UK general election 2024: Why do some popular parties win so few seats?

Reform UK has won just four seats with 14 percent of the vote, while Conservatives got 119 seats on 24 percent – why?

The United Kingdom’s general election has resulted in a landslide victory for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, which has won 411 seats of a total of 650 seats (65 percent) in the House of Commons.

Counting is still continuing in a handful of seats, but while Labour has 64 percent of the seats, it only actually won 34 percent of the actual votes.

Conversely, Reform UK, the far-right party campaigning on issues such as immigration, has received 14 percent of the votes so far, but only four seats, or 0.6 percent of the total. The Conservative Party has won a bit more of the vote – about 24 percent – but has taken 119 seats (18 percent of seats) – a huge difference.

So why do some parties with lots of votes only receive a handful of seats?

This anomaly occurs because the UK uses the plurality voting system known as “first-past-the-post”, which works differently from the various systems of proportional representation used in many other countries.