Londoners lead UK in backing fairer votes for Westminster elections

A new poll commissioned by the Electoral Reform Society suggests Londoners are overwhelmingly in favour of moving to a more proportional voting system for General Elections.

The UK’s ‘first past the post’ system makes it harder for smaller parties such as UKIP and the Greens to win seats even though they’re backed by significant numbers of voters across the country.

Between them the UK’s smaller parties could take up to a fifth of votes at next week’s General Election but win fewer than 1% of seats.

Meanwhile polls suggest the SNP could take the vast majority, or even all, of Scotland’s seats at Westminster on little more than half the vote.

Polled by BMG Research on behalf of the Electoral Reform Society, 74% of people agreed or strongly agreed that “the number of seats a party gets should broadly reflect its proportion of the total votes cast”.

In London, where a proportional system system is already used to elect members of the London Assembly, 80% of respondents agreed with the statement – the highest level of support in any region of the UK.

Katie Ghose, Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said the poll “shows the public want their votes to be fairly reflected in Parliament.”

“Politics has fundamentally changed over the past few years. We are now a truly multi-party country, as the leaders’ debates have shown. But how we vote hasn’t caught up.

“Under a proportional voting system, the public could support a range of parties and vote for who they believe in, knowing their vote would genuinely count.

“With 74% of the public backing proportional elections, it’s time for politicians to put real reform back on the agenda after May 7th. That could help restore faith in politics and ensure the public have the democracy they deserve.”