three fifths of the public support changing the voting system

The new data, from late-2024, reveals another significant leap in support for PR. Fully three-fifths (60%) of the British public now support changing the voting system for UK general elections. Just 36% want to keep the current voting system, a record low.

As Professor Curtice and his co-authors write:

‘The heavily disproportional outcome of the 2024 election appears to have created – for the time being at least – a public that, irrespective of partisanship, is questioning the current electoral system to an unprecedented degree’.

Voters across the political spectrum are in favour of switching to PR

As reflected in the above quote, another notable aspect of the latest data is how there is majority support for changing to a proportional voting system among the supporters of each of the five main Great Britain-wide political parties: Labour; Conservatives; Reform UK; Liberal Democrats; and the Green Party.

As we noted in a previous blog, one of the key reasons why support for PR first rose above 50% in the BSA series, in data collected in autumn 2021, was a dramatic shift in the views of Labour Party supporters. For the first time in the series, more Labour supporters were in favour of changing the system, rather than keeping the status quo.

Despite Labour winning a landslide majority under FPTP at the general election of 2024, support for PR among Labour supporters remains strong in the latest data, with a clear majority (55%) wanting to see electoral reform. This represents only a five-point fall on the level of support among Labour supporters recorded prior to the 2024 general election.

Pro-PR sentiment remains strong among supporters of the three parties outside of the traditional ‘big two’ parties, with majorities in favour of PR among Green Party supporters (90%); Reform UK supporters (78%); and Liberal Democrats supporters (56%).

The most striking change in this year’s data concerns supporters of the Conservative Party. Historically, this group has been the least in favour of changing to a PR voting system. This year’s data, however, reveals a doubling in support for PR among this group, from just under a quarter (24%) in 2023 to just over a half (52%) in 2024.

The pressure to change the system is mounting

With support for PR reaching a record high and that support being so widespread among voters across the political spectrum, pressure continues to build on FPTP; a system that is out of time and no longer fit for purpose in the era of multi-party politics. In the words of the BSA report’s authors:

‘Support for retaining the single-member plurality system [FPTP]…has reached a new low’.

Are you in the majority who want reform?

Add your name to our call for proportional representation in the UK →

Voting systems are the methods we use to elect representatives, like MPs or local councillors. They lay out rules about the way votes are cast and counted. 

Which system do we use in general elections in the UK?

In Britain, we use the First Past the Post voting system for general elections for Westminster. In general elections, people across the UK vote to elect a representative for their local area to the House of Commons. Winning candidates become MPs. 

How does First Past the Post work?

When voting under First Past the Post, you’ll receive one ballot paper.   

Only one MP can represent each constituency, and parties can only have one candidate for you to choose from per constituency. You get one vote, and must put an ‘X’ next to your single chosen candidate on a ballot paper.  

The winner is whichever candidate receives more votes than any other candidate. The rest of the candidates don’t get a place in Parliament –  it’s a winner-takes-all system. In fact, under First Past the Post, a candidate could win by just a single vote. 

If enough MPs from a single party secure a majority of the 650 seats across the UK, they then are able to form a government.  

Unfortunately, this system means that votes end up ‘wasted’, because votes for losing candidates in each seat don’t impact the election result. Shockingly, this can apply to millions of voters: in the 2024 General Election, 57.8% of votes were cast for candidates that weren’t elected.  

Westminster’s broken system delivers unfair results

A real problem with First Past the Post is that it delivers parliaments which are not proportional. This means we get parliaments where the seats don’t closely match votes cast. And that means that thousands of people end up without someone representing their interests in Parliament.  

To understand how this happens, it can be useful to think back to past election results. 

In the 2024 General Election, in the constituency of Godalming & Ash, 23,293 people voted for the winning Conservative candidate. As they received the single highest number of votes, they won the election because of the rules of First Past the Post. 

But 22,402 people voted for the second-place candidate. 9,001 voters combined voted for the other candidates. That’s 31,403 people who did not vote for the winning candidate – over half of all voters in the constituency – but whose votes made no difference to the results of the election. 

Those 31,403 voices are now not reflected in the make-up of Parliament. 

Under First Past the Post, seats simply don’t match votes. 

First Past the Post makes voters reluctant to vote with their hearts

Many voters who understand that First Past the Post is a winner-takes-all system will turn to ‘tactical voting’.  This is when you vote for a candidate other than your preferred candidate, to reduce the chance of your least favourite candidate from winning.
There are even websites that will tell voters whether they should vote tactically or not in order to keep out a particular party.  

This isn’t how it should be. A fair voting system should empower us to vote with our hearts for candidates that we actually want to win. Instead, we’re forced to try to make a broken system work for us by voting tactically. 

What is the alternative to First Past the Post?

