The votes from last week’s local council elections across England have now been counted, and one thing is clear: First Past the Post is yet again failing to reflect voters’ views on who should run their local council.

People vote in local elections because they want to shape what happens where they live. Whether it’s protecting local services, improving their neighbourhoods, or changing the direction of their area, voters head to the ballot box expecting their voice to matter.

But once again, the results across England are showing how badly the First Past the Post voting system fails to reflect what voters actually wanted. Instead of councils that are shaped by the views of the communities they serve, England’s voting system too often produces results that hand overwhelming power to one party without majority support from voters.

Too many council results simply do not reflect how people voted

Our team has been analysing the results and there are some key examples of where the councils bear very little resemblance to how people actually voted.

In Hammersmith and Fulham, Labour have over three quarters of the seats on little over a third of the vote.

It’s a similar story in Havering, as Reform picked up 71% of the seats on just 36% of the vote share.

And in Sutton, the results are stark. The Liberal Democrats have taken almost all the seats on the Council with a minority share of the vote.

In Lewisham, the Green Party secured nearly three quarters of seats with just 42% of the votes in the area.

These are very different political stories, but they point to the same problem: First Past the Post distorts election results no matter which party benefits. Ultimately, the voting system is just failing to deliver for the voters.

When coming in second means you come first

First Past the Post is often dubbed a ‘winner takes all system’. The idea is simple: the party that comes first gets the power, even if the majority didn’t vote for them. But remarkably, it cannot even guarantee that the party with the most votes will win the most seats.

This is what happened in Wandsworth, as the Conservatives managed to turn a second place in votes to the most seats in the council.

Because the system counts results ward by ward rather than looking at how people voted across the council area as a whole, seat totals can end up badly distorted. What matters is not simply how many votes a party wins, but where those votes are won and how ‘efficiently’ they are distributed.

First Past the Post is failing voters

When election after election produces the same distorted outcomes, local elections can start to feel less like a meaningful expression of voters’ choices and more like a lottery shaped by the quirks of the voting system.

It’s no wonder that people are left frustrated, feeling powerless. The voting system is creating a disconnect between communities and the councils that represent them.

England doesn’t need to settle for a broken voting system

Across the UK, there are already voting systems that better reflect how people vote.

Northern Ireland has used proportional representation for local council elections since 1973, while Scotland adopted it in 2007. These systems are designed to ensure seats more closely match the votes cast, giving more people a meaningful voice in local decision-making.

It’s high time voters in England got the representation they deserve. Local democracy should be something people can actually use to change their area, not something that leaves them feeling shut out. We need a voting system where local election results better reflect how people vote.

If we want local people to feel connected to the decisions shaping their communities, it’s time to scrap first past the post and finally fairly represent us all in English local government.

Think it’s time to fix England’s voting system? Add your name →

Discussions around changing the voting system often refer to Westminster, yet the same problems that stifle the government of the UK apply at a much more local level. Just like in Parliament, councils across England and Wales use the First Past the Post system, or slight variations of it. And just like in Parliament, councils rarely reflect how their local residents voted.

The 2022 local elections in Lewisham, for instance, saw Labour win every single councillor on just over half the vote. The same year, also in London, the Conservatives won 70.0% of seats on Kensington & Chelsea Council, from 44% of votes and the Liberal Democrats won 89% of seats on St Albans Council, in Hertfordshire, from 48% of votes.

At the Electoral Reform Society, we want to see local councils that more closely reflect how their local areas voted – a party on half the vote should get roughly half the seats. This isn’t just an issue of fairness to all the residents who aren’t being represented currently, though; it would have a real impact on how our local councils function.

Local councils should be responsive to voters

When local councils don’t reflect how local people voted, changes to how people vote don’t always have an impact on the council.

Democracy works when elections function as a feedback loop between voters and their representatives. If the streets are getting cleaner and the quality of social care is improving in your local area, the party in charge might expect to increase their vote share and win more councillors to continue their good work. Likewise, if there are piles of fly-tipped waste on every corner and constant scandals at the council, their vote share might drop, and they start to lose councillors

But this isn’t how First Past the Post works.

