How the East would look with proportional representation - and other key election numbers

The dust has settled on a historic night for the East of England, the numbers are in - and they make for interesting reading.

Labour made huge gains, taking 35 of the 71 seats, but with fewer votes than the Conservatives, who suffered major losses.

The results have raised familiar questions about the first past the post system - in which only the winning party in each constituency wins representation in Parliament - with Reform UK leader and new Clacton MP Nigel Farage now promising to campaign for a more representative system.

His party received over 17% of the region's votes, but won only three of its seats - a trend which has also been followed nationally.

So how would the election have looked in the East if seats were based on the share of the vote?

Unsurprisingly, Labour would not have won so many seats and the smaller parties would have made more gains.

Had the number of MPs in the region been in exact proportion to the share of the votes gained then Labour and the Conservatives would have had 21 each.

Reform UK would have 12 MPs, the Lib Dems nine, Greens five, with two others.

The other key facts and figures

The 2024 election is the first time since 1945 that the Anglia region has had more Labour MPs than Conservatives.

Several seats were very marginal:

  • Basildon and Billericay - Con majority 20 (third most marginal in the UK)

  • Cambridgeshire North West - Lab majority 39 (fourth)

  • Peterborough - Lab majority 118 (seventh)

Sir Ed Davey celebrates a record night for the Liberal Democrats Credit: James Manning/PA

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats secured their highest number of MPs ever in the region with seven - the last highest was four in 2010.

The region saw its first Reform UK MPs in Clacton and Great Yarmouth, while it also got its first ever Green MP in the new seat of Waveney Valley.

Securing that seat, Adrian Ramsay recorded the third-biggest swing in the UK to win (32.1% swing from Con to Green)

Adrian Ramsay celebrates in Diss after winning the Waveney Valley seat. Credit: ITV Anglia

The last time Bury St Edmunds elected anything but a Conservative MP was in 1880 - when the constituency had two MPs and one was a Liberal, but this time round it went Labour.

Some seats like Suffolk Coastal has never had a Labour MP, so made history by switching - though they have been in existence for a relatively short period of time (1983 for Suffolk Coastal).

At just 22 years old, Labour’s Sam Carling is one of the youngest MPs after ousting Conservative Shailesh Vara in North West Cambridgeshire.

He’s also a Cambridge City councillor and the first Labour MP for North West Cambridgeshire, although the seat was only created in 1997. He won by just 39 votes.

Peterborough should have been the easiest seat to win for Labour, given how marginal it was, but they won by only 118 votes.

The party needed only a 2.5% swing to win, but there was a strong performance by the Workers’ Party candidate Amjad Hussain getting 12% of the vote.

Subscribe free to our Election Briefing newsletter here for exclusive and original campaign coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox at 5pm every weekday