The votes from last week’s local council elections across England have now been counted, and one thing is clear: First Past the Post is yet again failing to reflect voters’ views on who should run their local council.
People vote in local elections because they want to shape what happens where they live. Whether it’s protecting local services, improving their neighbourhoods, or changing the direction of their area, voters head to the ballot box expecting their voice to matter.
But once again, the results across England are showing how badly the First Past the Post voting system fails to reflect what voters actually wanted. Instead of councils that are shaped by the views of the communities they serve, England’s voting system too often produces results that hand overwhelming power to one party without majority support from voters.
Too many council results simply do not reflect how people voted
Our team has been analysing the results and there are some key examples of where the councils bear very little resemblance to how people actually voted.
In Hammersmith and Fulham, Labour have over three quarters of the seats on little over a third of the vote.
It’s a similar story in Havering, as Reform picked up 71% of the seats on just 36% of the vote share.
And in Sutton, the results are stark. The Liberal Democrats have taken almost all the seats on the Council with a minority share of the vote.
These are very different political stories, but they point to the same problem: First Past the Post distorts election results no matter which party benefits. Ultimately, the voting system is just failing to deliver for the voters.
When coming in second means you come first
First Past the Post is often dubbed a ‘winner takes all system’. The idea is simple: the party that comes first gets the power, even if the majority didn’t vote for them. But remarkably, it cannot even guarantee that the party with the most votes will win the most seats.
This is what happened in Wandsworth, as the Conservatives managed to turn a second place in votes to the most seats in the council.
Because the system counts results ward by ward rather than looking at how people voted across the council area as a whole, seat totals can end up badly distorted. What matters is not simply how many votes a party wins, but where those votes are won and how ‘efficiently’ they are distributed.
First Past the Post is failing voters
When election after election produces the same distorted outcomes, local elections can start to feel less like a meaningful expression of voters’ choices and more like a lottery shaped by the quirks of the voting system.
It’s no wonder that people are left frustrated, feeling powerless. The voting system is creating a disconnect between communities and the councils that represent them.
England doesn’t need to settle for a broken voting system
Across the UK, there are already voting systems that better reflect how people vote.
Northern Ireland has used proportional representation for local council elections since 1973, while Scotland adopted it in 2007. These systems are designed to ensure seats more closely match the votes cast, giving more people a meaningful voice in local decision-making.
It’s high time voters in England got the representation they deserve. Local democracy should be something people can actually use to change their area, not something that leaves them feeling shut out. We need a voting system where local election results better reflect how people vote.
If we want local people to feel connected to the decisions shaping their communities, it’s time to scrap first past the post and finally fairly represent us all in English local government.
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