The elections held across the UK on 7 May 2026 produced a series of dramatic outcomes, and the political ramifications of those results are still playing out.

Different areas of Britain vote differently, and each year’s local elections happen in different parts of the country. If a party does well in the local elections, it might just be that elections were happening in areas where their supporters are more likely to live.

So, in my last article, I suggested keeping an eye on two sets of data produced by separate academics after the English local election results were in. Both datasets have been running for around 45 years, and both seek to do the same thing – estimate the vote share each party might have got if local elections had taken place across the whole of Britain, rather than just in certain parts of it.

The Projected National Share (PNS) is produced by Professor Sir John Curtice for the BBC and the National Equivalent Vote (NEV) is produced by Professors Rallings and Thrasher for Sky News.

We expected that both measures would indicate that UK public opinion is now unprecedentedly fragmented, with support spread more thinly across more parties than ever before. This is exactly what happened.

Professor Sir John Curtice’s Projected National Share

The results of the May 2026 PNS are as follows:

Reform UK: 26%
Greens: 18%
Conservatives: 17%
Labour: 17%
Liberal Democrats: 16%
Others: 6%

May 2025’s PNS was the first in which five parties scored over 10%. One year on and five parties have scored over 15%.

Other things to note are as follows:

• The 26% received by Reform UK is the lowest recorded by any largest party in the history of the PNS series. The previous lowest was the 28% recorded by both Labour and the Conservatives, in May 2019.
• It is the first time in the history of the PNS that neither Labour nor the Conservatives feature in the top two parties. The Greens are in second place, with 18%.
• There is only 10-points between the first placed party (Reform UK: 26%) and the fifth-placed party (Liberal Democrats: 16%).

Although not showing quite as fragmented a picture as the PNS, the NEV still breaks a number of records.

Rallings and Thrasher’s National Equivalent Vote

The results of May 2025’s NEV are as follows:

Reform UK: 27%
Conservatives: 20%
Labour: 15%
Greens: 14%
Liberal Democrats: 14%
Others: 10%

Things to note are as follows:

• The 27% received by Reform UK is the lowest recorded by any largest party in the history of the NEV series. The previous lowest was the 29% recorded by Labour, in May 2013.
• It is the first time in the history of the NEV that five parties received more than 10% of votes.
• There is only 13-points between the first placed party (Reform UK: 27%) and the fifth-placed parties (Greens: 14%; Liberal Democrats: 14%).

The different order of the parties in the NEV and PNS just shows the impact a few percentage points has when the parties are so close together. These data sets don’t mean that, for instance, Reform UK would win 26% or 27% of MPs in a UK general election. With First Past the Post it’s really complicated for voters to work out how their votes will translate into representation.

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Random results from England’s local elections

There are numerous examples of this multi-party politics playing out in individual council elections across England, with seat after seat seeing the largest party receiving the support of barely a third of local voters. With these sorts of voting patterns, First Past the Post throws out some pretty random and bizarre results, making it hard for voters to know how votes will tranlate to representation in their area. A flavour from last week’s local elections are below:

• Sefton = Lab majority (55% of seats), with 29% of votes*
• Calderdale = Reform UK majority (63% of seats), with 31% of votes
• East Surrey = Lib Dem majority (56% of seats), with 28% of votes
• Bexley = Conservative majority (64% of seats), with 33% of votes
• Lewisham = Green majority (74% of seats), with 42% of votes

Many councillors are elected in wards where each voter has as many votes as there are positions to be filled. When some voters have 2 votes and others 3, and some decide to not cast all their votes as well, you can’t simply add up all the votes to calculate the vote shares. For councils with wards that elect more than one councillor (multi-member wards), we have calculated vote shares by using the number of votes for each party’s best-placed candidate in each ward. This is the approach taken by local election experts Professors Rallings & Thrasher of The Elections Centre, a major resource for local election data in the UK.

Now that the elections are over, we will continue to keep a close eye on the opinion polls and see where our multi-party politics heads next.

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Amid all the political drama over the weekend, with the fallout from the elections and then calls on the Prime Minister to resign, there was also a significant development in the campaign for proportional representation.

On Sunday, members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) voted decisively to reject Westminster’s failing First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system and back a move to proportional representation, marking a historic shift for the Labour-affiliated union.