To get elected under First Past the Post, the candidate needs to get one more vote than the person in second place. Say your area is improving and your councillor’s vote share increases – but as they have already won, this increase makes no difference to the make-up of the council. Say your neighbourhood is getting worse and their vote share goes down – as long as they still have one vote more than the person in second place, this drop in support also makes no difference.

Rather than a responsive ebb and flow, you get parties that slowly hollow out support before collapsing. While it might feel satisfying for their opponents, replacing one tranche of experienced councillors all at once with a whole new set of inexperienced ones inevitably will impact how the council functions.

Councillors shouldn’t mark their own homework

The other impact of one party winning the bulk of seats on a minority of the vote, is that councillors scrutinise each other on council decisions and annual budgets. When the scrutiny committee is dominated by councillors of the same party as the people they are scrutinising, there is little incentive to look too deeply into councillors’ behaviour.

Likewise, while it might be easy to pass a council budget when one party is in overall control, there is little incentive for that budget to be properly scrutinised. We are not talking about small sums of money here either; Birmingham City Council set a £4.4 billion budget in 2026, and even smaller councils are spending hundreds of millions of pounds a year. Councils need enough opposition councillors to properly scrutinise this spending.

The tried and tested alternative

In local elections across England and Wales, some people live in wards that elect a single councillor while others have two or three. Yet, due to First Past the Post the same party will typically pick up all the seats. What if, rather than going to the single party with the most votes, these seats represented the spread of opinion in the ward? A councillor who is doing a good job and saw their vote share increase could get a colleague from the same party elected to carry on their work. Likewise, if a party were losing support, they could go down from two to one councillor – without having to wait for their party to collapse off a cliff.

This is how local elections have worked in Scotland since 2007. They use a system called the Single Transferable Vote that means the political make-up of councils change in response to voters, and councillors have to work together for their local area, rather than rubberstamping a budget from one party.

The question is why England and Wales should continue to settle for less.

Add your name to our call for local elections in England to match how we vote

Add your name today

The government is bringing in new laws to improve our elections – and this is our chance to make things better.

After years of broken promises and an electoral system that has consistently left millions of voices unheard, Parliament finally has the chance to fundamentally fix our democracy. The upcoming Elections Bill presents a rare opportunity that we cannot afford to let slip by.

Progress has made, but not enough

The government has already confirmed that the Elections Bill will be packed with changes we’ve long been fighting for.

In a statement to parliament, the democracy minister set out plans including extending the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds, a modernised and more automated registration system to get the missing millions on the register, scrapping photo ID requirements in favour of non-photographic ID like bank cards, and crucial measures to tackle dodgy money in politics by closing political finance loopholes.

This represents great progress and shows that sustained campaigning can move the dial on democratic reform. However, now we need to push them to go further.

The missing piece is fair votes

Because there’s still one fundamental change missing from this legislation: fair votes.

They’re calling it an ‘Elections’ Bill, but without proportional representation at its heart, it won’t fix the key problem with our elections.

Right now, we elect our MPs using First Past the Post – a winner-takes-all system where only the candidate with the most votes wins, and everyone else gets nothing. The 2024 General Election was the most disproportional in British history. Thanks to First Past the Post, 57.8% of people – that’s 16.6 million voters – ended up represented by an MP they didn’t vote for.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. One MP can never represent the full range of political opinions in an area. Under fairer, proportional voting systems like the Single Transferable Vote, multiple representatives are elected per area, ensuring that far more voices are heard and seats actually match votes cast.

This is why we need to see this Bill go further.

Now is the time to act

It’s time to ensure seats reflect votes and give power back to the voters – all voters, everywhere, regardless of where they happen to live.

We need to speak up now, while they’re still writing these laws. This is our moment. Let’s make sure they go all the way and deliver the fair democracy we deserve.

