We have all heard the outcome of the 2024 general election, the surprises and the predictable outcomes, but digging under the surface there’s a surprising story to tell about the millions of voters who were unheard in this election.
This General Election saw the second lowest voter turnout since the universal suffrage in 1928 with only 59.9% of people turning out to vote, narrowly beating the previous low of 59.4% in 2001. Historically, turnout was solidly above 70% until the 2001 election where it tumbled 12 percentage points from the 1997 figure of 71.3%. From there it began to slowly creep back up but we have not seen that illusive 70% figure in over a quarter of a century.
Almost as many people voted as didn’t vote in the 2024 general election
With turnout on the decline it casts doubt over the authority and mandate of our elected institutions, with over 19 million registered voters not turning out and an estimated 8.2 million eligible people missing or inaccurately registered almost the same amount of people didn’t vote, 27.5 million, as voted at this election, 28.8 million. One of the key tenants of democracy is that citizens engage in democratic life and by extension take part in voting, however we are seeing unsettling trends of people not turnout out to vote and thereby forgoing one of the most fundamental democratic rights. To try reverse this trend the government could introduce various measures to make it easier to vote including introducing Automatic Voter Registration, scrapping voter ID and extending the franchise to 16 year olds across the country.
Number of 2024 voters, registered non-voters and unregistered persons
Our estimates show that nearly as many people didn’t vote as did turnout.
Not every vote was equal in 2024
Not only did millions of voters in the UK not have their voices heard through the ballot box on the 4th July, a further 21.2 million votes cast (73.7%) made no different on the result of the UK election due to a disastrous quirk of the First Past the Post system (FPTP). Their votes were either unrepresented, they cast a vote for an unelected candidate which are disregarded under FPTP, or they were surplus, under FPTP the winner only needs to beat the candidate in second place by one vote, meaning any votes above this make no difference to the overall result.
This means that votes cast across the UK had an unequal weight depending on which constituency they were cast in.
But not every system treats votes in this way, under a various systems of Proportional Representation votes do not pile up in safe seats and have more impact on the outcome of the election. PR systems reduce the geographical determinant which allows for votes to carry different weights under FPTP, they do this by either taking a second or third preference into account if the voters first choice isn’t elected or count more preference in the first place.
You can read more about how the results would have looked under different PR systems in our recent report A System Out of Step: The 2024 General Election.
Read more in our full report, A System out of Step: The 2024 General Election