Executive Summary

In Britain today, too many people are locked out of an equal say in our democracy by virtue of their economic background. The truth of our political system is that the voices of society’s poorest do not count as much as the rich. Our political system has consequently rewarded the interests of those with advantages and wealth, instead of creating incentives for those furthest from the political process to become involved.

Polling suggests this sentiment is keenly felt throughout the country, with 69 per cent of people saying they have no say in what the Government does, according to ONS research. Similarly, according to Fairness Foundation polling, 75 per cent of us say the “very rich have too much influence on politics in the UK”, and 34 per cent think the “very rich have the most power in society” .

This broken system jars with our most basic principle of representative democracy that everyone should be able to exercise equal influence on decisions made in their name. However, economic inequality is corrupting that ideal because of chronic low and unequal turnout. This is skewing the decisions made in our country towards the interests of the richest and most powerful.

As this paper argues, this democratic deficit must be addressed and the Government should commit to ending the link between economic inequality and political inequality by introducing democratic reforms, namely compulsory voting with a “None of the Above” option on ballot papers.

As a new Prime Minister takes office, he has a golden opportunity to arrest the blight of low turnout in elections with a new agenda to restore trust and hope in our democracy, and ensure everyone has an equal voice. Andy Burnham, a politician almost uniquely energised by a desire to pursue political as well as economic reform, should seize that opportunity.

The reality of the UK’s low turnout is indisputable. In the most recent elections (English local authorities, the Welsh Senedd, and Scotland’s Holyrood) turnout was dire.

In Scotland, turnout was down from the last election, to just 53 per cent of registered voters. The House of Commons Library wrote: “Constituency turnout was highest in Eastwood at 66 per cent and lowest in Glasgow Easterhouse and Springburn at 43 per cent.” Overall, 18 Scottish seats saw fewer than half of registered voters turnout. As the BBC notes: “This is actually fairly well in line with the sort of turnout we saw at Holyrood from 2007 through to 2016.”

In Wales, which saw a monumental shift in electoral fortunes for the Welsh Labour party, turnout was equally poor. As the House of Commons Library states: “Overall turnout in this election was 52 per cent. This was highest in Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf at 58 per cent and lowest in Afan Ogwr Rhondda at 45 per cent.”

In the six English mayoral elections held on the same day not one achieved turnout higher than 42 per cent. The lowest turnout for a mayoralty was Newham which saw just 34.6 per cent of registered voters turnout.

Turnout is also a fairness issue highly correlated with economic and social deprivation. Simply put, the impact of poverty and deprivation on voter turnout is stark which resultantly skews political incentives.

As Scottish political observer Jonathon Shafi wrote:

You can, for instance, trace the relationship between voter turnout and life expectancy. The gap between people living in the least and most deprived areas of Glasgow is around 15.4 years for males and 11.6 years for females, as reported by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health. Between 2015–19, there was an estimated 17.6-year gap between males born in Greater Govan (65.4 years) versus Pollokshields West (83 years).…

The poorer you are, the shorter you will live, and the less likely you are to vote in elections. Research from the Fraser of Allander Institute further corroborates this pattern, concluding in a 2022 report that “health and income inequality are consistent predictors of voter turnout in Scotland.”... In the 1987 UK general election, the turnout recorded for the poorest income group was 4% lower than for the wealthiest. By 2010, the gap had grown to a sobering 23 points.

This can be illustrated by mapping indicators of deprivation with turnout in elections across England. In 2024, a constituency in Manchester (Rusholme) saw the lowest turnout “at a general election since South Staffordshire in 2005 (37.2%).” It is unsurprising to see that child poverty rates in the Manchester constituency are grim with “more than half (51.3%) of all children currently living in poverty.”

Indeed, taking data provided by the House of Commons Library on the absolute child poverty rate (that is, the percentage of children aged 0-15 living in households with income below 60 per cent of the median income in 2010/2011 with income being measured before housing costs) and mapping against turnout paints a stark picture.

For example, Eastwood, in the most recent Scottish Parliamentary election, was the constituency with the highest turnout. The local council’s child poverty action plan, states: “Child poverty rates after housing costs are the lowest in Scotland, at 12 per cent (2,842 children). This has fallen from last year at 14 per cent (3,247 children).”

This is compared with the North East of Glasgow, where the lowest turnout occurs. Here, Glasgow City Council states that while child poverty across Scotland stands at 24.5 per cent, in Glasgow it is 32 per cent. The council adds: “[this] varies by constituency within Glasgow from 32.0 per cent Glasgow North to 42.4 per cent Glasgow Central.”

Between 2019 and 2024 the largest decline in voter turnout was in East Ham (falling more than 18 percentage points). East Ham sits within the borough of Newham where 44.9 per cent of children live in poverty, compared with 10.6 per cent in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames (2024 voter turnout, 68.7 per cent). Newham is the most deprived borough in London, and between 2019 and 2024 deprivation increased, just as voter turnout decreased, according to the 2025 Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD).

