Two-thirds of Parliament from a third of the votes: Are British elections out of whack?

When the Labour Party took power after the United Kingdom’s general election on July 4, its victory was hailed as a landslide.

The party took 412 of the 650 seats in the U.K.’s House of Commons – 211 more than in the 2019 election. The incumbent Conservatives watched their share tumble from 372 to 121, a record low for the party.

“You have given us a clear mandate,” said Labour Party leader Keir Starmer as he stood on the steps of the prime minister’s official residence, No. 10 Downing St. “We will use it to deliver change.”

Yet a closer look at the statistics shows a different picture.

Labour may have taken 64% of the seats in Parliament, but it won only 34% of the vote. The disconnect between vote share and seats won was even more pronounced for smaller parties: The populist Reform UK secured 14% of the vote, but won only five seats. By contrast, the Liberal Democrats won a 12% share of the vote, but will become Parliament’s third-largest party, with 72 representatives.

These discrepancies have long been a part of U.K. elections, which are geared toward a two-party system. But as more Britons turn their backs on both Labour and the Conservatives, they are wondering whether the current system can represent the country’s widening spectrum of views.

“This election was the most disproportionate on record,” says Tom Brake, a former member of Parliament for the U.K.’s Liberal Democrats and the director of Unlock Democracy, a pressure group campaigning for electoral and democratic reform.

“We now have a situation where 40% of people are voting for parties other than the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. Many of them are now realizing that vote often doesn’t count” in the current system.

No simple answers

The U.K.’s current electoral system follows the principle of “first past the post” (often called FPTP). It means that whichever candidate wins the most votes in a constituency will win its seat in Parliament.

The system is easy to understand – but to critics, its simplicity leaves many voters unrepresented. Many candidates are victorious after winning fewer than half the votes cast, and they head to Parliament without the support of the majority of their constituents.

The system also sees widespread use of tactical voting. If the race between the top two candidates is expected to be tight, many voters will use their ballot to keep their least-preferred candidate out, rather than to express their own beliefs. It is a dynamic that inevitably favors larger parties – a bias that has become increasingly apparent as smaller political groups win more votes but see no change in government.

For many electoral reform groups, the answer is simple: switch to a new system of proportional representation, in which seats are awarded based on a party’s vote share. The format is common worldwide, particularly in Europe. But previous attempts to change the U.K.’s voting system have fallen flat.

In 2011, Britons were asked in a referendum if they wanted to do away with FPTP, to be replaced not with proportional representation, but with a ranked, alternative vote system. The British electorate, however, was unimpressed – 67.9% voted to keep the status quo. The result ended any talk of change for several years.

For Louise Thompson, a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Manchester, one of the reasons for that result was simply apathy. Election reform is an issue that tends to resonate in the aftermath of a ballot but quickly fades, she says. “It’s not really something voters tend to care about between elections. They care far more about health and education.”

This gives little incentive for major parties to push for change – particularly as they are the ones who benefit most from FPTP. “If you’re a government with a big majority, then you’re going to be wary about putting something forward that will inhibit your parliamentary authority at the next election,” says Dr. Thompson.

Yet the U.K.’s political landscape in 2024 is very different from the way it looked at the time of the alternative vote referendum. The country’s media landscape is fragmented, and trust in institutions is low. In a June 2024 report, Britain’s National Centre for Social Research found that a record 53% supported changing the electoral system toward one that was “fairer” to smaller parties.

Campaigners believe the time is right to try again.

“Trust in politics has declined precipitously” since the 2011 referendum, says Steve Gilmore, a spokesperson for Make Votes Matter, a group campaigning to introduce proportional representation. “As trust declines, the desire for politics to be done differently – in a way that can give the public more confidence that their voices, that their concerns will be taken into account by government – grows.”

Rebuilding trust

Electoral reform isn’t the only route to greater representation. Changes in other areas of Parliament could provide an answer.

Currently, only the official opposition and the third-largest party are given special rights in Parliament, such as a guaranteed opportunity to speak at the prime minister’s weekly interrogation by members of Parliament (a convention known as Prime Minister’s Questions), or an assured spot on certain parliamentary committees. Expanding such guarantees to smaller parties could be a less contentious way for the government to show voters that their voices are truly being heard.

“Electoral reform would mean waiting for the next general election and hoping that parties don’t learn how to play the new system,” says Dr. Thompson. “Changing internal rules and procedures would make a massive difference now.”

Yet ultimately, campaigners believe that change of some kind will be needed for the country to move forward – and particularly to regain trust among disenfranchised Britons.

“The surest way to improve trust in politics is to deliver for the people,” says Mr. Gilmore. “It’s much easier to deliver for the majority when the majority of people’s voices are actually being represented in government.”