On 7 May 2026, Britain will not elect a new prime minister, nor will it directly change the composition of the House of Commons. The main contests are for the Scottish Parliament, Senedd Cymru, English local councils, and some directly elected local mayors. The Scottish Parliament is often called Holyrood in British media because its building is in the Holyrood area of Edinburgh. Holyrood is not a separate institution, but a common shorthand for the Scottish Parliament. These elections may look local or devolved, but they will test how parties convert votes into power under different electoral systems.
The Scottish Parliament uses the Additional Member System. Voters have 2 votes: one for a constituency candidate and one for a regional party list. The Parliament has 129 seats. Of these, 73 are constituency seats elected by first past the post, where the candidate with the most votes wins, even without a majority. Another 56 seats come from 8 regions, each electing 7 members through party lists using the D’Hondt formula. The point is to use regional list seats to correct some of the distortion created by constituency contests. The system keeps local representation, while limiting the chance that a party wins excessive power simply by narrowly topping the poll in many constituencies.
Wales will use a new Senedd system in 2026. The Senedd will grow from 60 to 96 members. Voters will have 1 vote, cast for a party list or an independent candidate. Wales will be divided into 16 large constituencies, each electing 6 members through the D’Hondt formula. This is a closed-list proportional system. Voters choose a party, not individual candidates. Who gets elected depends on the order set by the party before polling day. The benefit is that seats should more closely reflect votes. The weakness is that voters have less direct control over individual representatives, while party leaderships gain more power over list ranking.
Proportional representation does not mean every vote produces a seat. Because each Senedd constituency elects only 6 members, a party can still win some votes and no representation. In practice, the effective threshold in a 6-seat constituency is roughly 10% to 14%, depending on how votes are distributed among parties. A small party polling 5% or 8% in a constituency will usually fail to win the final seat. The new Senedd system is therefore more proportional than first past the post, but it is not pure proportionality. The smaller the constituency magnitude, the weaker the proportional correction. That is the trade-off: less distortion than winner-takes-all politics, but still a barrier for smaller parties, and more power inside party list selection.
English local elections follow a more traditional local logic. In 2026, more than 4,850 council seats will be contested across 134 existing local authorities, alongside shadow elections for 2 new Surrey unitary authorities. A shadow election is not a mock vote. It elects councillors to a new authority before it formally takes over services. Those councillors prepare budgets, administration and the transfer of powers before the new council becomes fully operational. The English contests also include London’s 32 boroughs, some county councils, unitary authorities, metropolitan districts and district councils, plus 6 directly elected local mayors. These are local authority mayors, not large metro mayors such as the Mayor of London or the Mayor of Greater Manchester.
Most English councillors are elected by first past the post. In a single-member local electoral ward, the candidate with the most votes wins. In a multi-member ward, voters may cast as many votes as there are seats, and the highest-polling candidates win. Directly elected local mayors are also elected by first past the post. The system is simple, quick to count and easy to understand. The cost is that vote share and seat share can diverge sharply. A party with dispersed support may win many votes but few seats. Another party can gain substantial power by narrowly winning many local contests.
This is why tactical voting matters under first past the post. The system does not ask who has majority support. It only asks who comes first. If 4 candidates receive 32%, 29%, 24% and 15%, the candidate on 32% wins, although 68% voted for someone else. There is no transfer of second preferences, no pooling of similar votes, and no compensation for losing votes. A voter whose favourite smaller party cannot win may therefore switch to the most viable candidate able to defeat their least preferred candidate. This is not a failure of principle. It is the system forcing voters to choose between sincere expression and practical effect.
But tactical voting in 2026 will be harder than it looks. Local elections rarely have reliable polling at ward level. National polls cannot be mechanically applied to a borough, town or local electoral division. Local candidate recognition, community issues, independents, low turnout and party ground operations can all change who the top 2 contenders are. Voters may know whom they want to stop, but not who is best placed to stop them. First past the post asks voters to behave like tacticians, while giving them too little information. That is the absurdity of the system.
The 7 May elections matter not simply because one party may gain or lose seats, but because they show several British democratic machines operating at once. Scotland uses a mixed system to balance local representation with proportional correction. Wales is moving to closed-list proportional representation to make its legislature more proportional. English local government still relies heavily on first past the post, turning multi-party politics into a series of local elimination contests. Elections appear to express public opinion. At a deeper level, they are systems for processing public opinion into power. Different systems do not only change results. They change how voters think, how parties campaign, and how minority vote shares can become governing authority.
