STV analysis suggests proportional voting would make majorities rarer at Westminster
Andy Burnham’s call to replace first-past-the-post with proportional representation has renewed debate over whether Westminster elections would produce more coalition or minority governments. The article says Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced a national commission on electoral reform, while Burnham argues that the current system can give power to a government supported by only a minority of voters.
An Electoral Reform Society analysis of past results, using the Single Transferable Vote as its model, suggests Labour would have been 99 seats short of a majority in 2024, and the Conservatives 18 short in 2019. It also projects that neither main party would have won 300 seats in 2017, and that Labour would have narrowly missed a majority in 1997; the last post-war majority government under this model would have been Harold Wilson’s in 1966. Under STV, voters rank candidates in larger multi-member areas, with surplus votes transferred to later preferences.
- Burnham’s push for proportional representation has revived debate over coalition government.
- STV modelling suggests most post-war elections would not have produced a majority.
- The analysis identifies 1966 as the last likely majority under STV.
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Originally published by Daily Mail as “Burnham’s recipe for Left-wing ‘rainbow coalition’ chaos: No election for decades would have given a single party a majority under PR voting system that PM wants Britain to use”.