FPTP has not been the source-question target since 2022. Three things have happened since that make it the strongest candidate for the 2026 paper: the 2024 general election produced the most disproportional result in modern British history; Reform UK won 14.3 per cent of the vote and just five seats while the Liberal Democrats won 12.2 per cent and seventy-two seats; and YouGov polling in early 2026 puts public confidence in the electoral system at a record low.
The examiner has been clear in both the 2025 examiner report and the 2025 CPD deck that source questions reward candidates who treat the source as evidence rather than a topic prompt. This question is built around the 2024 numbers, which are the live source material every Year 13 should know cold.
Labour won 411 seats, a working majority of 174, on 33.8 per cent of the vote. This is the lowest winning vote share of any UK general election since 1832. The disproportionality between votes and seats was the largest since the 1931 National Government landslide. Reform UK and the Greens together polled 21.4 per cent of the vote and won nine seats between them. The Liberal Democrats polled less than Reform but won fourteen times as many seats. Conservative voters in safe Labour cities and Labour voters in safe Conservative shires effectively had their preferences erased.
| Party | Vote share | Seats | Seats per percentage point |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | 33.8% | 411 | 12.2 |
| Conservative | 23.7% | 121 | 5.1 |
| Lib Dem | 12.2% | 72 | 5.9 |
| Reform UK | 14.3% | 5 | 0.3 |
| Green | 6.7% | 4 | 0.6 |
The Gallagher Index, which measures the gap between vote share and seat share, hit 23.6 in 2024, the highest since 1945. Anything above twenty is treated by political scientists as a serious legitimacy concern.
FPTP was designed in an age of two-party competition. When Labour and Conservative split eighty per cent or more of the vote between them, the seat distortion was small enough to be politically tolerable. Labour and Conservative now split fifty-seven per cent. Reform UK, the Greens, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP collectively polled forty per cent in 2024. With votes spread across four or five competitive parties in many constituencies, candidates win seats with thirty per cent or even less of the local vote, and the gap between national vote share and seats becomes severe.
This is not a temporary artefact. Polling through 2025 and into 2026 shows continued four-party competition. If anything, the trend is intensifying. The system depends on a two-party world that no longer exists.
Defenders make four arguments. First, FPTP delivers a strong single-party government with a working majority. The 2024 result was disproportional but it produced a stable Cabinet that can govern, in contrast to coalition haggling in proportional systems. Second, FPTP keeps a clear constituency link: every voter has one identifiable MP responsible to them. Third, the system has historically excluded extremist parties from Westminster representation. Fourth, the public rejected reform in the 2011 AV referendum by a sixty-eight to thirty-two margin, suggesting any change requires fresh consent.
The UK already runs four other electoral systems for sub-national elections, which gives us a controlled experiment.
Additional Member System (AMS) in Scotland, Wales and London. Mixes constituency MPs with regional list top-ups to correct disproportionality. Produces minority and coalition governments. Used to elect the Scottish Parliament since 1999. The 2021 Holyrood election delivered SNP 64 seats on 47.7 per cent of constituency vote, a much closer match between vote share and seats.
Single Transferable Vote (STV) in Northern Ireland Assembly and Scottish local government. Multi-member constituencies with ranked preferences. Eliminates wasted votes almost entirely. The 2022 NI Assembly election produced a Sinn Fein plurality with 27 seats on 29 per cent of first preferences.
Supplementary Vote (SV) formerly used for English mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners until the 2022 Elections Act reverted them to FPTP. Allowed second preferences. Replaced by FPTP from 2023.
The trend is mixed: devolved nations chose proportional systems and stuck with them; Westminster has tightened FPTP rather than reformed it.
The strongest line of argument is YES TO A LARGE EXTENT - FPTP is no longer fit for purpose given the 2024 results. The system was designed for a two-party world. UK politics is now a four-party contest, and the 2024 disproportionality crossed the threshold political scientists treat as a legitimacy crisis. Reform UK polling sixty per cent more than the Lib Dems and winning one fourteenth of the seats is not an aberration; it is the inevitable consequence of FPTP applied to a fragmented vote.
The defence that FPTP delivers strong government still holds and should be fairly engaged with. But strong government built on minority vote shares - 33.8 per cent of those who voted, and around 21 per cent of the eligible electorate when turnout is factored in - poses its own legitimacy questions, particularly when devolved nations show that strong government can co-exist with proportionality.