Our work in Wales

Senedd Elections 2026

With the next Senedd elections due to be held on 7^th May 2026, our year in Wales has been spent gearing up for election day.

The election will be very different from those held before, with the Senedd increasing in size to 96 Members from the current 60, moving from the current Additional Member System to the Closed List electoral system, and establishing 16 new constituencies. These changes have come about following the passing of the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Act 2024.

While we campaigned for a larger Senedd, we raised significant concerns about the Closed List system and advocated for the Single Transferable Vote (STV) to be used instead. In 2025 we have continued to campaign around this, meeting with parties about their manifestos where we have called for STV for both the Senedd and Welsh local government.

Earlier this year, we developed our own STV Bill for the Senedd, which set out to show decision makers how simple the change would be. We met with parties across the political spectrum to discuss this. We have also been meeting candidates as they are announced, building relationships and support for changing the electoral system after the next election.

Throughout the year we have attended the Welsh party conferences, meeting MSs, MPs and candidates for the election next year. In March, we hosted a main stage interview with Rhun ap Iorwerth MS, the Leader of Plaid Cymru, on the state of Welsh and global democracy.

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Ian Simpson, Senior Research Officer

“Across this year, our research team has continued to conduct independent, in-depth and timely research into the state of our political system. Conducting high-quality research is key to achieving our strategic goals as it provides the evidence base for our policy and campaigns. Findings are fed into government consultations, presented to select committees and quoted in parliament as well as shaping and driving our commentary in the media.”

2025 Local Elections Analysis

We closely monitored and analysed the outcomes of the English local and mayoral elections in May this year. Having collected data on the results of equivalent elections held in previous years, we were able to quickly compare the May 2025 results with previous ones highlighting how the electoral environment had changed.

We also highlighted how Strategic Authority mayors were elected with low vote shares under First Past the Post, with two coming to office with fewer than 30% of votes. We followed up our public statements and blogs on this with a letter to relevant government ministers calling for First Past the Post for Mayors and Police & Crime Commissioner elections to be scrapped. We are delighted that the government has acted on our call, going back to a preferential voting system in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill.

In relation to the English local authority elections, we highlighted a number of councils where one party, often Reform UK, won an outright majority of councillors having received the support of only around one-third of voters, under First Past The Post. Our analysis contributed to the ongoing focus on the fragmentation of party support in the UK, with voters supporting an ever-increasing number of parties, making First Past The Post increasingly unfit for purpose. We were able to show how for the first time in a set of English local elections, the unearned FPTP ‘winner’s bonus’ went to a party other than the Conservatives or Labour: across England, Reform UK won 41% of council seats from 31% of votes.

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Mike Wright, Head of Communications

“It has been busy year for the ERS, as we’ve won a lot of media attention on our issues across 2025. Our team have worked with journalists across national and local media to provide in-depth analysis, opinion pieces and interviews, to make the case for electoral reform and push vital democratic issues higher up the news agenda to increase public support.”

The end of last year saw a sharp focus on electoral reform with coverage of our report on the 2024 general election, quickly followed by the Lib Dems’ Private Member’s Bill passing its first parliamentary vote, both of which saw the ERS quoted in the national press. Jess Garland later appeared on the Politics Home podcast to discuss whether PR can fix our broken politics. There was growing interest in the bill to remove the hereditary peers as well as political finance, with ERS being quoted in a Guardian investigation into dark money flowing into our politics. The ERS was also prominent in the debate over yet more peers being added to the House of Lords in the New Year’s list, with Darren highlighting its already ‘ludicrous size’ in the Mirror.

We garnered national press attention with our analysis of the local elections showing that Reform had received the ‘winner’s bonus’ under FPTP for the first time, which the Mirror and Guardian covered. Politico also wrote a long-read on how the electoral system was struggling to cope with multiparty politics, quoting Jess Garland on how FPTP is now ‘failing on its own terms’. Jess was quoted again in Politico on how the hereditary peers were ‘abusing their position’ to delay the bill to remove them. In Scotland, we laid the ground for the Dunfermline citizens’ assembly, with Willie writing an oped in the Herald on the lack of democracy in the new school fiasco on the Isle of Mull and in a front page piece in the Herald on how Scots trust political institutions that are closer to home. In Wales, Jess Blair led the charge on warnings that the next Senedd could the least representative of women ever, with coverage in Nation Cymru and the Pembrokeshire Herald. There was also growing interest over this period in votes at 16, with Darren going on LBC with Iain Dale and then Nick Ferrari to debate its merits.

