Last week’s council elections have thrown the distortions of the First Past the Post voting system into sharp relief, the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) argue.
In Sutton, the Liberal Democrats won 92.7% of council seats on just 43.7% of the vote, while Reform UK received only 3.6% of seats despite winning nearly a fifth of votes cast.
In Wandsworth, the Conservatives won more seats than Labour despite receiving fewer votes — what the ERS call a ‘wrong winner’ result. The Conservatives picked up 50% of the seats with just 29.9% of the vote, whereas Labour’s 32.1% of the vote translated into 48.3% of the seats.
Similar distortions were recorded in Havering, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Kensington and Chelsea, where large portions of voters — in some cases over a third — ended up with no representation on their council at all.
The ERS said the results demonstrate how a system designed for two-party politics is struggling to reflect an electorate now spreading its support across multiple parties, leaving thousands of votes making no difference to the final outcome.
Willie Sullivan, senior director of campaigns for the ERS, said: ‘This doesn’t need to be the case, and indeed it is not in large parts of the UK such as Scotland and Northern Ireland, where councillors are elected by proportional systems that mean council chambers far better reflect how people voted.
‘Thursday’s results underscore that it’s time to scrap First Past the Post in England and move to proportional voting so that councils properly represent the choices residents make at the ballot box.’