Similar analysis of House of Commons library data finds there was a 17.1 percentage point turnout gap between the least and most deprived fifth of English seats (67.8% against 50.7%).

When measured against median wages, there was a 10.3 percentage point turnout gap in 2024 between best-paid and worst-paid fifth of seats – a gap which had increased from 7.8 percentage points in 2010. Unsurprisingly, median wages are not a usable predictor for any individual seat.

This uneven turnout creates a political disincentive for politicians to respond to the needs of those bearing the brunt of the UK’s unfair distribution of wealth and income. Fraser Nelson, the former editor of right-leaning The Spectator, has highlighted the lack of voting among those who are in receipt of state welfare:

The people with the greatest stake in the welfare system are the least likely to have a say over it… simply having been unemployed knocks around nine points off the likelihood that someone votes, an effect that lingers long after the job has been found. Worklessness, it seems, does not just empty the wage packet. It corrodes the sense that the system is yours to shape….

Because claimants do not vote, politicians have little electoral reason to fix a system that fails them: there is no bloc to reward good reform or to punish neglect. Yet the same fact makes the welfare state unusually easy to cut, because the people affected will not be heard from on polling day.

Democracy works on the rough assumption that those most affected by a policy will turn out to defend or change it. In welfare that assumption breaks down.

This is, of course, in dramatic contrast with the experiences of another cohort of welfare beneficiaries: pensioners. The triple lock on pensions has successfully ratchet up the value of pensions during a period of stagnant economic growth in the UK. In fact, “the current value of the Basic State Pension (BSP) is already 11 per cent higher than it would have been with earnings-linked uprating since 2012… And pensioners are now less likely to be in poverty than the rest of the population, and half as likely as children.”

Pensioners are, unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly more likely to vote. As a voting bloc, pensioners’ power was predicted by the older people’s charity Age UK ahead of the 2010 general election, just three months before the triple lock was introduced. It wrote: “Electoral power lies firmly in the hands of older voters… ‘grey' majorities are likely in 94 marginal seats where securing votes among the over-55s could tip the balance of power between the main three parties.” Since then wealth has been increasingly accumulated by older people while younger, less likely to vote, groups have faced a greater economic burden.

Unequal voter turnout is also a vicious cycle. The more disillusioned voters become, the less likely they are to vote; consequently, politicians are less likely to prioritise or focus on their needs, in turn increasing voter disillusionment and disengagement.

However, while economic disparities highlight the unequal turnout at UK elections, it does not necessarily explain all of the factors that motivate voters, or not.

For example, one factor which is certainly present in areas of economic and social deprivation is voter disillusionment. As Frances Foley, the deputy director of Compass, wrote, “free and fair elections are not enough… In the 2024 ‘year of elections’ there was a troubling decline of faith in the fairness of electoral processes.”

Indeed, it is not simply that areas of economic or social deprivation are more likely to see lower turnout, these areas also see higher support for political parties which describe themselves within the framework of “anti-Establishment” movements. In research by More in Common, pollsters found:

Reform’s strongest support comes from places with a low skills base, poor health, and weak labour markets – areas that may feel economically “left behind”. These constituencies are defined by high employment deprivation, health deprivation, and education, skills and training deprivation…

…the Greens perform best in urban constituencies marked by high in-work poverty, poor housing, pollution, and degraded local environments, where concerns about quality of life and living conditions are more visible. These constituencies are defined by high income deprivation and high living environment deprivation.

…While Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters overwhelmingly say that we should preserve and improve our political and social institutions, Green and Reform voters share a far greater desire for radical change. Over half of Green voters and 39 per cent of Reform voters say that we should let our institutions burn.

The deep apathy and disillusionment with politics was reflected in the 2026 elections. The low turnout was predicted in Scotland, and elsewhere, with pollsters referring to the “scunner factor.” This Scots word was defined by the BBC as “a broader feeling about politics at the moment - a disenchantment.”

Therefore, it is little surprise support for the Reform UK party, which seeks to embody anti-establishmentism, is greatest amongst voters who are “scunnered”. In April 2026, the UK’s largest union, Unison, concluded working class voters who back Reform UK “feel let down” by politics and their “frustration is real and understandable.”

Indeed, in the largest study of Reform UK’s supporters disillusionment with the status quo is a repeated refrain.

“The party’s new voter base is united by a shared sense of political disillusionment and alienation. They are less satisfied with life than other voters, more likely to feel like strangers to those around them, and more distrustful of institutions from politicians to the media… What binds these voters together is a deep wariness of the world around them and a strong sense of political disillusionment.”

This is not new either. In 2010, Andy Burnham’s future Chief of Staff and then an MP, James Purnell, said: “[government] incumbency is now a real disadvantage. Everyone is angry about something.” Four years later, Dr Ruth Fox, Director of the Hansard Society, told Parliament: “…voting levels are a manifestation of the bigger problem of disengagement across the board, linked to a declining sense of the efficacy of politics generally and their role in it, and a sense that the parties are all the same, the politicians are all the same, they are not like us, it does not make any difference.”

