Six in ten British voters say they would support replacing first-past-the-post with a proportional voting system. Labour won a 174-seat majority in 2024 and could legislate electoral reform with no opposition support. It is not doing so. The gap between public opinion and government action on this issue is among the starkest in current British politics.
The Polling on Electoral Reform
Multiple polls in 2025 and 2026 have asked voters whether they support changing the voting system. The results are remarkably consistent. An Electoral Reform Society-commissioned YouGov poll from January 2026 found 61% support for introducing a more proportional system, 19% opposed, and 20% don’t know. A separate Opinium poll for Make Votes Matter found 58% support when the question was framed as replacing the current system with one “where seats match votes”.
Cross-breaks reveal where support is concentrated. PR polls at 84% among Lib Dem voters, 82% among Green voters, and 71% among Reform voters — the latter reflecting the Reform electorate’s acute sense that their 28% polling share translates into nowhere near 28% of seats under the current system. Support is lower among Labour (52%) and Conservative (41%) voters, both of which have historically benefited from FPTP’s tendency to manufacture majorities.
Why FPTP Suits Labour
The structural reason Labour does not pursue PR is straightforward: the current system has delivered it three landslide majorities on below-40% of the vote, in 1997, 2001, and 2024. Under most proportional systems, Labour’s 33.7% in 2024 would have delivered around 220–240 seats rather than 412. The party would have needed coalition partners, policy compromises, and coalition negotiations of the kind that characterise proportional democracies in Europe.
Many Labour MPs represent safe seats where their personal majorities would be retained under any likely system, but the party’s institutional culture — shaped by decades of trying to win unambiguous governing power — has always prioritised winner-takes-all clarity over the consensus politics that PR systems tend to produce. The party leadership also calculates that a future Conservative government elected under PR would be harder to displace than one elected under FPTP.
What Kind of PR Do Voters Want?
When pollsters ask PR supporters which specific system they prefer, the Additional Member System — as used in Scottish Parliament, Welsh Senedd, and London Assembly elections — is the most popular option, chosen by around 38% of PR supporters. The Single Transferable Vote used in Northern Ireland and local elections in Scotland is second at 29%. Pure party-list systems as used in the Netherlands and Israel are the least popular option at 12%, reflecting British voters’ attachment to constituency representation.
This matters for reform advocates because it suggests a practical path that does not require wholesale abandonment of constituency links. An Additional Member System retaining most single-member constituencies alongside a proportional top-up list could command majority public support and represent a genuine compromise with FPTP’s defenders.
The Lib Dem Pressure and Cross-Party Dynamics
The Liberal Democrats’ experience of the 2024 election — 72 seats on 12% of the vote — while better than their average under FPTP still represents a significant distortion. The party wins seats by concentrating its vote efficiently in target constituencies, but nationally receives about a quarter of the representation its vote share would imply under PR. Ed Davey has made electoral reform a red line for any future coalition negotiation.
The Greens are even more distorted by the current system: their 6.7% in 2024 delivered four seats, where under PR they would have had around 40–45. This gives both parties strong incentives to keep electoral reform prominent, but their combined leverage depends on a hung parliament at the next election — which current polling, paradoxically, makes less likely given Labour’s FPTP advantages.
The Reform Factor: An Unlikely PR Coalition
The most politically interesting development in the PR debate is the growing Reform vote for electoral reform. With Reform polling at 28% nationally but potentially winning only 80–100 seats under FPTP, even many Reform voters have concluded the current system is stacked against parties outside the traditional two-party duopoly. Nigel Farage has occasionally acknowledged this frustration, though the party has not made PR a formal policy commitment.
If Reform were to actively campaign for electoral reform, it would transform the politics of this issue. An unlikely coalition of Greens, Lib Dems, and Reform voters representing around 55% of the electorate all wanting a more proportional system would be the most significant electoral reform pressure in decades. For now, the voting intention figures show a parliament that does not reflect how Britain actually votes — and growing awareness of that fact across the political spectrum.