This was another significant step in the campaign for proportional representation. Not only as CWU is a large union in its own right, but it is also one of the influential ‘big five’ unions affiliated to the Labour Party. This means it has an official link to Labour and role in its policy making processes.

Delegates overwhelmingly passed a motion at the union’s annual conference in Bournemouth warning that “FPTP is producing unrepresentative results and is at crisis point,” also describing it as “unsustainable and dangerous”.

The union cited the government’s move to scrap FPTP for mayoral elections and urged that “there has never been a clearer need to change the First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system in Westminster too.”

FPTP is ‘unstable, dangerous and at crisis point’

The motion called on the union to “reject First Past the Post and support the introduction of a form of Proportional Representation that maintains the constituency link and in which all votes count equally and seats match votes.”

It also called for the government to hold an “independent Commission for Electoral Reform”.

There was an animated debate in the conference hall, which ended with the Union’s executive committee outlining its support for ditching FPTP in favour of PR, and then a large majority of delegates voting in favour.

We were down in Bournemouth with Politics for the Many (which is supported by the ERS), running a stall and talking to delegates about the case for PR.

Following the vote, Ed Baldwin a delegate from the CWU Kent Invicta Branch and a political officer for the south east region who proposed the motion, said:

“First Past the Post no longer reflects those we represent and is producing results that do not match the will of the people.

“The Labour government has already accepted it is broken by scrapping it for mayoral elections. If it distorts democracy there, then it distorts democracy at Westminster too.

“This motion is a demand for fairness, representation and a democracy that works, and CWU has never been afraid to challenge systems that fail working people. It is time for our union to lead and help make proportional representation a reality.”

CWU vote represents a sea change in Labour-affiliated unions on PR

The move highlights the huge shift in the trade union and Labour movement in recent years as CWU becomes the eighth of the 11 Labour-affiliated unions to make electoral reform its official policy. Of the remaining unions, two (Community and NUM) do not have a policy on electoral reform and GMB, also considered one of the big five, is currently opposed.

CWU’s vote comes after Unite, Unison and Usdaw have all voted to back electoral reform in recent years. Sunday’s vote shows how support for ditching First Past the Post has become the overwhelming position in the Labour-affiliated trade union movement.

The impact of growing trade union support for electoral reform has already been seen in the Labour Party as the affiliate unions were key to the passing of the 2022 conference motion supporting the move to proportional representation.

Nancy Platts, Coordinator of the Politics for the Many, the trade union campaign for PR, hailed the vote, saying:

“Trade unionists have always been at the forefront of the fight for fairness and democracy, which is why CWU delegates voted decisively to reject the failing First Past the Post system and back electoral reform.

“It is clear that we cannot continue with a voting system that ignores millions of votes and is producing more and more chaotic results that do not represent the way people have voted.

“CWU’s vote demonstrates how support for proportional representation is now the overwhelming position of the Labour-affiliated unions, with Unite, Unison and Usdaw moving to back electoral reform in recent years.

“This marks a sea change in the Labour movement. The party’s politicians at Westminster now need to listen to these collective voices and act to make electoral reform a reality.”

Find out more about Politics for the Many, the trade union campaign for proportional representation

Find out more about Politics for the Many

While polling can give us an idea of what the public thinks, there is nothing like real votes to test the mood of the country. With elections across large areas of England, plus Scotland and Wales tomorrow, we’ll finally get some real votes to compare recent polling against. While the results in Scotland and Wales will be roughly in line with party vote shares, as they use voting systems that reflect how people vote, local council elections in England are a different story.

England’s First Past The Post (FPTP) voting system is likely to deliver numerous highly disproportional results, with parties possibly taking control of councils where they didn’t win the most votes and councillors elected on tiny vote shares. First Past the Post simply cannot cope with this new reality of multi-party politics.

As can be seen below, we have hit another milestone in terms of electoral fragmentation, with no fewer than five parties separated by just 14.2 percentage points in our April polling averages data – a new record.

Scroll down to see the polling for April 2026

First Past The Post is designed for a two-party environment. When people express their political preferences in a wider variety of ways the system starts to splutter and breakdown, producing increasingly chaotic outcomes that do not properly reflect how people have voted. We will be watching closely as the English local elections results come in and will report back on what happens.