The ERS was prominent in the coverage on the government’s announcement in the summer that it would be expanding the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds in the Elections Bill, with Darren quote in the BBC, FT and Mirror, among other outlets. Jess Blair and Jess Garland also did a host of broadcast outlets on the day, including BBC News, Nicky Campbell and LBC. In this period Darren was also profiled in the New Statesman as the ‘Kiwi who wants to fix Britain’s electoral system’. In Scotland, the successful government grant to lunch the Dunfermline citizens’ assembly was covered nationally and locally.

Support the Electoral Reform Society

As momentum builds for electoral reform, your support is more important than ever. 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.

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Building Relationships with Important People

Willie Sullivan, Senior Director, Campaigns and Scotland:

“Building connections with politicians is incredibly important in mobilising change.

Our work behind the scenes consists of meeting with MPs and their staff to better understand their democratic concerns, gathering information and identifying politicians who share our goals. We are building our reputation as a trusted source of information by providing evidence-based research on a variety of democratic issues.

We work closely with other organisations in the democracy sector to support MPs in raising democratic issues with the government and organising events to facilitate conversations amongst politicians around our policy issues.”

Support the Electoral Reform Society

As momentum builds for electoral reform, your support is more important than ever. 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.

Click here to support our work from just £2 a month →

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Support the Electoral Reform Society

As momentum builds for electoral reform, your support is more important than ever. 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.

Click here to support our work from just £2 a month →

Darren Hughes, Chief Executive

This has been a seismic year for British politics. We have witnessed a huge change election, but also one that was the most disproportional in the history of the UK. That has thrown a spotlight onto our failing First Past the Post electoral system like never before – a system that is clearly creaking under the weight of shifting voter behaviour.

A year on from the most disproportional general election in British history, we are clearly seeing political instability and volatility continue to be amplified by our outdated electoral system. First Past the Post buckling under the new multi-party environment has become a dominant theme in our political discourse, something the ERS has been central in bolstering through its research, comms and digital work.

A key moment for this narrative was the 2025 local elections where our work highlighted that a party outside of Labour or the Conservatives, in Reform, secured the FPTP ‘winner’s bonus’ for the first time in a century. This has intensified the debate around the electoral system for Westminster, which was kicked off by our work highlighting the distorting impact FPTP had on the general election.

Meanwhile, at Westminster the work to repair the damage done to our democracy in recent years is underway as long-standing ERS priorities have begun to take shape in legislation. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill is scrapping FPTP and restoring the Supplementary Vote for mayoral and PCC elections, ensuring outcomes better reflect voters’ preferences.

The government’s forthcoming Elections Bill looks to include Votes at 16, automated voter registration, fairer rules on political finance, and reforms to voter ID – all policies we have championed for years. And after decades of campaigning, the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill is finally set to end the principle of birth-right law-making in Parliament.

Across the UK, we have continued to advance the cause of fair representation and citizen participation. In Wales, ERS Cymru is leading efforts to promote awareness of major Senedd electoral reforms and the impact they could have at next year’s elections, as well as pressing for STV for future elections. In Scotland, our pioneering citizens’ assembly in Dunfermline is showing how local democracy can be deepened through genuine public participation.

The progress made on all these fronts is a testament to the hard work, passion and professionalism of the ERS staff, and I would like to put on record my thanks for their dedication and enthusiasm. Likewise, I would like to pay tribute to our board who support our work by volunteering their time, wisdom and expertise.

Our membership and supporter base have never been stronger, and the momentum for change has never been clearer. The foundation of our work is the support of the thousands of people who deeply believe in democracy and that ours can be made better. We would not be able to do what we do without their support.

Together we are demonstrating that a more equal, accountable, and participatory democracy is not just possible – it is already being built.

Lynn Henderson, Chair

As Chair, I am proud to reflect on a year when the momentum for proportional representation as well as for strengthening and renewing our democracy has gathered pace on several fronts. We are seeing the government strip back FPTP from mayoral and PCC elections, which is a deeply encouraging sign. And the work of the ERS has helped shaped the political discourse around how dysfunctional and distorting FPTP is becoming for Westminster.

The culmination of this work can be seen in the latest British Social Attitudes survey, which recorded a record 60% support for electoral reform from the public, the highest number since it started polling the question in the 1980s.

We have seen the government respond to public pressure for a fairer, more accessible democracy by pledging measures the ERS has long championed – Votes at 16, automatic voter registration, stronger rules on political finance, and an end to hereditary law-making in the Lords. These reforms show that persistent, evidence-based campaigning works.

The ERS has been deeply involved in bolstering democracy in all four corners of our nation. In Wales, our team has led the debate around Senedd reform and pushed for a move to STV. In Scotland, our work to embed citizens’ assemblies has helped demonstrate how communities can play a direct role in shaping decisions.

These achievements reflect the dedication and hard work of the ERS staff. I want to thank them – and our thousands of members and supporters – for their commitment to building a fairer politics for everyone.