We live in a country where each constituency has a single MP. Yet for most people this means the MP who “represents” them in parliament doesn’t share their politics, didn’t win a majority of the vote in their local area, and was chosen by a tiny handful of party insiders long before election day.

In the 2024 General Election, the majority of people found themselves with an MP they didn’t vote for. That’s 57.8% or 16.6 million people represented by someone they didn’t want. In fact, Labour is the only party where a majority of their voters have an MP they voted for. It’s no surprise that people feel like politicians don’t listen.

While these MPs will, no doubt, try their best to help their constituents and stand up for their local areas. But when it comes to more political issues, these MPs will be marching into the voting lobbies along party lines. But it’s precisely to influence national political issues that we elect MPs in the first place.

MPs without majority support are the norm

In the 2024 general election, around 85% of MPs were elected on less than half the vote. That’s 554 constituencies where the majority of people wanted someone else to be the MP – this is compared to 229 in 2019. It gets worse though, 266 constituencies (41% of all seats) elected their representative on less than 40%. The record for lowest vote share was an incredible 26.7% – barely over a quarter of voters.

That 26.5% vote share was made possible in South West Norfolk as the right wing vote was split three ways, between Reform, the Conservatives and an Independent Conservative. Together, those three won 62% of the vote, compared to the Labour candidate’s 26.7%. It’s pretty clear voters wanted a right-wing MP, yet as the vote was split three ways, and Labour won the seat.

Candidates are chosen from the top down

But who chooses the candidates? Before voters even get a say, party HQs or small groups of local activists have already decided who stands. Sometimes candidates are parachuted in from outside the area, hand-picked for loyalty to the leadership or their faction.

While all the political parties contain a broad range of views, the rest of us get one candidate per major party, and one shot at choosing between them. You can’t say, “I like this party but prefer their other candidate.” You can’t choose between shades of opinion.

It doesn’t have to be like this

One MP can never represent the full range of political opinions in an area. Under fairer, proportional, voting systems like the Single Transferable Vote, things look very different.

Instead of one MP per area, you elect a small team of MPs to represent a larger region. On the ballot paper you number the candidates in order, across or within parties, so you can choose who best reflects your values.

If you like a party but not its chosen candidate, you can back someone else from the same party. And because several MPs represent each area, almost everyone ends up with at least one MP they actually voted for. Someone they can turn to and say, “You speak for me.”

When Scotland changed to the Single Transferable Vote for Scottish elections, the number of people who ended up with a councillor they voted for jumped to 75%.

The Single Transferable Vote is a tried and tested system that works

First Past the Post gives power to party HQs and factional insiders. It narrows choice and locks millions out of meaningful representation.

The Single Transferable Vote gives that power back to voters. It creates competition within parties, encourages cooperation across them, and ensures that every voice has a chance to be heard.

It’s time we stopped pretending that one MP for everyone is working for anyone.

Add your name to our call for a fairly elected parliament

Join our call for proportional representation

Wales stands at an important crossroads in its democratic journey. ERS Cymru has developed a proposal to change the way we elect members of the Senedd, replacing the planned closed-list system with the Single Transferable Vote (STV). This proposal represents not just a technical adjustment, but a fundamental conversation about the kind of democracy we want for Wales.

Under STV, people can choose between individual candidates as well as parties, ensuring that elected representatives are accountable directly to the voters who elect them. Working with Alun Davies MS and members of other political parties, ERS has developed a bill to make this vision a reality.

Why This Matters for Voters

The Senedd election next year will be held under a system no one wanted – the closed list system. Closed lists will deliver a proportional result but will not deliver accountability, with voters only being able to back political parties rather than the individual candidates on the ballot paper that will actually represent them in the Senedd.

Both the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform and the Expert Panel on Assembly Electoral Reform recommended the Single Transferable Vote (STV) instead of the closed list system, which would deliver both proportionality, ensuring the Senedd looks the way the Welsh people voted, and direct accountability to voters for MSs.