Two sets of numbers to keep an eye on in the aftermath of the English local elections are the Projected National Share (PNS) produced by Professor Sir John Curtice, for the BBC and the National Equivalent Vote (NEV) produced by Professors Rallings and Thrasher, for Sky News.

Both the PNS and the NEV have been published every year for around the last 45 years. What these data attempt to do, via slightly different methodologies, is to estimate the vote share each party might have got if local elections had taken place across the whole country, rather than just in certain parts of it. This makes it possible to compare local elections vote shares from one year to the next, even though the types of places where English local elections take place varies significantly from one year to the next.

In May 2025, the PNS recorded five parties on over 10% of the vote for the first time and placed those five parties within 19 percentage points of each other. This year we expect to see both the PNS and NEV reflect an even more fragmented political landscape, in line with how the opinion polls have moved over the last year.

April UK General Election Polling Averages

The average (mean) vote shares from the most recent April poll by each of the ten polling companies who published a UK general election poll during April, is as follows:

* Compared with March’s average – Each month a different combination of pollsters will publish polls, so this change is not strictly comparing like with like, but gives a general sense of change

What do these mean?

• The party with the highest vote share has the support of only just over a quarter of voters.
• There is only a 14.2-point gap between the 1st and 5th placed parties, the smallest we have seen since we started collecting this data.
• The combined Conservative and Labour vote share is just 37.7%, a significant drop on the combined 57.4% they achieved at the 2024 general election, itself a record low.
• Reform UK’s vote share (26.4%) represents its lowest monthly average vote share in the last 12 months, since they recorded 24.9% in April 2025. They are down 5.4 points from their monthly average vote share peak, which was 31.8% in September 2025.

April’s polling average was compiled using data from the following pollsters – BMG; Find Out Now; Freshwater Strategy; Good Growth Foundation; Ipsos; J.L. Partners; More In Common; Opinium; Techne; YouGov.

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With growing fragmentation, it becomes harder and harder to work out how polling will translate into seats in Westminster, at UK general elections. Something that pollsters have tried to get round with MRP polls. These MRP polls take data from a bigger than normal sample of people. For example, the sample for YouGov’s most recent UK general election MRP was 13,000. YouGov’s MRP model  looks for relationships between people’s characteristics and how they intend to vote. It then combines these relationships with information about the characteristics of people living in different constituencies, in order to produce estimates of voting intention in each constituency.

Both YouGov and More In Common have published MRP polls for this week’s London local elections. However, both companies have stuck to estimating vote shares for each party, in each London borough, rather than attempting to estimate the number of council seats each party will get in each borough. This highlights just how difficult it is becoming to understand how party vote shares will translate into representation in elected chambers, under FPTP.

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Since February 2025, we at the Electoral Reform Society have been collecting data on UK general election voting intention polls published by British Polling Council (BPC) members.

The year since has seen the continuation of a trend decades in the making but which has now reached unprecedented levels: the breakdown of the UK’s post-war two-party political system and its replacement with a multi-party system, which is the norm throughout Europe.

Unfortunately, unlike in the rest of Europe, we have a voting system – First Past the Post – designed for a two-party environment. When people express their political preferences in a wider variety of ways the system starts to sputter and breakdown, producing increasingly chaotic outcomes that do not properly reflect how people have voted.

To see evidence of the extent to which the UK is becoming a multi-party nation, let’s turn our attention to the polling data for March 2026. This month saw a bumper crop of polls from BPC members. Twelve different companies published polls, a monthly high since the ERS started collecting this data a year ago.

March UK Polling Averages

The average (mean) vote shares from the most recent March poll by each of those twelve companies, is as follows:

* Each month a different combination of pollsters will publish polls, so this change is not strictly comparing like with like, but gives a general sense of change

The party with the highest vote share has the support of only just over a quarter of voters. There is only a 15-point gap between the 1st and 5th placed parties, the smallest we have seen since we started collecting this data. The combined Conservative and Labour vote share is just 37.1%, a significant drop on the combined 57.4% they achieved at the 2024 general election, itself a record low.

The Green Party’s vote share represents its highest monthly average vote share since the party’s formation. Indeed, this week’s YouGov poll had the Greens in joint 2^nd place, behind Reform UK.