Unfair results and disempowered voters are just two of several problems with Britain’s voting system. 

To address them, we need a system that delivers proportional representation: the idea that the seats in parliament should be in proportion to the votes cast.  

That’s why we’re campaigning for Westminster elections to adopt the Single Transferable Vote, a system which achieves proportional representation. We’d have a parliament that more accurately matches the make-up of votes cast, and voters wouldn’t feel forced to make tactical decisions. 

Do you think it’s time for a fair voting system? Add your name.

Last week saw MPs warning that our current Parliament “is the one that least represents how the country voted of any in history”, as the government came under increasing pressure to bring in a fairer proportional electoral system for Westminster elections. The calls came as the Commons debated on Thursday how the First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system is failing voters after it produced the most disproportional Parliament in British history at the last election.  

For instance, Labour received two thirds of the seats (63%) on just a third of the vote share (34%), whereas the Greens and Reform received just over 1% of the seats in Parliament for their more than 20% of the vote share combined. 

The debate in Parliament on Thursday comes after the Commons voted in favour of PR for the first time ever in December following the first reading of a 10-minute Rule Bill put forward by Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Olney. The backbench business debate last week saw MPs from Labour, the Lib Dems, Reform UK and the Greens all back a move to Proportional Representation (PR) for Westminster, with cross-party calls for the Government to launch an independent commission to look at the flaws in FPTP and recommend a proportional system for Westminster elections that would better reflect the way the British people voted. 

MPs from across the political spectrum united behind PR 

During the debate, Sarah Olney, warned that trust in British politics is already a record lows and that situation was unlikely to improve if voters continued to get parliaments that don’t accurately represent how the country voted.

She said: “Trust in politics will not improve if the public keep getting parliaments that don’t represent the balance of votes cast and this parliament is the one that least represents how the country voted of any in history.

“Increasing levels of disengagement threaten our ability to respond both to immediate challenges and to long-term issues.”

Sarah Olney’s calls were backed by Labour MPs, who also said that the current voting system was struggling to represent the multiparty reality of the way the electorate is now voting.

Luke Akehurst, Labour MP for Durham North, told the chamber: “The current fracturing of the party system with five parties getting more than 5% of the vote – more parties than that in Scotland and Wales – is probably here to stay that means there are more marginal seats and more three or even four-cornered fights for marginal seats and more members elected to parliament on relatively low vote shares by historical standards.

“It [the current voting system] is trying to pour a multi-party system into an electoral system designed for two parties. So it inevitably leads to more and more disproportional results where the relationship between vote share and number of seats completely breaks down…

“We should design an electoral system based not on whether it benefits us as individual politicians or our own parties at a specific moment, but on whether it delivers just and equitable outcomes that can logically be defended.”

FPTP trying to pour a multi-party voting into system designed for two parties

Fellow Labour MP and Chair of The APPG for Fair Elections, Alex Sobel, also warned of the impact the disproportional parliaments is producing was having on how voters view politics.

He said: “People can tell when they’re being ignored they can also smell unfairness a mile away. FPTP means people’s votes are not equal in value.” 

Later in the debate he added: “We do need to further consider a commission to look at the failures in our electoral system and to look at whether we should move to a more proportional system.”

The debate saw MPs from across the political spectrum back calls for PR, with Reform UK’s Richard Tice describing how the mismatch in votes and seats that his party and the Greens received was damaging faith in the political system.

He said: “Trust in politics is so important for a functioning democracy but sadly, based on the statistics and the data, trust is collapsing.”

Green MP Siân Berry echoed the sentiments of many MPs in the chamber by saying the UK had to take action to arrest the falling trust in democratic institutions seen globally, with addressing the unfair electoral system a key plank of that effort.

She said: “We are in a world characterised by democratic decline and falling trust in institutions. Without public belief in making change through democratic debate, political pluralism and representation from people who listen to them we have a society vulnerable to being exploited by populist division and tyranny and FPTP adds to these risks.”

As well as being the most disproportional election in history, meaning there was the biggest gap between the votes parties won and the seats they received in Parliament, the general election saw a number of other electoral firsts. 2024 was the first time four parties got over 10% of the vote, and first time five parties got over 5%.

Research by the Electoral Reform Society also shows it was the most volatile election since the 1930s, with parties’ vote share moving around at a rate unprecedented in modern times.

MPs have woken up to the elephant in the room 

What the debate in parliament showed was that many MPs have now woken up to the elephant in the room that is the Westminster voting system. The out-of-date two-party system is struggling with our new multi-party reality and is delivering a distorted parliament that least represents how the country voted of any in history.

Meanwhile, trust in politics is at a record low so the government must look at ways to make sure the next election, and all those that follow, better reflects how people voted with seats in parliament. The only bias a voting system should have is towards the voters. 

