How the Political Map Has Changed and How ‘First Past the Post’ Favoured the Lib Dems

Published on: 11 May, 2026
Updated on: 13 May, 2026

The political map of Surrey has completely changed over the past few days. Not only are the eleven boroughs and districts set to disappear but the county has been divided in two east and west.

The first past the post electoal system gave the Liberal Democrats  a working majority of seats, 56 of the 90, two for each of the new wards which follow the boundaries of the Surrey County Council Divisions.

But a look at the popular vote by party shows that if the seats had been allocated strictly in proportion to each parties vote tally the Lib Dems, who have long advocated for proportional representation, would have significantly fewer seats, 32 instead of 56, and the council categorised “no overall control”.

The big losers under first past the post were Reform UK, the Greens and to a lesser extent Labour The Conservatives and the various Independents and Residents groups were comparatively unaffected..

In Guildford, there are similar disparities between the popular votes in the ten West Surrey County wards and the seat share. The Lib Dems with 37 per cent of the vote won 12 of the 20 seats, the Tories with 27 per cent 7 seats and R4GV 1. It is noteworthy that R4GV who only stood two candidates, both in The Horsleys, had a bigger aggregate vote than all the ten Labour candidates, one in each ward, combined.

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