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First Past the Post: A system under strain

The days of a vast majority of people voting for one of two ‘major parties’ are gone. Unfortunately, the electoral system designed for those days, First Past The Post (FPTP), is still very much with us for UK general elections.

First Past the Post resulted in the most disproportional general election result ever in 2024, when Labour won almost two-thirds of seats, from just over one-third of votes. With the continued rise of multi-party politics since then, it is likely to result in even more random and chaotic results in future.

This outdated system simply cannot cope with how people are expressing their democratic preferences in 2026. We are seeing increasing numbers of MPs and councillors elected with under one-third of votes, meaning the views of over two-thirds of voters are simply ignored.

In addition, First Past the Post often causes voters to feel under pressure to vote ‘tactically’, where they have to consider voting for a party that is not their favourite, to try to stop a party they really dislike from winning. This is not how democracy should work but there is a real danger that our next general election will be dominated by tactical discussions of who people should vote for to keep out other parties, rather than a debate about competing visions for the country.

Now is the time to make the case for change

We need a new proportional voting system, one that reflects the new realities of multi-party politics in the UK and which would mean people could express the genuine democratic preferences without having to worry about tactical considerations.

The Representation of the People Bill is currently making its way through parliament. This bill includes several important changes we’ve long campaigned for – this is real progress. But there is a huge missing piece.

If this Bill is going to live up to its name, it must replace the outdated First Past the Post system with a proportional one – where seats in Parliament actually reflect how people vote.

March’s polling average was compiled using data from the following pollsters – BMG; Find Out Now; Focaldata; Freshwater Strategy; Ipsos; J.L. Partners; More In Common; Opinium; Survation; Techne; Verian; YouGov.

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There has been a significant intervention in the debate around electoral reform recently, in the guise of former Prime Minister John Major. The Conservative politician has questioned the “validity” of the First Past the Post system for Westminster and said the case for examining its role is “growing”.

This is the latest in a growing drum beat of politicians on the right of British politics asking whether it’s time to ditch First Past the Post and move to a more proportional voting system. The case has long been made by Conservative Action for Electoral Reform, and since the last election figures such as Tobias Ellwood and Nigel Evans have both made the case for electoral reform.

Major’s intervention adds to this momentum, not least as it comes from a PM who directly benefited from Westminster’s voting system. His comments came when he gave the latest Attlee Foundation Lecture at King’s College London last month. The speech’s theme was that we are in the midst of a pivotal moment for democracy at home and abroad.

The former PM pointed out that democracy is in retreat in many parts of the world with only around a quarter of the globe living under a system where they get to genuinely choose who governs them.

Against such a backdrop, Major urged us not to take our own liberal democratic settlement for granted and warned that not addressing the declining faith in our political institutions could open up a vacuum into which a future autocrat could step.

‘Our democracy has fallen short of expectations’

He praised British democracy as a system that has been ‘an enabler’ for peace, as well as one that promotes justice, wellbeing and the transformation of life opportunities.

Yet, he warned:

“Along the way it makes mistakes, but its purpose is to extend freedoms of choice and action that more extreme politicians would curtail.

“But … but … we cannot ignore the uncomfortable truth that, in recent years, our democracy has fallen short of expectations.” 

The speech noted that many parts of our political settlement are now under strain, a theme typified by the waning dominance of the two traditional main parties. This can be seen in the fact that the last general election was the first time we saw four parties get over 10% of the vote, and since then that trend has only advanced and we now have five parties consistently polling over 10%.

In 2024 this helped create the most disproportional election result in UK history as Labour received two-thirds of the seats on a third of a vote, and the Greens and Reform together received less than 2% of the seats in Parliament despite garnering more than 20% of the vote combined. This means the current parliament is the most unrepresentative of how the country voted in history.

As voting preferences spread more widely First Past the Post provides distorted results

Major acknowledged in his speech that First Past the Post, which is designed for two parties, is acting more erratically as it struggles to cope in the current multiparty environment.

He said:

“Recent General Elections have thrown into doubt the continuing validity of the “first past the post” system of voting.  

“As voting preferences spread more widely it provides distorted results. The democratic case for examining this is growing, although changes would come with distinct drawbacks.” 

While the former Tory leader stopped short of voicing support for electoral reform or moving to a more proportional system, it is significant to have a former Conservative prime minster openly question the ‘validity’ of the Westminster voting system.