Our drive for electoral reform is gathering pace and shows that together we are proving that when people demand better democracy, change follows.

Support the Electoral Reform Society

As momentum builds for electoral reform, your support is more important than ever. 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.

Click here to support our work from just £2 a month →

Mike Wright, Head of Communications

“It was clear this was going to be a busy year for the ERS media-wise, with a likely general election and change of government, as well as local elections, making our issues prominent at various points in the year. The first quarter was largely dedicated to preparing for those set pieces to ensure we were able to maximise the coverage and then land effective messaging that resonated with the public. As such, a predominant focus was the messaging project we carried out with research colleagues to ensure we had tested arguments and lines on electoral reform ready for the election. The other key strategic focus for the comms team was building deeper relations with journalists, particularly in broadcast, to ensure we could pre-brief influential figures on our issues before the elections, and this led to better informed coverage when our issues did arise.”

The start of the year was dominated with Liz Truss’s resignation honours list, which put a sharp focus on the House of Lords, peerages and cronyism. The ERS was quoted in the BBC News story on the list, and Jess Garland was also interviewed on a number of outlets, including Channel 4 News, ITV, and Sky. This allowed us to frame the issue of Lords reform as pressing for the then current and next government.

The rest of the first quarter of the year was then dominated by the build-up to the local and mayoral elections, which were seen as a key test for the beleaguered Sunak government and to see if Labour was making serious electoral inroads. There was also a growing focus on our issues and we were quoted in stories on tactical voting in Politico, voter ID in the Express, and Police and Crime Commissioner elections on ITV.

In May, the local elections saw the media take an interest primarily in voter ID as it was the first time millions of voters would be encountering it. ERS spokespeople did numerous broadcast interviews, largely on BBC Local News radio, on how the issue could affect people, with Darren’s comments being picked up by the Express and other news outlets. After the local elections, our analysis showing that mayors had been elected with smaller mandates than previous incumbents due to the switch to FPTP was also picked up by the media.

In the period following the general election, the media focus shifted to the new government’s agenda, with the majority of the media interest being in the reforms to the House of Lords. The ERS has featured in coverage of this issue in a number of publications, from the New Statesman, i News to the Daily Mail. Darren appeared on BBC News discussing the Lords reform proposals in the Kings Speech.

The ERS had over 800 hits in different media outlets over 2024 to date. This is similar to 2023, when there was a high media interest in the roll-out of voter ID for the first time. However, the focus this year, when the spotlight was likely to fall on our issues, was to aim for higher cut-through media outlets, with appearances on the Today Programme and BBC Breakfast as particular highlights.

Support the ERS

As momentum builds for electoral reform, your support is more important than ever. Members support our work in parliament, in the press and at conferences like this one – making the case, and backing it up – for how we can fix Westminster’s broken system.

Click here to become an ERS member from just £2 a month

Ian Simpson, Research Officer:

“Across this year the research team has continued to conduct independent, in-depth and timely research into the state of our political system. Conducting high-quality research is key to achieving our strategic goals as it provides the evidence base for our policy and campaigns. Research was central to our work on the General Election and provided the basis for our media and digital campaigning. We had prepared for the General Election by mapping the changes that had occurred to the UK parliamentary constituencies following the boundary reviews. This ensured we had a thorough understanding of the electoral landscape prior to the election and enabled us to produce interesting data during the campaign and after the results were announced”
At the start of the year the research and communications teams together drew up a new messaging guide for use by the Democracy sector. This was the final thread of the messaging research project which took place in 2023 in which we engaged multiple research agencies and tested messaging on PR on the general public. We shared this messaging guide with National Campaign for PR early this year and the messaging we created was used during the general election.

In May there were local council elections in many places in England, and once again we highlighted places that saw highly disproportional outcomes, with voters failing to be represented properly. We renewed our call to replace FPTP with STV for English local elections, matching the tried and tested system used for Scottish local elections, which produces outcomes that much more closely match how people have voted in their local area.

There were also Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) elections across England and Wales and a number of elections for directly-elected mayors, including high profile contests in Greater London, Greater Manchester, West Midlands and Tees Valley. These were the first set of PCC elections held under the First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system after the previous Conservative government scrapped the use of the Supplementary Vote (SV) system for PCCs and elected mayors as part of the Elections Act 2022. We highlighted how this reduced the mandates of the mayors and PPCs who were elected and called for FPTP for mayors to be scrapped. We also gave evidence to the Greater London Authority elections committee on the impact of using FPTP for these elections.

In May this year we also launched our report Pursuing Parity: Examining Gender Quotas Across Electoral Systems, with a webinar in May for our members and supporters as well as others in the sector. The report laid out how the electoral system can impact the diversity of an elected body and how gender quotas can work in conjunction with different electoral systems to produce more gender-balanced legislatures. This piece of research found that elected bodies which use proportional representation are more likely to have larger numbers of women in their elected bodies than countries which use majoritarian systems.