Voter choice is not a technical detail; it is the foundation of trust in our institutions. When people can identify the individuals they have helped elect, it strengthens legitimacy and engagement. Closed lists, by contrast, risk creating a sense of distance between voters and those who serve them.

Strengthening Accountability and Representation

The introduction of STV would mark a positive step towards a more open and representative Senedd. It would allow people to express nuanced preferences and ensure that no vote is wasted. In practical terms, this means that the Senedd would better reflect the diversity of views across Wales.

This reform also matters for accountability. Under STV, individual members of the Senedd would need to maintain direct relationships with their communities, earning and retaining the trust of those who elect them. That personal link is crucial if we are to build a legislature that feels connected, responsive and legitimate.

Building a Better Democracy for Wales

After the next Senedd election in May 2026 Members of the Senedd will have the chance to review the closed list system.

Wales has the opportunity once again to show leadership in democratic innovation. We have done it before. From devolution to gender balance in representation, Wales has shown that reform can make politics work better for people.

Moving to STV would continue that tradition. It would bring more openness, more accountability and a system that truly reflects the will of voters. It would mean that every vote counts and that every voter can recognise their influence in shaping the Senedd.

We warned from the start that closed lists risked being a lose-lose compromise and that we needed a voting system that works for the Welsh people. This draft Bill demonstrates how easy the change from the closed list system to STV would be, if the circumstances after the May election meant a change would be possible. As a reminder, constitutional change in Wales requires a 2/3 majority of Senedd Members to vote in favour, so this would need to be a change backed across the political spectrum.

For democracy to thrive, people must feel that their voice matters. Reforming the voting system is one of the most powerful ways to make that happen. The debate now beginning in Wales is a chance to strengthen our institutions, renew public trust and ensure that our democracy continues to grow with the people it serves.

Support ERS Cymru

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

Join the ERS today

Each week, usually on a Thursday, a number of local council by-elections take place around Britain. As with UK parliamentary by-elections, these take place when a representative either resigns or dies and there is a vacancy to be filled.  On 11 September 2025, six local by-elections took place across England and Wales.

The outcomes in five of these contests highlight something we have identified at regular intervals over the last couple of years: the First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system is not fit for purpose in our age of multi-party politics and is producing random results. First Past the Post is a disservice to voters.

The striking fact is that of the six by-elections that took place on 11 September, in five of them the winning candidate takes their place in a council chamber with the support of fewer than one-third of the voters in that election. In two of the contests, the winning candidate’s vote share was under 30%.

• Newmarket East (West Suffolk) – Reform UK (29.7%)
• Wilmslow Lacey Green (Cheshire East) – Conservatives (29.8%)
• Stotfold (Central Bedfordshire) – Reform UK (30.8%)
• Illtyd (Vale of Glamorgan) – Reform UK (31.3%)
• Talbot & Branskome (Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole) – Liberal Democrats (32.4%)

This is not the fault of the individual councillors elected; they have to compete in the system as it is. However, that system is clearly producing perverse outcomes when the views of over two-thirds of voters are regularly being completely ignored.

Local elections that are fit for purpose

It does not have to be this way. Local elections in two nations of the UK, Scotland and Northern Ireland, are conducted using the Single Transferable Vote (STV), a system of proportional representation where voters rank candidates in order of preference.

When standard local elections take place in Scotland, between two and five councillors are elected to represent each ward. The proportional nature of the system means that the representatives elected to serve each ward far better reflect the political balance of views of voters in that area than is the case in England and Wales.

At local council level in Scotland, it is vanishingly rare to see single parties win underserved majorities of council seats, when they lack majority support within that area. This is far removed from the situation in England, under First Past The Post, as we saw at the local elections in May 2025, when single parties won overall majorities on multiple councils, despite receiving the backing of fewer than 40% of voters.

How Scottish by-elections work

If a Scottish councillor resigns or dies, a by-election takes place to elect one replacement. Voters rank as many or as few candidates as they like, in the same way as they do under the Single Transferable Vote. If no candidate wins over half the votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and the votes that had gone to them are moved to each voter’s second preference.

