At the start of May, many eyes were looking towards the elections taking place across large areas of England, as well as in Scotland and Wales, for a sense of what it meant for party support across Britain as a whole.
But what affect did this have on the polls the weeks following the elections? The overall picture remains one of a highly fragmented political landscape, with a multi-party system firmly entrenched.
The days of Britain’s traditional two-party system now appear to be firmly behind us. Yet the country continues to use a voting system – First Past the Post – designed for a very different political era. As voters increasingly spread their support across a wider range of parties, the system comes under greater strain, producing outcomes that can appear increasingly chaotic and often fail to reflect accurately how people have voted.
May UK General Election Polling Averages
The average (mean) vote shares from the most recent May poll, by each of the eleven polling companies who published a UK general election poll during May, is as follows:
*Compared with April’s average – Each month a different combination of pollsters will publish polls, so this change is not strictly comparing like with like, but gives a general sense of change
May’s polling average was compiled using data from the following pollsters – BMG; Deltapoll; Find Out Now; Freshwater Strategy; Ipsos; J.L. Partners; More In Common; Opinium; Techne; Trajectory Partnership; YouGov.
Parties can win with fewer than three in ten voters’ support
May’s polling averages are based on opinion polls conducted after the elections held on 7 May 2026. Compared with April, there is evidence of a modest increase in support for Reform UK and a slight decline in support for the Greens.
But one of the most striking features of today’s political landscape is that the most popular party, Reform UK, is supported by fewer than three in ten voters. Historically, such a vote share would have been regarded as a poor result for a party hoping to form a government. In Britain’s traditional two-party era, winning power usually required support from well over a third of voters.
This is no longer necessarily the case. The reason being that the First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system does not necessarily reflect the objective popularity of a party. If this was the case, a party that gets around 30% of votes would get around 30% of seats, which is what happens under proportional voting systems, such as the Single Transferable Vote.
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Why First Past the Post can produce majorities from minority support
Under First Past The Post, it is not the overall popularity of parties that shapes outcomes but their popularity in relation to their competitors. What this means in effect, is that it does not matter how low a parties overall vote share is, if they manage to finish say 6-9 points ahead of the nearest competitor party, in a crowded field, there is a good chance that they can win a majority of seats in a First Past the Post contest.
This is exactly the situation we see reflected in May’s polling data, with Reform UK comfortably below 30% support but still around 8-points ahead of their closest competitor, Labour.
What the local elections in England have shown us
A look back at some of the English local election results in May, which were held under FPTP, reveals numerous examples of parties winning a majority of seats in council chambers, with under 30% of votes or with just a touch over 30% in some cases.
Here are some examples. In each case, despite receiving a relatively low overall vote share, the party that received a majority of seats finished 6-10 points ahead of the nearest competitor party, in a very crowded field.
Note on Ealing: Many councillors are elected in wards where each voter has as many votes as there are positions to be filled. When voters have between 1 and 3 votes, depending on which ward they are in, and some decide to not cast all their votes as well, you can’t simply add up all the votes to calculate the vote shares. For councils with wards that elect more than one councillor (multi-member wards), we have calculated vote shares by using the number of votes for each party’s best-placed candidate in each ward. This is the approach taken by local election experts Professors Rallings & Thrahser, of The Elections Centre, a major resource for local election data in the UK.
Is First Past the Post really fit for purpose?
Do parties that receive the support of fewer than three-in-ten voters deserve to have an overall majority of seats on local councils or indeed in the House of Commons, in Westminster? The answer to that is a resounding ‘no’.
It’s clear that urgent reform of our electoral system, at both UK level and at local level in England and Wales, is required, as otherwise, in our new multi-party world, the types of outcomes we saw in May will keep happening.
In terms of local elections, there is an off-the-shelf model of Proprotional Representation that is already in use in two nations of the UK, Scotland and Northern Ireland – the Single Transferable Vote (STV).
This system should be introduced for local elections in England and Wales as soon as possible. It would ensure that voters preferences are translated into representation on local councils in a much more accurate way, reflecting the reality of people casting their votes for a much wider number of parties than was previously the case.
Do you agree we need a voting system where every vote counts?