Recently Lydia Pearson expressed concern over the apparent success of Reform UK in the 2025 round of Lancashire County Council Elections, stating that the party “absolutely swept the floor” both nationally and locally. Actually, they didn’t – in Lancashire they won only 36% of the vote. It was our outdated First-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system that gifted them 63% of the seats and absolute power on the council, despite nearly two-thirds of voters not supporting them.
Supervote Project
The Supervote Project is a small campaign, run by the author, working alongside others to replace our inefficient Victorian voting system with proportional representation (PR). While other groups are focused on PR for Westminster elections, our initiative concentrates on local council elections, where the FPTP voting system is doing untold damage to democratic representation. To this end, I have compiled a “Top 10” of County Councils with the most undemocratic local election results in 2025. Here it is:
| Ranking and County | Dominant Party | % Seats taken by that Party | % Votes won by that Party | % Disparity |
| 1.Staffordshire | Reform UK | 79.0% | 41.2% | 37.8% |
| 2.Kent | Reform UK | 70.4% | 37.0% | 33.4% |
| 3.Derbyshire | Reform UK | 65.6% | 36.8% | 28.8% |
| 4.Lancashire | Reform UK | 63.1% | 35.7% | 27.4% |
| 5.Nottinghamshire | Reform UK | 60.6% | 36.3% | 24.3% |
| 6.Lincolnshire | Reform UK | 62.9% | 39.2% | 23.7% |
| 7.Cambridgeshire | LibDem | 50.8% | 27.4% | 23.4% |
| 8.Shropshire | LibDem | 56.8% | 34.2% | 22.6% |
| 9.Oxfordshire | LibDem | 52.2% | 30.1% | 22.1% |
| 10. Gloucestershire | LibDem | 49.1% | 27.2% | 21.9% |
Not much of a democracy!
As can be seen, all media talk of landslides was twaddle. Reform UK did not win a majority of votes in any of the councils where they walked off with a majority of the seats. While Staffordshire takes the wooden spoon, Lancashire’s results were the 4th worst. Number crunching the Lancashire results reveals that:
- The Labour Party received 19% of the vote but secured only 6% of the seats, while the Conservatives obtained 21% but only 10% of the seats.
- Of the 84 councillors elected, only 10 won an outright majority of the vote in their divisions – the rest were elected with only minority support.
- A majority of the votes cast in the County – 58% – did not contribute to the election of any candidate.
- Turnout was low, with two-thirds of those eligible not voting at all.
How can we put it right?
Our analysis just shows that the voting system in this country is not actually democratic. We are obliged to use the FPTP voting system: a 19th century mechanism that wastes many of the votes cast, while producing a distorted result with the remainder. The following table shows this in more detail for parties in Lancashire County’s 2025 Elections (from the County Council’s website):
| Party | % Votes Won | % Seats Taken |
| Reform UK | 35.69% | 63.09% |
| Conservative | 21.15% | 9.52% |
| Labour | 18.92% | 5.95% |
| Liberal Democrat | 9.01% | 5.95% |
| Green | 8.38% | 4.76% |
| Independent | 5.46% | 8.34% |
| Other Parties | 1.39% | 2.39% |
Something is wrong in the state of… Lancashire
Clearly, something is very wrong with a voting system that can award nearly two-thirds of the seats to a party that has won just over one-third of the vote, while denying 58% of voters representation of their choice.
First-past-the-post is past it. Continued use of this Victorian museum piece makes about asmuch sense as using Stephenson’s Rocket to haul trains on HS2. Lancashire’s voting system needs bringing up to date so that election results reflect the votes cast – transforming the County’s elections into vibrant, diverse and inclusive events where there is everything for everyone everywhere to play for – for voters, local party organisations and candidates alike.
To achieve this, Lancashire needs to have a system of proportional representation – a type of voting system that allocates seats in proportion to votes cast. So, if Labour, for instance, were to poll 6 out of 10 votes, they would be awarded 6 out of 10 seats. Our current, outdated, Victorian system does not deliver this.
An end to ‘King of the Castle’ politics – with the Supervote!
The Single Transferable Vote (STV) is the British form of proportional representation. While continental PR systems are primarily designed to deliver party proportionality, STV allows voters to rank candidates by preference in multi-member areas. This gives people more choice and the ability to vote on what matters most to them – whether it’s party affiliation, independence of thought, gender, culture, or position on a key issue. Wasted votes are minimised because votes are redistributed according to voters’ preferences: votes for candidates with little support or surplus votes beyond what a winning candidate needs are recycled. The counting method ensures that the collective will of the electorate is properly reflected, with seats awarded in proportion to votes cast. STV is the most powerful vote that can be given to an electorate – and has justifiably been described as “the Supervote”.
Time for England to play catch up
The Irish Republic has used STV since the 1920s. In the UK, Conservative and Labour Governments have supported its use in Northern Ireland for local council, Assembly and European elections for over 50 years. In 2007, STV was successfully introduced for local elections in Scotland, and the Welsh Senedd has passed legislation that allows local councils in Wales to use it if they so choose. English councils need to catch up.
Introducing STV could boost voter participation, breathe new life into local party politics, and help strengthen democracy from the grassroots up. In turn, this could open the door to a new era in our representative democracy – more consensual, less adversarial and with more input from a broader range of voices, and ultimately better quality decision-making.
Author’s note
Further sources of information include: The Electoral Reform Society, Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform, Conservative Action for Electoral Reform and Liberal Democrats for Electoral Reform. Readers unhappy with the undemocratic state of our voting system might also wish to register their displeasure by writing to the Right Hon Angela Rayner MP, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF, asking for legislation to be introduced so that voters in Lancashire and beyond can use a fairer voting system for their local elections in future.