In 1992, Major was the beneficiary of First Past the Post’s disproportional winner’s bonus, as his 41.9% of the vote was boosted into 51.6% of the seats in Parliament. However, his comments also make sense in terms of his thesis that democracy needs to be seen to be serving the interests and meeting the needs of its citizens.

If First Past the Post continues to behave in a chaotic way, then we risk having an even more disproportional result and an even more unrepresentative parliament after the next election. The Institute for Government recently warned that voters will become “ever more frustrated” if “casting a vote starts to feel more like participating in a lottery”.

We have argued that this concern is particularly acute when trust in politics has already slumped to record lows in recent years. The case for moving to an electoral system that ensures seats in parliament properly represent how people voted is becoming stronger by the day.

Major calls for a cap on political donations

In his speech, John Major also called for a wider ‘updating’ of our politics, starting with a clean-up of donations and honours.

He said:

“Politics has a grubby underbelly that can make it look seedy. We need a spring clean.

Is political funding corrupted if ‒ with no qualifications other than money ‒ donors receive honours or preferential access to Ministers?  

“Should political donations be capped to protect against undue influence?  I believe the answer is – yes.”

This is an area where we also agree with the former prime minister, as we’ve called for a donations cap to stop money pouring into our politics and further corroding public trust. There has been some movement on this front, with the government pledging to cap overseas donations at £100,000 a year following the recommendations in the recent Rycroft report.

This is a welcome step in itself, but a cap needs to be applied to domestic donations as well, especially as massive donations from ultra-wealthy individuals are becoming an increasing feature of our politics.

Aside from his policy suggestions, one of the most striking messages from Major’s speech was his message on how democracy binds a society together while allowing it to work out its differences and find a way forward. He underscored this by addressing the optics of a Conservative prime minister giving a speech in honour of a Labour PM. Major said despite their differing political philosophies he admired many of Attlee’s achievements, from the creation of the NHS to his commitment to public service.

He added: “Of course, where he and I both active in politics today – there would be differences of policy, of priority, of philosophy. We are political opponents. But mark this: Opponents, Yes. Enemies, No.”

Have you been ‘questioning the validity of First Past the Post’?

Add your name to our call to scrap First Past the Post

By Paulo Trigo Pereira, Professor of Economics, University of Lisbon (ISEG) and President of Institute of Public Policy

Portugal is often seen as a stable democracy. Since the peaceful Carnation Revolution of 1974, the country has consolidated democratic institutions, joined the European Union, and experienced decades of political stability.

Nearly fifty years after the transition to democracy, Portugal’s electoral system for its national parliament (the Assembleia da República) has changed very little. What once helped ensure proportional representation now shows clear signs of strain. This is the starting point of the civic initiative “Reforming the Electoral System: Renewing Democracy”, launched by the Lisbon-based think tank Institute of Public Policy (IPP). The project argues that democratic renewal in Portugal requires revisiting and reforming how representatives are elected.

A System That Limits Voter Choice

Portugal uses Party List Proportional Representation with closed party lists. Voters choose between parties, but they cannot express any preference for individual candidates. Party leaderships determine both who appears on electoral lists and the order in which candidates are elected.

In comparative perspective, this is increasingly unusual. Portugal is one of only a handful of European Union countries where voters cannot influence the selection of candidates at all in legislative elections. In most proportional systems, voters can either choose between candidates directly, rank candidates within party lists, or cast separate votes for parties and individual representatives.

The consequence is a weak accountability link between voters and elected representatives. Members of parliament depend primarily on party leadership for their political careers, rather than on citizens. Over time, this institutional feature contributes to political disengagement and a perception that elections offer limited real choice.

Territorial Inequality, Discrimination and Political Fragmentation

A second major issue concerns territorial representation. Electoral districts in mainland Portugal coincide with the eighteen administrative districts whose populations differ sharply. This produces large differences in district magnitude – the number of seats allocated per district.

In smaller, less populated districts, particularly in the interior of the country, voters face a structural disadvantage. Only a small number of seats are available (e.g Portalegre with just two), which effectively restricts competition to the largest parties. Voters who support smaller parties often know in advance that their vote is unlikely to translate into representation. As a result, many feel pressured to cast a “useful vote” or abstain altogether.