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Proportional Representation (PR) is the idea that seats in parliament should closely match votes cast in an election.  A system that’s perfectly proportional would mean that if a political party received one third of the votes, they could then expect one third of the seats in parliament. 

At present, in UK general elections, we don’t use a proportional system for voting MPs into the House of Commons. Instead, we use the First Past the Post (FPTP) system, where the number of MPs a party gets is often very different to the party’s share of votes.  

There are a variety of possible PR voting systems including the Single Transferable Vote (STV), which is our preferred electoral system. What could voters expect to see if PR – specifically, the Single Transferable Vote – is introduced in the UK? 

Parliament would be more proportional  

With proportional representation our parliament would look different, because parties’ seat share would much more closely match their vote share. 

In the case of the 2024 UK General Election, which was the most disproportional in history, 57.8% of voters were unrepresented as they voted for a candidate that didn’t get elected.  

This happened because of the FPTP system where a successful candidate can win by as little as one vote, and where geography plays a decisive role: if votes happen to be spread out over a geographical area rather than being highly concentrated, then chances are that many of those votes will be wasted, resulting in little parliamentary representation 

Under PR, you could expect to see parliaments which more accurately reflect votes cast in a general election. For a visual illustration, our modelling in the wake of the 2024 General Election paints a picture of how parliament might have looked if we had used different proportional electoral systems, including STV.

Our ballot papers would be different 

If Britain had proportional representation, the way we vote, and the ways those votes are counted, would be somewhat different. 

For the most part, the process of voting would be similar to what we all know and expect: going to the polling station on election day and casting your vote with a pencil on a piece of paper.  

However, voting would be slightly different under different types of proportional system. For example, under STV, rather than placing an ‘X’ next to one candidate, you would numerically rank candidates in order of preference. You would be able to rank as many or as few candidates as you like. 

There would then be a number of rounds of vote counting in order to identify the winners for each constituency. 

Constituencies would have more than one representative 

If the UK had proportional representation, our constituencies might look different. 

Assuming that STV is the system being used, the UK would have somewhat larger constituencies. Where we might currently have three constituencies each electing one MP, there may be cases where there’s one large constituency which elects three MPs.  

Ireland and Malta both use STV for their national elections. In Ireland, constituencies have from 3 to 5 seats. In Malta, constituencies have 5 seats. 

The key takeaway is that under a proportional system, voters would be represented by more than one MP, making it much more likely that that they will be represented by at least one candidate or party that they voted for.   

Coalition or single-party majority? It depends on the voters 

Some people associate PR with coalitions, rather than single-party majority governments. It’s true that PR can lead to coalitions, but it’s not true that that’s an inevitability.  

In Scotland, where a form of PR called the Additional Member System (AMS) is used, the SNP formed a majority in 2011.  

New Zealand also uses AMS, and in 2020 the Labour Party secured enough votes to form a single-party majority. They opted instead for a ‘cooperation’ agreement with the Green party, favouring a more collaborative form of government.   

Ultimately, though, it depends on the voters. Under PR, when you do end up with a single-party majority, it’s because a majority of people, or close to a majority, voted for that party, rather than the FPTP system unfairly delivering a majority without the numbers to back it up. 

On the other hand, if no party is popular enough to rule alone, then that’s because they weren’t popular with enough voters.  

Either way, coalition or majority, the result is because of the will of the people, not an unfair quirk of the system.

Countries around the world

Hypotheticals aside, many countries around the world do use PR. In fact, it’s the most popular form of democracy in the world.  

Looking at the systems of other countries can provide some insight into how proportional representation can and does work in practice.  

For example, as mentioned above, Ireland uses the Single Transferable Vote. In 2020, we spoke to Irish voters about their experiences of voting under STV. They told us that the system means that ‘your vote matters, no matter where you live in the country’, and that they felt that political parties were able to work together rather than lean into divisions. 

It’s time for fair votes for our general elections 

The exact mechanics of Proportional Representation, if it’s implemented in Britain, will require careful thought and planning. That’s true of any political reform.

But with the British public seeing disproportional election results time and time again, and with polling in December 2024 showing 44% of the public want to change to a proportional voting system, one thing is clear: it’s time to scrap first past the post and adopt PR.

You can strengthen our campaign for Proportional Representation

Members support our work in parliament, in the press and online – making the case, and backing it up – for how we can fix Westminster’s broken system.  

Support our work, become an ERS member today

As the year draws to an end, we’ve had a look through the stats to see which of our articles were the most popular with you, our supporters. So if you missed them the first time around, here are our top 5 most-read articles of 2024!

