Kingston is one of the "most undemocratic" boroughs in London, according to a campaign group.

Data from Supervote's Autumn 2025 'Rotten Boroughs' survey, which measures the percentage of seats parties win in relation to their vote share, put Kingston second behind only Lewisham, ahead of the next round of local elections in May.

Currently the council is controlled by the Liberal Democrats, who hold more than 90% of seats despite securing less than 44% of the vote in 2022 – a disparity of almost 48%.

As per Supervote's statistics, this equates to a total of 44 out of 48 seats being won on less than half the vote, with the Conservatives taking just three seats despite sealing almost a quarter of the vote.

A survey by Supervote found Kingston to be the second least 'democratic' borough in London (Credit: James Bools)

Labour and the Green Party, meanwhile, failed to secure any seats at all despite vote shares of 13% and 10% respectively.

Unsurprisingly, such results will strengthen calls in some quarters for reform of the controversial First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) system, which Kingston uses.

Unlike many proportional representation (PR) structures in Europe, FPTP has the advantage of producing clear victors, thanks to a 'winner takes all' approach where the candidate with the most total votes takes the seat.

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But the system has been criticised for failing to ensure fair representation, with a 2025 YouGov survey finding that 74% of the electorate believes the current model to be wholly or partially broken.

According to Supervote founder David Green, "First-Past-the-Post can over-represent support for dominant political parties across a council, while suppressing representation of other parties to the point of eliminating it altogether.

"If a party is dominant across most of the wards of a council and the other parties are relatively weak, it is entirely possible for that party to take most, if not all, of the seats on the council.

"Last year, someone in Cornwall got elected with just 19% of the vote."

Green went on to blast FPTP as an antiquated relic of a bygone age, with the Southport man's own research finding that 54% of voters – or 31,700 – wasted their votes in 2022.

He said: "Continued use of First-past-the-post makes about as much sense as having Stephenson's Rocket haul trains on HS2.

"It is a museum piece which wastes many, and in some cases most, of the votes shovelled into it while producing distorted results with the remainder."

Green further claimed FPTP was responsible for low turnout in Kingston, with just 48% of those eligible to vote in 2022 choosing to do so, and stated such apathy doesn't bode well for May's upcoming elections.

He said: "At local level the deficiencies of First-past-the-post are magnified, because community demographics conspire to ensure there are many councils where a party can rule for decades without any meaningful opposition.

"This breeds a 'what's the point?' attitude among the electorate, with distorted representation, low levels of participation in local politics, lamentable turnouts and voters of different political persuasions denied any say."

Kingston's south-west London neighbour Richmond also performed poorly, with the Liberal Democrats once again dominating by winning almost nine out of 10 seats on just over half the vote share.

The party won 48 out of 54 seats, or nearly 89%, on just 51.1% of the vote in 2022, with the Conservatives taking just 1.8% of seats from nearly 23% of votes cast.

Labour, meanwhile, once again walked away with nothing despite managing 10% of the ballot.

Although the Green Party's tally largely matched their vote share, taking 9.3% from 12.8% of ballots, Green notes that without a pact with the Lib Dems "the monopolistic situation in Richmond would've been even worse."

For all his criticisms of FPTP, however, Green was keen to stress that the Lib Dems, who are long-standing supporters of the Single Transferable Vote system of PR, are not responsible for Kingston and Richmond's woes.

He claimed instead that the blame lies squarely at Westminster's shoes, for "it is the Government who determine what system is used to elect local councils."

Nub News has contacted Kingston Council for comment.