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Londoners lead UK in backing fairer votes for Westminster elections

April 30, 2015 - Martin Hoscik@martinhoscik

Image: lazyllama / Shutterstick
Image: lazyllama / Shutterstock
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.”

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Comments

  1. ASLEF shrugged says

    April 30, 2015 at 8:26 pm

    In 2011 67.9% voted to keep FPTP, somehow I doubt if there’s been a massive change of heart since then, merely that most of that 74% who now say they want PR couldn’t be bothered to get off their fat arses and vote.

  2. Mit says

    May 10, 2015 at 10:42 pm

    What we have today is not a Democracy. Our voting system is rigged to create an Oligarchy which is what we have now. A few rich and strong ministers ruling our country where voting how you want for your area of the country is over-ruled at every turn. Every vote should be a free vote.
    Then only if you truly believe in your party will the laws be passed fairly for the people of Great Britain. NO MORE WHIPS !!!

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