Record support for ditching First-Past-the-Post

The latest report by the independent and highly respected National Centre for Social Research on the state of British democracy finds record support amongst the public for changing the current electoral system.

British Social Attitudes #42 | Britain's democracy: A health check, an analysis based upon a large sample of british people's views about what it is like to live in Britain and how the country is being run, was published at the end of June. The report examines survey responses from Autumn 2024 and, as such, was considered by the authors to provide an insight into whether the results of the General Election that year restored trust and confidence in the British democratic process.

One of the main conclusions of the report was that the 2024 election had failed to restore trust and confidence in the UK's system of governance. That, the authors suggest, leads to another of their main conclusions: that support for electoral reform has reached a new high. 60% of respondents were in favour of changing the electoral system “to allow smaller parties to get a fairer share of MPs”.

As BSA's graph shows, that number has been risely steadily in the last 10 years.

Another finding was that, for the first time, a majority of the voters for each of the five main parties favoured changing the existing system.

Given the widely-covered current unpopularity of the Labour government, it seems unlikely that support for electoral reform has decreased since the survey was carried out.

LDER will continue to push as strongly as we can for ditching the flawed First-Past-the-Post system and adopting the fairer Single Transferable Vote instead.