Half of Britons (49 per cent) support reform of the voting system and the introduction of proportional representation (PR) — almost twice as many as those who favour retaining the present first past the post (FPTP) system, a new YouGov poll has found.
The 2024 general election was the most disproportional in British history, which saw the Labour Party receive 63.2 per cent of House of Commons seats on just 33.7 per cent of the vote. An increase of 1.6 per cent in the party’s 2019 vote-share had seen Keir Starmer’s party more than double its seats to 411.
Support for a switch to PR is highest among Green (72 per cent), Reform UK (67 per cent) and Liberal Democrat voters (61 per cent) — the three parties who officially support electoral reform.
A majority of Labour voters (53 per cent) also support moving to a PR system — versus only 27 per cent who would prefer to keep FPTP.
Overall, just 26 per cent of voters favour retaining the FPTP system, YouGov found. A further 25 per cent responded “Don’t know” when asked which voting system they prefer, PR or FPTP.
Conservative voters are fairly evenly divided between the 39 per cent who would like the UK to adopt PR and the 42 per cent who continue to support FPTP.
YouGov also found that nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) of those who express a preference for either voting system say they feel strongly about it, including 59 per cent of those who prefer FPTP and 66 per cent of those who favour PR.
The poll comes as cross-party pressure for reform of the voting system builds, following a House of Commons debate on proportional representation last week.
In the debate, MPs from the Labour, Liberal Democrat, Reform UK and Green parties pressured the government to change the “broken” FPTP system.
Labour MP Alex Sobel, chair of the Fair Elections All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), told the government that FPTP is “failing on its own terms” and “producing more and more random results.”
Where do Britons stand on voting system trade-offs?
— Josh Self (@josh-self.bsky.social) 2025-02-03T10:06:44.982Z
Liberal Democrat MP and Fair Elections APPG vice-chair Lisa Smart said: “[FPTP] is a system that no longer functions as a fair or effective mechanism for translating the will of the electorate into parliamentary representation.
“It is collapsing under its own weight, and the time has come to take the first step in addressing this failure with the establishment of a national commission for electoral reform.”
The minister responsible for responding to the debate, Rushanara Ali, confirmed that the government has “no plans to change the voting system” for elections to the House of Commons “at this time”.
The democracy minister added: “The [FPTP] system, while not perfect, provides for… a direct relationship between members of parliament and their local constituency.”
The debate followed a commons vote late last year, when MPs backed a symbolic motion on proportional representation by 138 MPs to 136.
Those in favour included 59 Labour MPs.
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.
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‘No plans to change voting system’ insists minister, as cross-party pressure for reform builds
Source: Politics