This process continues until a candidate achieves the support of over half of people who voted or only one candidate is left.  An example of this occurred in a Scottish by-election, on 26 June 2025, in the Fountainbridge & Craiglockhart ward of City of Edinburgh Council.

The first preference vote shares for the top six candidates were as follows and are a prime example of the multi-party world that British politics has now entered.

• Labour: 20.8%
• Liberal Democrats: 20.4%
• Green Party: 18.2%
• Scottish National Party: 14.5%
• Conservatives: 13.8%
• Reform UK: 7.9%

If this local by-election had occurred in England, under First Past the Post, then the Labour candidate would have been elected with the backing of just over one-fifth of voters. Almost 80% of voters would have been ignored.

Fortunately, the preferential system used in the Scottish context meant that the views of a wider portion of voters was taken into account and the winning candidate took up their place in the council chamber with the backing of a much more solid 54.8% of voters who turned out, once the preferences of each of the eliminated candidates had been transferred.

The graph below, from Ballot Box Scotland, shows how the vote transfers process unfolded, with the Liberal Democrats candidate emerging as the winner after all votes had been transferred.

 

On 2 September 2025, the House of Commons held the second reading of the English Devolution & Community Empowerment Bill. While the bill covers many areas, one of the clauses is something we have been calling for – the cutting short of the failed imposition of First Past the Post for Mayoral and Police and Crime Commissioner elections.

There are a few more legislative stages to go, but the Bill passed its 2nd reading by 365 – 164 votes.

Traditionally, voters could put down a second choice when electing these positions – it was meant to stop them being elected with the support of just a small portion of the local community. But the last government sneaked plans to impose First Past the Post on Mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners into the 2022 Elections Act during the Committee Stage – avoiding scrutiny from MPs.

The inevitable happened, and this year we saw a mayor elected with the support of fewer than a quarter of voters. So, we’re pleased that MPs have voted to cut short this misguided electoral experiment.

The Electoral Reform Society briefed MPs ahead of the debate, and thousands of our supporters emailed their MPs to ask them to attend.

We can do better than the Supplementary Vote

The traditional system for electing Mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners is the Supplementary Vote, which is a big improvement on First Past the Post. But this bill has the opportunity to not just repair the damage, but improve on what we had. Why limit voters to just a single back-up choice? The Alternative Vote allows voters to express their views on as many candidates as they wish.

Along with other MPs, the Liberal Democrats’ Vikki Slade MP picked up this line of argument from our briefing:

“it is ridiculous that one of the mayors elected this May won on just 25% of the vote—but the Government must go further in making votes fair. We believe that the Government should bring in the alternative vote system so that voters’ voices are properly heard.”

What about Councillors?

The government has accepted that First Past the Post doesn’t work for Mayors, but what about councillors? We called in our briefing for England and Wales to adopt the system successfully used in Scotland’s local elections for the last two decades, the Single Transferable Vote (STV).

Labour MP Euan Stainbank referred to his experiences getting elected under Scotland’s system in 2022.

“In 2022, I was elected as a local authority councillor in third place under the multi-member system, and it did work… I do think it is worth looking at that system, as I was about to touch on as a member of the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections”.

As councils get larger, we still need neighbourhood governance

The bill will get rid of the two-tier structure of district and county councils in England. This will create new councils covering much larger areas than many current district councils, so there is a danger that some voters may come to feel further away from local democracy.

The government plan to deal with this by ‘a requirement on all local authorities, in England, to establish effective neighbourhood governance’ but doesn’t say what this actually means. We warned MPs that this can’t just be left to be filled in by the minister after the bill has passed, as is currently planned.

Labour’s Maya Ellis raised concerns about how these vague proposals will interact with the existing system of Town and Parish Councils

 “I am concerned that the Bill does not fully appreciate the role that town and parish councils currently play and that the accountability of such neighbourhood area committees does not seem to be enshrined.”

