When is an electoral reform not proportional? That question matters because support for scrapping First Past the Post is growing, yet not every alternative would solve Westminster’s central democratic problem: Parliaments that don’t reflect how people voted.
This discussion has come into focus as senior figures in the Labour Party have made statements backing electoral reform in recent weeks. Andy Burnham, who is seen as the frontrunner to be the next Labour leader if he wins the Makerfield by-election, has said he wants electoral reform for Westminster and that proportional representation is an idea whose ‘time has come’. Wes Streeting, another likely contender in the next Labour leadership contest has also publicly recommitted his support for scrapping First Past the Post.
Burnham in particular has been a passionate advocate for electoral reform for a number of years now. He has previously explained how he was converted to the cause by his experiences running to be the mayor of Manchester, which gave him his first taste of campaigning under a non-First Past the Post electoral system.
Labour leadership frontrunners have backed electoral reform
In a recent ITV interview, he said: “I want to describe what was a real change moment in my political journey. I stood for Westminster four times under the First Past the Post system.
“And then in 2017 when I stood for the first time to be the mayor of Greater Manchester, under a proportional system, I realised you had an incentive to knock on any door, because you may be able to get a second preference from somebody who was a Lib Dem voter or a Green. And I used to say to them ‘oh well okay, if support regulation of the buses maybe you could consider giving me a second preference’.
“And the thing about that was is that it finally aligned the conversation on the door with what people want from politics, which is about problem-solving first and foremost, not about point-scoring.
“For me, building a different political conversation in the country then allows us to start thinking of different long-term solutions. I think Westminster politics has served people very badly indeed.”
When asked by the interviewer if he was talking about electoral reform for Westminster, Burnham replied.
“I support it, and I think it brings a different conversation. But that, to answer your question, would require it to be in a manifesto and endorsed at a general election.”
In his most recent interview with the Observer, Andy Burnham has said, “I am committed to proportional representation”.
Burnham’s conversion on electoral reform came through experience of a preferential system, rather than proportional, but he has rightly identified that proportional representation is the answer for Westminster. That may seem like a small difference, but it is a crucial one when thinking about what electoral system should replace First Past the Post and whether it would lead to parliaments that truly represented how the country voted.
Crucial difference between proportional and preferential systems
Broadly speaking, when talking about the alternatives to First Past the Post, electoral systems are either ‘proportional’ or ‘preferential’. Some can be both; more on which later.
Proportional systems are ones designed to ensure that an elected chamber, a parliament or a council, etc., reflects the way people voted. So, if party X won 30% of the vote, they then get roughly 30% of the seats. This in a nutshell is what is meant by ‘proportionality’ – it effectively means accurate representation between votes and seats.
However, this doesn’t work for elections to a single position, as a party can’t hold 30% of a single mayor. In these situations, preferential voting is the best way to ensure that more votes count towards the result.
Burnham’s first Greater Manchester mayoral campaign was held under the preferential Supplementary Vote system, which allowed voters to express a first and second preference. That system was later replaced by First Past the Post, before being restored for future mayoral elections after 19 June 2026.
The Supplementary Vote allows voters to express a first and second preference on their ballot paper, hence why it is called a preferential system. If, after the first preferences are counted, a candidate has won 50%, they are elected. If not, all but the top two candidates are eliminated, and votes cast for eliminated candidates are moved to each voter’s second preference. If these are for a candidate in the top two, they are added to their totals to decide the winner. This system means that the winning candidate tends to have a greater share of the vote and a stronger mandate than under systems like First Past the Post.
Australia shows preferential voting doesn’t mean accurate representation between seats and votes
The reason systems such as Supplementary Vote are not considered Proportional Representation is that if they were used for elections to a chamber, such as parliamentary elections, they can often produce disproportional results that don’t properly represent how people voted.
An example of this is the last Australian general election, which was held under the preferential system, the Alternative Vote (AV), the same that was rejected at the UK 2011 referendum. AV is also a preferential system similar to SV. However, AV lets voters rank as many candidates as they wish in order and transfers preferences through successive rounds. SV limits voters to a first and second preference and only transfers relevant second preferences to the final two.
Australia shows that preferential voting in single-member seats does not reliably produce proportional outcomes. The Australian Labor Party won 34.6% of first-preference votes but secured around 63% of House seats. This echoes the last UK general election in 2024, where Labour won two thirds of the seats (63%) on just a third of the vote (34%), which produced the most disproportional parliament in UK history.
So, if the Supplementary Vote system were to be used for Westminster instead of First Past the Post, it would also likely produce disproportional results and not solve the main problem – ending up with parliaments that do not properly represent the way the country voted.
In short: Preferential voting can make individual contests fairer; proportional representation makes the whole Parliament fairer.
Only a proportional system fixes the problem of less and less representative parliaments
This is not just a technical quibble but goes to the heart of what electoral reform is meant to achieve. Only a proportional system would address the problem we currently have of parliament looking less and less representative of what the voters expressed at the ballot box.
Fortunately, this is not a hard either/or choice as there are proportional voting systems that incorporate preferential voting, such as the Single Transferable Vote (STV), which allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference on their ballot paper and is designed to produce proportional outcomes. This system is already familiar to millions of people in the UK as it is used in Scottish local elections and in Northern Ireland for the Northern Ireland Assembly and council elections. It also happens to be the ERS’s preferred electoral system.
It is worth noting that Burnham has said he wants an independent commission set up to look at the issue of the electoral system for Westminster and then see proportional representation in the next Labour manifesto. This is an approach the ERS agrees with and echoes the Royal Commission in New Zealand in the 1980s that set the stage for their transition to proportional representation in the 1990s.
Whatever process we go through to determine what system comes after First Past the Post, the central question has to be how its replacement ensures that Parliament actually reflects how people voted.
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