31% of Reform UK voters now back retaining first past the post, up 14 points since January last year
Key takeaways
- By 45% to 25%, Britons tend to prefer proportional representation (PR) over first past the post for UK general elections
- Majorities of Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters back PR, as do 45% of Reform UK voters
- Support for retaining FPTP among Reform UK voters has risen from 17% to 31% since January last year
For many years, one of the most prominent advocates for proportional representation (PR) in Britain was Nigel Farage, whose parties have historically been significantly underrepresented in parliament. At the 2024 election, for instance, Reform UK won less than 1% of seats despite winning 14% of the vote, as part of what was then the most disproportional general election result in British history.
But with voting intention polls over the last year showing clear Reform UK leads, it is likely that our current first past the post system (FPTP) would cease to be a disadvantage for the party: YouGov’s MRP in September projected Reform could win 48% of seats on just 27% of the vote. This has led to some in the party dropping their support for electoral reform. Now, the latest YouGov tracker data shows Reform UK supporters are also changing their tune…
While 2024 Reform UK voters are still more likely to back PR than FPTP for elections to the House of Commons, the 45% favouring electoral reform is a double-digit decrease from polls in January and July last year, when 55-56% support changing the voting system in this way.
Against this, the proportion of Reform UK voters favouring FPTP has risen 14 points from 17% last January to 31% in our latest figures.
Among voters for other parties, attitudes are largely unchanged. Two thirds of Green (67%) and Lib Dem voters (65%) back PR, as do a majority of Labour voters (56%), while Conservatives are divided between the 43% who support FPTP and the 38% who favour PR.
Overall support has remained reasonably steady, with our polling since 2019 showing nearly half of Britons (45-48%) favouring a switch to proportional representation since the election, while around a quarter (24-26%) prefer retaining first past the post.
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