Over 50,000 people have signed the Electoral Reform Society’s petition calling for proportional representation for Westminster elections, after last week’s warped results.
Thursday’s election set alarm bells ringing when the government won a large majority on a minority of the vote.
The Conservatives’ vote share rose only slightly (1.3 percentage points) – while their share of seats rose 7.4 points (to 56%). The Greens got over 860,000 votes and just one MP, while the Brexit Party got over 600,000 votes and none. Yet it took less than 40,000 votes to elect SNP and Conservative MPs. Something is deeply wrong here.
It’s no wonder we’ve seen a surge in people signing up to support a genuinely democratic voting system – where seats match votes and everyone’s voice is heard, no matter where they are. Westminster’s rotten seat means that elections rely on a handful of ‘swing seats’ – while millions of voters in the hundreds of one-party/safe seats are effectively ignored.
That was illustrated by research for the ERS which found that just one in four people (25%) in safe seats reported receiving four or more election leaflets, compared to almost half (46%) of those in swing seats.
But even in swing seats, voters are systematically ignored: often MPs can slip in on fractions of the vote – despite most people rejecting them.
We’ve crunched the numbers and found that across the UK, there are 14,513,247 unrepresented voters who didn’t back the one winner in their area. That’s 45.3% of votes cast in the UK.
Find out how many votes went unrepresented in your area:
Unrepresented voters by region/nation
Unrepresented voters by nation
Sign the petition here and join the movement for real reform of Westminster:
Sign the petition and join the movement for real reform of Westminster