Anyone seeking to understand the current fragmentation of UK politics and the overall context of declining faith in government, must first consider trends in voter turnout. This is also found internationally. In Australia, the independent think tank the Grattan Institute wrote in 2026: “How we feel about the economy is linked to how we feel about democracy. People who are down about the economy are more likely to feel dissatisfied with democracy and have lower trust in government…. And people who have negative economic expectations are more likely to vote for independents and minor parties.”

If a democratic “circuit breaker” is set to be a reality, recognition that voter apathy is legitimate is vital. Indeed, as the Economist’s Duncan Robinson wrote: “It has been so long since a British government could honestly say that things have improved… Practically every area of British public policy, from health care to defence, has got worse since the financial crisis… Assuming that voters will not notice improvements is a belief that swings between arrogance and insanity.”

Those disproportionately poorer voters who feel unable to vote or if they do vote turn to parties offering an anti-Establishment proposition, deserve solutions not derision. Indeed, “the principal driver [of these voters] is a feeling our political class has become unresponsive. When people vote for change, what they get is more of the same. Many Britons value their democratic rights, and want to participate, but no longer believe voting is a credible mechanism for change.”

Economic and democratic stagnation must be arrested if British democracy is to thrive, or indeed survive. A key, indeed central, tenet of our Parliamentary system is that change is conducted in the ballot box. Yet if economic and social change is not happening at the speed society demands it is not acceptable to think the problem is with the voters or the very concept of our Parliamentary democracy.

Instead, we must fix the parts of our democracy which has become frayed, namely election turnout.

Yet for all its merits, compulsory voting as implemented in Australia is a political misnomer. As described above, Australians are compelled merely to turn-up rather than vote, per se. So what happens to those who remain disengaged or dismissive of what is on offer, but comply with the law and vote?

Australian elections turn out many so-called “donkey voters” who, while not spoiling their ballot, rank candidates on the ballot paper on the basis of the order they appear rather than the voters’ actual preference. This strays into the possible side effects of compulsory voting: the so-called “low-quality voter.”

Yet a way to avoid accidentally skewing the election result by virtue of ballot paper ordering, this equine voter can be avoided by adding a “None of the Above” to ballot papers.

This idea is not novel or alien. In 2022 the Le Monde newspaper reported on “None of the Above” within a global context:

In Europe, the Netherlands and Spain count the blank vote as part of the votes cast in each election and it is included in the percentages used for defining electoral thresholds. However, it is not taken into account in parliamentary elections for the distribution of seats in Parliament.

Sweden recognizes the blank vote in some elections and in referendums. Greece also counts it but reallocates it to the winner of the election. In Switzerland, the blank vote is taken into account in the first round to reach an absolute majority, but not in the second round.

As detailed above, turnout in UK elections averages around 50 per cent or below. In Spain’s most recent general election, 200,673 “blank” ballots were recorded, and turnout generally hovers around 60-70 per cent in recent general elections. In the Netherlands’ most recent general election, 40,128 “blank” ballots were recorded and turnout, since 1925, has been amongst the highest in the democratic world, regularly reaching 80-90 per cent (the Dutch had compulsory voting from 1917 through to 1967).

In the UK, the issue was said in 2015 to have moved “from being an interesting, though largely ignored, fringe proposal to becoming a reality… recent articles, for example from Demos, Open Democracy and the broadcaster Rick Edwards advocate for the inclusion of NOTA.”

Indeed, Parliamentarians publishing a 2015 report recommending a “None of the Above” option to ballot papers:

Over 70% of respondents to our consultation supported having the option of voting for "none of the above" on the ballot paper, irrespective of whether or not voting were compulsory…

Having the option to vote for "none of the above" on the ballot paper is the proposal which has had the largest support among those who have given their views to the surveys we have drawn upon. This change would enable people to participate at elections even if they did not wish to vote for any of the candidates presented. If large numbers of people did choose to cast their vote in this way it would serve as a wakeup call for candidates and parties that they needed to do more to gain the support of the electorate.

We recommend that the Government consult on including, on ballot papers for national elections, an option for voters who wish to participate but not vote for any of the candidates presented, and report to the House on this proposal.

In 2026, think tank ThinkLabour published a report by Dr David Klemperer which called for the introduction of a “None of the Above” option on UK ballot papers because of its potential to impact voting patterns:

Convergent Opinion tested the potential impact of the introduction of a “None of the Above” option in the UK by dividing poll respondents into groups as part of a multi-armed randomised control trial. They showed one group a standard ballot paper, and the other group another ballot paper which included a None of the Above option. They then modelled the effect of having a None of the Above option on the ballot paper on vote choice.

In line with what we would expect based on the studies cited above, the results found that the presence of a “None of the Above” option shifted support away from non-traditional parties, strengthening both Labour and (to a lesser degree) the Conservatives at the expense of Reform in particular.

The data suggests providing a “None of the Above” option decouples irritation at the politicians from support for anti-Establishment parties. Instead of legitimising apathy, as critics fear, “None of the Above” actively changes voter behaviour.

With thanks to Dr David Klemperer and Sarah Drew.