Can first-past-the-post survive the multi-party age?

Opinion polls are based on representative surveys of voters asking how they would vote in a general election.

But local elections in which the public elects their local councillors, often based on very local issues or by-elections, are unlikely to be reliable guides.

We can already have a fair guess as to what will happen after the results start to be announced in the early hours of Friday morning .

The big losers will be the Conservatives .

Nigel Farage should be the big winner, not just taking Runcorn but amassing several hundred councillors.

If that party or candidate has narrow support but is widely disliked by the wider electorate, this could prove to be very divisive. This is why Thursday ’s elections in illustrating what the polls are telling us could be important. The results will not just raise questions about the state of our parties, but raise questions about whether our electoral system is fit for purpose in a multi-party system..