Change. That was the driving message of Labour’s successful general election campaign, and change was very much on the agenda for the ERS Comms team (as far as the electoral system goes) as we’ve been kept busy with requests over the last few weeks of the campaign.
On election night
We’ve spent the last few months meeting journalists to discuss what could happen, and to make sure they understood the background on our issues.
Across the evening of the general election, whilst many of you were watching the exit poll come in, we were busy briefing journalists and commentators with the unexpected situations that our voting system often throws up. This original research was used across the main coverage, including Channel 4, the BBC, and Sky News. Our briefings also made its way into an episode of the chart topping political podcast, The Rest is Politics.
After the election
Post election, we have toured TV studios and papers to give journalists and the public the info they need to digest the election results. Our research team found that the 2024 general election results were the most disproportionate in British electoral history. It was an evening of firsts for other reasons too for example, this election was the first ever which saw four parties receiving 10%+ of the vote share.
Armed with this work, we arranged for our Chief Executive, Darren Hughes, to go onto BBC Radio 4, BBC 5 Live, Times Radio and the BBC Breakfast sofa to make the case for proportional representation. We even had our research confirmed by BBC Verify.