This is an area that the government need to put some thought into and where genuine consultation with local people is vital.

MPs will now have the opportunity to propose amendments to the bill, and we will be making the case in all of these areas. Thank you to all of our supporters who emailed their MP – the government have made the case themselves, we need every representative elected with a fair electoral system.

Support our work

Behind every campaign win is months of detailed research and advocacy. For this Bill, we produced evidence-led briefings for MPs and ensured your concerns were front and centre in the debate.

ERS members help make this possible. You can join them today.

Join the Electoral Reform Society today

If you live in England, you might be casting a vote for a councillor in a local election this May – and with your vote, expressing your desire for how you’d like your local services to be run. With councils responsible for the management of key services, from social care to parks and schools, local government is a way for us to have a say on the decisions that impact our local area.

From withdrawing your vote from the party in charge because you don’t think they have done a good enough job, to lending it to the challengers because you like their ideas, voting is the key to influencing the priorities of your local council.

So, it’s concerning that in England and Wales, we use a voting system that means that, for many voters, it makes no difference who they vote for.

The First Past the Post system used in England and Wales results in council chambers which are scarcely recognisable when it comes to how the local population voted. It means the ideal of local elections as a way for us to make our voices heard locally breaks down.

Local councils would be better off switching to the fairer system used in Scotland for their local elections, the Single Transferable Vote (STV) – giving us a system which puts power back into local hands.

We’d have local election results that match how we voted

In 2023, local elections saw some parties winning up to 90% of the available seats on less than half of the vote share. In Tameside, for example, Labour took 90% of the council seats despite only 48% of voters backing their candidates.

Why is this? The problem with First Past the Post is that the winner only needs to win by a single vote in a crowded field. The ‘winner’ might only win a third of the vote, but as long as nobody got more, they will become the councillor. The problem comes about when the same party wins every ward on a similar level of support. Winning a third of the vote in every ward, could become winning every seat in the council chamber. Many councils aren’t that far off our hypothetical example.

That means that often, the makeup of the council simply won’t match the makeup of the votes cast – as all the votes cast for anyone other than the winner won’t contribute to the result.

Every vote is a message from a voter on how they want local services to be run.

It’s a bit of a stretch to say that we can all have a say in how our local services are run, when this system means huge swathes of these messages never translate into councillors who can put them into action.

By contrast, in Scotland council chambers are much closer to how everyone voted. And this means that we can actually hold sway over council decisions, as we’d be getting councils which actually represent us.

That’s what we should demand, and expect, in a representative democracy.

You should be able to influence how your local area is run

If you want to save your local library, get more green space, or see lower (or higher for that matter) council tax bills you need your vote to count.

Under First Past the Post, votes cast in local elections go to waste unless they’re votes for the winners. But also, the excess votes, those above the level they needed to win, make no difference.

That means that huge swathes of voters are left in a position where their vote has had no impact on the election results. Some councillors can afford to lose a lot of support in the knowledge that nothing will happen.

When a councillor can afford to lose your vote, how can you influence them?

By contrast, the Single Transferable Vote is a system which sees far fewer wasted votes, so councillors know that every vote matters, and every voter should be listened to.

STV is a tried and tested alternative

The fact is, the way we currently elect our local representatives just isn’t adequate. Huge swathes of us aren’t getting the councils we voted for, which means huge numbers of us get no say in the local decisions that really affect us.

STV is an excellent alternative to this broken system not just in theory, but in practice. In Scotland, councils have been elected via STV since 2007, and it’s put an end to councils dominated by a single party when the local area is much more mixed. As Professor Sir John Curtice illustrated in his 2022 report on the impact of STV in Scottish Local Elections, the Scottish system is a powerful example of how local democracy can put power into peoples’ hands.

Ultimately, in Scotland, voters have more say over how their local council is run than we do in England and Wales – and it’s because they scrapped the unfair system of First Past the Post, in favour of STV.

Want your vote to matter in local elections? Add your name to our call.

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.

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