5. It should be a scandal that small changes in the vote result in outsize changes in Parliament

Just before the vote in July, both the Times and the Financial Times reported that in the upcoming election, small swings in the vote would likely have a very large impact on the results of the General Election.

In light of this, our Head of Digital, Doug Cowan, argued that the voters deserve a fair, predictable and proportional voting system to determine who gets elected.

4. ERS reveals constituencies with the most potential missing voters – is yours on the list?

Analysis by the Electoral Reform Society revealed that an estimated 8.2 million eligible voters are missing from the electoral register in England, Scotland and Wales. In this article, you can use our interactive map to see how many people are missing in your constituency.

3. What does a super-majority mean and is it something we should worry about?

In response to comments made by Grant Shapps in the lead up to the election on the supposed dangers of a Labour ‘super-majority’, we wrote about the important fact missed in this discussion – that you don’t need a big majority of support in the public to win a big majority of MPs. It’s one of the problems with the way we elect MPs to Westminster.

2. Four striking general election outcomes showing the chaos of First Past the Post

The 2024 General Election was the most disproportional election in British History, and once again failed to reflect the view of the voters.

Our Research Officer, Ian,  highlighted four notable things from our analysis of the general election results that you might have missed.

1. How the 2024 election could have looked with proportional representation

Under proportional voting systems, seats would more closely match the votes we cast, and could end the scourge of millions feeling unrepresented and ignored.

Our team crunched the numbers and calculated how this election’s results might have looked if the UK voted under a different, fairer system. One that better aligns with the actual votes cast by the public.

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Every six months or so, since November 2019, the pollster YouGov have been asking the British public the following question regarding electoral reform.

Some people support a change in the British voting system to proportional representation, where the number of MPs a party wins more closely reflects the share of the vote they receive.

Other people support retaining our present voting system, First Past the Post, which is more likely to give one party an overall majority in the House of Commons and avoid a hung parliament.

Which voting system would you prefer?

YouGov asked this question most recently on 4 December 2024, which is the first time it has been asked since the general election of July 2024, which saw the most disproportional UK general election result in history

The results of YouGov’s latest poll reveal that support for changing to a proportional representation system continues to run at levels seen prior to the general election. Indeed, the gap of 21 percentage points between those indicating support for proportional representation (44%) and those wanting to retain First Past the Post (23%) is the biggest in any of the eleven surveys in which YouGov have asked the question, since November 2019. This is the first time in the series that fewer than a quarter of people have backed retaining First Past the Post.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, backing for proportional representation is strongest among supporters of parties that have traditionally found it hard to translate votes in the country into MPs in the House of Commons. For example, 62% of people who voted for Reform UK at the 2024 general election back a move to PR, while just 17% favour sticking with First Past The Post. At the general election, Reform UK received 14% of votes but under 1% of MPs.

The Liberal Democrats have historically suffered a similar fate to Reform under First Past The Post, with their share of seats lagging behind their share of votes. However, at the 2024 general election they managed to nearly overcome this, winning 11% of MPs, from 12% of the public’s votes. Despite this, support for electoral reform among Liberal Democrat voters has remained at exactly the same high level as in January 2024, with 58% favouring a move to proportional representation and only 22% wanting to stick with First Past the Post. This continued strong support for proportional representation among Liberal Democrat voters matches that of Liberal Democrat MPs in parliament, with the House of Commons recently voting in favour of Sarah Olney MP’s 10-minute rule bill proposing the introduction of proportional representation for UK general elections.

Labour voters still back proportional representation

Perhaps most striking, however, is the continued strong support for proportional representation among people who voted for Labour at the 2024 general election. Despite the party they voted for winning a landslide victory under First Past the Post, Labour voters back a move to proportional representation over retaining First Past the Post by two to one, with 48% in favour of electoral reform and just 24% in favour of the status quo.

Data from the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey, in 2021 and 2023, found majority support for a change to a proportional representation system for the first time since the BSA question on electoral reform was first asked in 1986. One of the key drivers in proportional representation achieving majority support in the BSA survey, in both 2021 and 2023, was a big shift in the views of Labour supporters, with them strongly favouring proportional representation over First Past the Post in both years.  Prior to 2021, Labour supporters had always favoured First Past the Post. When the next BSA data on electoral reform are published it will be fascinating to see whether it echoes those of the most recent YouGov data, in showing support for proportional representation among Labour voters remaining strong despite the party winning a landslide due to First Past the Post in July 2024.

If that is the case, it may become increasingly hard for the Labour leadership to maintain their position of opposition to PR. Labour conference voted in favour of a move to proportional representation in 2022, the two largest Labour-affiliated trade unions, Unison and Unite both back it, as do many Labour MPs. And now, in poll after poll, it is clear the public are tired of First Past the Post. It’s time for Labour’s leadership to catch up.