Democracy campaigners often point to the experiences of countries across the world which have switched from First Past the Post to a more proportional voting system: New Zealand, which made the change following a referendum; South Africa, which ditched FPTP when Apartheid was abolished; and Ireland and Cyprus, which made the change in the course of independence from British rule.

Hardly any countries have made a switch in the other direction, but one interesting case is that of Papua New Guinea. After independence in 1975, it changed its voting system from the Alternative Vote (AV) to FPTP in the belief that it would lead to strong and stable government.

In fact it did exactly the opposite. As the Administration and Cost of Elections Project reported*:

“Electoral violence increased, because it was in some candidates’ interests to stop opponents’ supporters from voting, rather than to campaign for their second preferences as they had under AV. Also, because there are so many clans all trying to win the seat, candidates learned that they could be successful with very limited support. At the 1992 elections, almost half the Papua-New Guinea parliament was elected with less than 20% of the vote – one successful candidate gained only 6.3%. It is now common for candidates to be encouraged to stand in order to ‘split’ a dominant clan’s voter base. The single-member system of representation has resulted in high levels of turnover of politicians from one election to the next.”

This malfunction was put down to the fact that Papua-New Guinea is a very mountainous country. Each village has little contact with its neighbours for topographical and indeed linguistic reasons – it’s a country with 839 living languages. Most people just voted for the head of their village, and the seat went to the largest village in each constituency.

The UK is not yet at the stage where large numbers of MPs are elected on less than 20% of the vote in their constituency, but the 2024 election represented a major push in that direction. In 45 seats the MP was elected with less than a third of the votes, and in six seats the MP won on less than 30% of the vote.

Before that, sub-30% victories had only happened four times in the last 100 years. For many years the record was held by Sir Russell Johnston who won Inverness, Nairn & Lochaber for the Liberals with 26.1% in 1992; that record was beaten in 2015 by Alasdair McDonnell who won Belfast South for the SDLP with 24.5% of the vote. But the 2024 election produced six sub-30% victories, more than all the previous elections put together.

Labour won Norfolk South West with 26.7%, Sittingbourne with 29.1% and Montgomery by 29.4%; the Conservatives won Exmouth & Exeter East with 28.7% and Dumfries & Galloway with 29.6%; and the Liberal Democrats took Brecon, Radnor & Cwm Tawe with 29.5%.

When turnout is factored in, the figures are even more stark. Liam Byrne won Birmingham Hodge Hill & Solihull North with 31.2% of votes cast, but low turnout meant that he was supported by only 13.7% of the electorate – less than one elector in seven. Similarly, Richard Holden was elected as the Conservative MP for Basildon & Billericay with 31.6 % of votes cast, but with the support of only 17% of the electorate – just over one elector in six.

Back in the 1950s a majority of MPs could have walked down the high street of their constituency, confident in the knowledge that most of the people they met had voted for them. But only one Conservative MP, Bob Blackman, Harrow East won a majority of the votes cast (53.3%) and none came close to a majority of their electors. While 74 Labour MPs won more than 50% of the votes in their constituencies, none won a majority of the electors. The highest was Catherine West in Hornsey & Friern Barnet with 40.8%.

How is the 1992 experience of Papua-New Guinea relevant to the situation in the UK 30 years later? The countries could scarcely be more different. But the issue is with the system, not the country. The corrosive effect of having a system where MPs can be elected on as little as 13.7% of the electors in a constituency will sooner or later persuade the voters, and maybe even the government, to change the system.

So what happened in Papua-New Guinea? Well, it didn’t take them long to change the system. They now use the Limited Preferential Voting system, a close relative of the Australian Alternative Vote system that they had before.

* follow the link and scroll to the entry on Papua New Guinea to read the report on the 1992 election in Papua-New Guinea published by the Australian Administration and Cost of Elections Project

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About Martin Linton

Martin Linton is a member of the LCER Executive and former MP for Battersea