Where elections often used to be a two-horse race between Labour and the Conservatives, voters are now spreading their support across an increasingly crowded field – and our voting system is struggling to keep up.
The latest polling data, including a striking new YouGov survey and a roundup of recent polling from eight major polling firms, paints a vivid picture of a country whose political allegiances have shifted dramatically. The question is no longer whether multi-party politics has arrived in the UK – it’s whether our outdated electoral system can survive it.
YouGov showing a snapshot of a fragmented electorate
A voting intention poll published by YouGov this week (fieldwork: 1-2 March), produced findings that shine a light on the multi-party politics that now exists in the UK.
Here are some of those data:
- The party with the highest level of support (Reform UK) on just 23% (fewer than a quarter of voters).
- Five parties within just nine percentage points of each other (the Liberal Democrats were in 5th place, on 14%).
- Neither of the traditional ‘big two’ parties of British politics (Labour and the Conservatives) in the top two positions (the Greens were in 2nd place, on 21%).
This was a Great Britain-wide poll but recent polling in Scotland and Wales show two other parties (the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru) as the best supported parties in each of those countries.
This week’s YouGov poll is just one poll and like any poll in isolation should be treated with caution. However, we at the Electoral Reform Society monitor opinion polling on an ongoing basis and the broad themes of the YouGov poll are in line with what we have seen from other polling.
Beyond YouGov: what the wider polling picture shows
During February 2026, eight members of the British Polling Council conducted Britain-wide general election vote intention polls. The average (mean) vote shares from the most recent February poll by each of those eight companies, was as follows:
While not quite as dramatic as the YouGov data, this averaged polling paints a similar picture. The party with the highest vote share has the support of fewer than 30% of voters. There is only a 15-point gap between the 1st and 5th placed parties. The combined Conservative and Labour vote share is just 38.2%, a significant drop on the combined 57.4% they achieved at the 2024 general election, itself a record low.
First Past the Post: A system under strain
The days of a vast majority of people voting for one of two ‘major parties’ are gone. Unfortunately, the electoral system designed for those days, First Past The Post (FPTP), is still very much with us for UK general elections.
First Past The Post resulted in the most disproportional general election result ever in 2024, when Labour won almost two-thirds of seats, from just over one-third of votes. With the continued rise of multi-party politics since then, it is likely to result in even more random and chaotic results in future.
This outdated system simply cannot cope with how people are expressing their democratic preferences in 2026. We are seeing increasing numbers of MPs or councillors elected with under one-third of votes, meaning the views of over two-thirds of voters are simply ignored.
In addition, First Past The Post often causes voters to feel under pressure to vote ‘tactically’, where they have to consider voting for a party that is not their favourite, to try to stop a party they really dislike from winning. This is not how democracy should work but there is a real danger that our next general election will be dominated by tactical discussions of who people should vote for to keep out particular parties, rather than a debate about competing visions for the country.
Now is the time to make the case for change
We need a new proportional voting system, one that reflects the new realities of multi-party politics in the UK and which would mean people could express the genuine democratic preferences without having to worry about tactical considerations.
The Representation of the People Bill is currently making its way through parliament. This bill includes several important changes we’ve long campaigned for – this is real progress. But there is a huge missing piece.
If this Bill is going to live up to its name, it must replace the outdated First Past the Post system with a proportional one – where seats in Parliament actually reflect how people vote.
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