The opposite happens in large urban districts such as Lisbon (48 MPs) or Porto (40 MPs), where many seats are allocated and proportionality is dramatically higher. Such larger districts promote excessive political fragmentation since in these districts political representation can be achieved with a very low percentage of votes. Effective electoral thresholds are extremely low in these districts. The outcome is unequal representation based solely on geography – an issue with significant implications for political inclusion, territorial cohesion and parliamentary fragmentation.

A Civic and Participatory Approach to Reform

What distinguishes the IPP initiative is not only its diagnosis, but also its approach. The project is explicitly non-partisan and citizen-led. Rather than advocating a single technical solution from the outset, it frames electoral reform as a democratic process that must combine public deliberation, academic expertise, and institutional feasibility.

The project began with the public launch of a Manifesto for Electoral Reform, and a crowdfunding campaign, reflecting its independence from political parties and public funding. Its premise is that meaningful reform must be grounded in civic legitimacy, not elite negotiation alone.

Over the course of a year, the project promotes public consultation through focus groups and seminars held across the country, with particular attention to regions disadvantaged by the current system. These discussions aim to incorporate citizens’ perspectives and experiences into the reform debate.

At the same time, the project invests in electoral literacy. A dedicated website (in Portuguese here) provides accessible explanations of electoral systems, comparative research, and frequently asked questions. This reflects a key assumption: informed citizens are essential to meaningful institutional reform.

From Debate to Institutional Change

The initiative is not limited to discussion. Its explicit goal is to launch a Citizens’ Legislative Initiative in parliament, backed by twenty thousand signatures. This mechanism allows citizens to formally place legislative proposals on the parliamentary agenda.

In doing so, the project seeks to strengthen democratic participation not only through the content of reform, but through the process itself. Electoral reform becomes both a means and an end of democratic renewal.

The Portuguese case illustrates a broader challenge facing many established democracies: how to redesign political institutions created decades ago to societies that are more educated, more connected, and more demanding of political accountability.

Find out more about the work of Lisbon’s Institute of Public Policy.

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At the Electoral Reform Society, we believe democracy is never a finished project.

Something so hard won requires constant attention, updating and improvement if it is to remain healthy. That is particularly true at a time when public trust in politics is being eroded, political scandals continue to dominate headlines, and concerns about foreign interference in British democracy are growing.

Against this backdrop, we welcome the Representation of the People Bill, which saw it’s second reading debate this week. The Bill contains several important steps forward: extending the vote to all 16 and 17-year-olds, widening the range of accepted voter ID, and strengthening the powers of the Electoral Commission. These are reforms that we have long championed.

What MPs were saying in the debate

The Second Reading debate this week reflected the seriousness of the moment. MPs across the House recognised the stakes for the health of our democracy. While many welcomed the Bill’s direction, there was also broad acknowledgement that it does not yet match the scale of the challenge. It represents genuine progress, but stops short of the deeper, systemic reforms that our democracy ultimately requires.

Where elections often used to be a two-horse race between Labour and the Conservatives, voters are now spreading their support across an increasingly crowded field – and our voting system is struggling to keep up.

The latest polling data, including a striking new YouGov survey and a roundup of recent polling from eight major polling firms, paints a vivid picture of a country whose political allegiances have shifted dramatically. The question is no longer whether multi-party politics has arrived in the UK – it’s whether our outdated electoral system can survive it.

YouGov showing a snapshot of a fragmented electorate

A voting intention poll published by YouGov this week (fieldwork: 1-2 March), produced findings that shine a light on the multi-party politics that now exists in the UK.

Here are some of those data:

• The party with the highest level of support (Reform UK) on just 23% (fewer than a quarter of voters).
• Five parties within just nine percentage points of each other (the Liberal Democrats were in 5th place, on 14%).
• Neither of the traditional ‘big two’ parties of British politics (Labour and the Conservatives) in the top two positions (the Greens were in 2nd place, on 21%).

This was a Great Britain-wide poll but recent polling in Scotland and Wales show two other parties (the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru) as the best supported parties in each of those countries.

This week’s YouGov poll is just one poll and like any poll in isolation should be treated with caution. However, we at the Electoral Reform Society monitor opinion polling on an ongoing basis and the broad themes of the YouGov poll are in line with what we have seen from other polling.

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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