Common Questions

What does the Electoral Reform Society do?: A UK NGO founded 1884 that campaigns for proportional representation and independent election administration.
What is the Electoral Reform Society's position on the 2026 Welsh Senedd election?: The ERS supports Wales's switch from AMS to closed-list D'Hondt PR and views the 2026 Senedd election as a significant democratic reform and live evidence for proportional representation arguments.
What did John Major say about electoral reform?: In the Attlee Foundation Lecture at King's College London on 18 March 2026, Major said recent general elections had thrown into doubt the continuing validity of First past the post. He stopped short of endorsing PR but supported Flexible voting pilots — a position the Electoral Reform Society praised.
What does the Electoral Reform Society want to change about UK elections?: The ERS campaigns to replace first-past-the-post with proportional representation for Westminster elections. It argues FPTP produces unrepresentative results as five-party fragmentation grows; the 61 English councils under No Overall Control after 7 May 2026 are its latest evidence.
Did the Welsh closed-list PR system squeeze small parties as the ERS predicted?: Yes. The Wales Green Party collapsed from a projected 10 seats to 2 in the final fortnight as voters consolidated behind Plaid Cymru, a D'Hondt squeeze effect the ERS had flagged as a structural feature of closed-list proportional systems.Source: Lowdown
Why did a former Conservative prime minister back electoral reform in 2026?: Sir John Major delivered the March 2026 Attlee Foundation Lecture arguing that recent general elections had thrown the validity of FPTP into doubt and endorsing Flexible voting pilots. The ERS praised the intervention as unusual cross-party validation.Source: Lowdown

Background

The Electoral Reform Society (ERS) is a UK political advocacy organisation founded in 1884, making it one of the oldest electoral-reform bodies in the world. It campaigns for proportional representation and independent election administration, and has actively supported Wales's transition from the Additional Member System (AMS) to closed-list D'Hondt PR for the 2026 Senedd election.

The ERS is centre-Left in orientation and is consulted by think tanks, political parties, and parliamentary committees on electoral system design. Its 2025-2026 commentary on the collapse of UK two-party politics, with five parties polling above 10% for the first time in modern history, has framed the 7 May 2026 elections as a stress test for first-past-the-post. In March 2026, former Prime Minister Sir John Major delivered the Attlee Foundation Lecture, stating that recent general elections had thrown into doubt the continuing validity of FPTP. The ERS analysed Major's speech and praised his support for Flexible voting pilots, treating the intervention from a former Conservative Prime Minister as significant validation of the reform argument.

The 7 May 2026 results provided the ERS with its most compelling live evidence in a generation. The Welsh D'Hondt system squeezed smaller parties, with the Wales Green Party falling from a projected 10 seats to just 2 as voters consolidated behind Plaid Cymru in the final fortnight; the ERS has been tracking this as a real-world demonstration of how closed-list PR changes strategic voting incentives compared to AMS. England's 61 councils under No Overall Control after 7 May illustrate the FPTP representation mismatch the ERS has long argued against.

Source Material

Electoral Reform Society - Wikipedia Electoral Reform Society

How the World Sees Them

Conservative critics

Argue ERS advocacy treats PR as an end in itself without acknowledging the coalition instability and strategic-voting distortions it can produce, as seen in the Welsh Green collapse.

Electoral Reform Society

The 2026 English council elections exposed first-past-the-post's inability to translate five-party fragmentation into representative seat distributions; 61 councils under No Overall Control is a historic PR failure argument.