Half of Britons support introducing proportional representation, but retaining local MPs remains a sticking point
Electoral reform has been a perennial side debate in British politics since the 19th century, with those who support smaller parties often left frustrated by our present first past the post (FPTP) voting system, which tends to favour the larger, established parties.
Following the 2024 general election, which produced the least proportional result in British history, there have been renewed calls for elections to the House of Commons to switch to a system of proportional representation (PR). This would mean that the seats won by parties were roughly in proportion to their share of the vote, though this would make it less likely for one party to win an overall majority of seats, as has been the norm in the UK.
Half of Britons (49%) would support the introduction of a PR system, almost twice as many as the 26% who favour retaining our present FPTP system.
Support for a switch to PR is highest among Green (72%), Reform UK (67%) and Lib Dem voters (61%), the three parties who officially support electoral reform.
Nonetheless, a small majority of Labour voters (53%) also support moving to a PR system, relative to only 27% who would prefer to keep FPTP, while Conservatives are fairly evenly divided between the 39% who would like the UK to adopt PR and the 42% who continue to support FPTP.
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of those who express a preference for either voting system say they feel strongly about it, including 59% of those who prefer FPTP and 66% of those who favour PR.
Where do Britons stand on voting system trade-offs?
Choosing a voting system is ultimately a game of trade-offs, with different systems prioritising different elements, such as proportionality or local representation. What side of the trade-offs the British public come down on varies from trade-off to trade-off.
Britons tend to say it is more important for seats to be allocated proportionally between parties (46%) than for the largest party to win a majority of seats in the House of Commons (27%), while similarly tending to favour having a greater number of smaller parties (44%) than a system with two larger main parties (27%).
Indeed, Britons are fairly open to smaller parties, with 53% believing that winning a small number of votes should entitle you to at least a small number of seats, as happens under some PR systems, while just 19% believe such parties should not win any seats, as is intended under FPTP.
Nonetheless, Britons are divided 37% to 38% over whether they prefer single-party government or coalition government, as well as splitting 41% to 44% on whether they would rather cast a vote for just a single candidate or be able to rank multiple candidates.
And there is a clear lead for the status quo when it comes to constituencies. Nearly half of Britons (45%) would prefer to have just a single local MP, as they currently have under FPTP, compared to just 29% who would rather have multiple MPs from different parties in constituencies covering larger areas, as would be necessary under most PR systems.
While PR and FPTP supporters largely land on their ‘side’ of the debate, there are some exceptions. PR supporters still tend to favour having a single local MP (45%) over having multi-member constituencies (36%), while the 44% of FPTP supporters who think parties who win small numbers of votes should still win some seats outnumber the 36% who think small parties should win no seats.
Additionally, on some issues, there is a divide between Conservative and Reform UK supporters of PR and those who voted for left-of-centre parties (Labour, Lib Dem, Green, SNP or Plaid Cymru). For instance, while ‘left’ PR supporters are much more likely to favour coalitions over single party-governments (59% vs 25%), ‘right’ PR supporters are evenly split 42% to 44% on which type of government is preferable.
Do Britons think PR would make a positive difference?
Britons see electoral reform as an attempt to improve how representative parliament is of public opinion, with 53% believing PR would make a positive difference on this front, against just 7% who believe ditching FPTP would lead to parliament being less representative.
There is also a tendency to believe that PR would make politics more accountable, with 37% of Britons thinking that a switch in voting systems would make a positive difference to how easy it is for voters to get rid of bad MPs or hold a government to account, relative to 13-17% of Britons feeling PR would have a negative impact here.
When it comes to political stability, how simple the ballot paper is, and the representation of the far-left or far-right in parliament, there is more of an even split. In these three areas, a quarter of Britons (24-25%) believe PR would make a positive difference, while 22-26% believe it would make a negative difference and 18-24% feel it would make no real difference either way.
Does partisanship change attitudes to electoral reform?
It is not uncommon in the electoral reform debate for there to be accusations of some supporting a particular voting system for reasons of partisan advantage.
Had the 2024 general election been conducted under PR, the main beneficiaries would likely have been Reform UK, with some scenarios giving them around 85 more MPs than they actually won under FPTP. Under the same estimate, the Greens would have won around 35 seats more, the Conservatives around 30 seats more, while Labour would have won nearly 200 fewer seats.
When shown this hypothetical result, Reform UK voters were perhaps unsurprisingly the most enthusiastic, with 73% seeing it as a better result. Half of Conservatives (48%) also saw it as an improvement, though 22% believe it would have been a worse result, with Greens splitting 47% to 17% and Lib Dems 40% to 28% in favour it being a better result.
By contrast, four in ten Labour voters (39%) see the ‘PR result’ version of the 2024 election as a worse result than the actual election, compared to just 23% who see it as a better result.
Notably, though, only a slim majority of those who support PR (54%) felt that a PR version of the 2024 election would have been a better result, while not even half of those who favour FPTP (45%) felt it was a decidedly worse result than the actual 2024 election.
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Photo: Getty