With the anticipated change in Government came an increase in conversations around the second chamber and ERS published our views on the way to an elected second chamber in our report, Unfinished Business: Routes to an Elected Second Chamber. With the first steps towards Lords reform passing through parliament this year in the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill we have been using our work on options for reform to inform and press the case for stage two.

Following the Electoral Commission estimates of the number of people missing from or incorrectly registered on the electoral rolls, we used census data across England, Scotland and Wales to estimate the numbers of eligible voters missing, or inaccurately registered. This work was used to further our campaign for automatic voter registration (AVR), highlighting to MPs, policy makers and the general public, the vast numbers of eligible voters who could be enrolled under AVR.

Support the ERS

As momentum builds for electoral reform, your support is more important than ever. Members support our work in parliament, in the press and at conferences like this one – making the case, and backing it up – for how we can fix Westminster’s broken system.

Click here to become an ERS member from just £2 a month

The Most Disproportionate General Election Ever

General Election years are always significant for us, but this one was particularly so with results being the most disproportional in history, and many people voting as if we already had PR.

During the election campaign we highlighted the many barriers facing voters at the polls, from our analysis of the numbers missing from the electoral register, to the challenges of voter ID and of course, the results themselves. Our analysis featured throughout the campaign in the media, in print, broadcast and online.

Many of our members and supporters joined our campaign actions and thousands signed our PR pledge. Our supporter numbers grew extensively in this period.

The election itself provided the strongest case for PR yet with not only the most disproportional result, but also a significant shift away from two-party politics and the second lowest turnout since universal suffrage. We highlighted the failures of FPTP as soon as results were out on our General Election 2024 dashboard. We will be sharing our full analysis in our General Election 2024 report, which will be released in early December 2024.

You can read more on our team’s work during the General Election campaign here.

Winning Fair Votes for Welsh Councils

Three councils in Wales moved to the consultation phase on adopting STV voting systems this year. Gwynedd and Powys voted to move to consultation last December with Ceredigion joining them this year. The response to the public consultations across the board was an overwhelmingly positive one with 67% backing STV in Ceredigion, 72% in Gwynedd and 61% in Powys.

Despite this clear signal from their residents, in Powys, councillors chose not to back the change to a fairer electoral system. In Gwynedd, the result was one vote short of the two-thirds super-majority needed, with over 65% of councillors supporting the change. Ceredigion Council also voted by a majority in favour of the change but again this was short of the two-thirds majority required. All three councils failed to reach the high bar of a two-thirds majority, despite the majority of the public backing moving to STV and the majority of councillors in two councils also backing the change.

This has been a significant piece of work for the ERS this year. We have been working with councillors in the three consultation areas for nearly five years now and ran significant campaigns in each of the areas to encourage residents to respond to the consultations. The evidence is clear, there is appetite to improve local democracy from both the public and councillors in Wales, but the piecemeal approach of the Welsh legislation and the high threshold needed remains a barrier to change.

You can read more about our team’s work on the Wales STV campaign here.

140 Years of the ERS

On the 16th January 2024 we celebrated the 140th anniversary of the Electoral Reform Society.
Across those 140 years, the Electoral Reform Society was involved in the successful adoption of the Single Transferable Vote in the Republic of Ireland, and helped to defend it twice against politicians’ attempts to return to Westminster’s electoral system. The Society was also involved in the adoption of the Single Transferable Vote in Malta and aided the campaign in Australia.

In the UK, our advocacy for proportional representation paid off with fair elections now held in Northern Ireland for the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont and all local councils. In Scotland, proportional systems are used in the Scottish Parliament and for all local councils, and in Wales, a proportional system is used for the Welsh Assembly and councils have won the right to choose STV. London also now has an assembly elected on a fair basis.

Over the last 140 years of our advocacy, First Past the Post has changed from the default electoral system to an outlier.

The Best System

To mark the first 100 years of the Society in 1984, the Electoral Reform Society commissioned a history of the Society, modestly called  The Best System. 40 years later, to mark the 140th anniversary, we have made it publicly available once again. The publication is now available on our website, and we published an article to mark the occasion. This is a historic document, reproduced in its entirety. If you are interested in the history of the Society, the earliest records are held at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick.

Read The Best System: An account of the first hundred years of the Electoral Reform Society

Support the ERS

As momentum builds for electoral reform, your support is more important than ever. Members support our work in parliament, in the press and at conferences like this one – making the case, and backing it up – for how we can fix Westminster’s broken system.

Click here to become an ERS member from just £2 a month