The dust has settled on the 2025 General Election, and the time and distance since election day affords a good opportunity to reflect on the result and what it means. Going into the election, I thought we might well look back on the vote as a tipping point in our political history. At least that it had the potential to be a tipping point for two principal reasons: first there was the sheer number of candidates, 109 in total, unprecedented; and, second, the number of young new candidates who were prepared to stand, outside of and away from the two main parties, and what they were offering voters by way of a choice.

Notwithstanding the result, it may still turn out to have been a tipping point for politics in Bermuda. This much is clear as slightly more people voted for all those candidates in opposition — One Bermuda Alliance, Free Democratic Movement, Emperial Group and independent — than for the ruling Progressive Labour Party.

Excluding the OBA, the latter three groups captured no seats but did attract 3,346 votes out of a total 24,779 votes cast, not an insignificant number when you consider that the OBA won 11 seats with just three times the number of votes — 9,133. Meanwhile, the PLP won re-election with 25 seats based on a total 12,300 votes, just under 50 per cent of those who voted.

The proportionality of seats to votes cast leads to an understandable reaction. There is something wrong with “the system” when the overall distribution of seats does not match the votes cast. But that is one of the known drawbacks to the “first past the post” electoral system. Governments are formed based on seats and not necessarily on votes cast. There obviously needs to be a change to our electoral laws — and Constitution Order — if we want to move to proportional representation and a more representative legislature.

But to date there appears to have been very little public clamour or pressure to move in that direction. At least nothing widespread. Yet.

The last time proportional representation was raised, it simply failed to get off the ground. The United Bermuda Party government advanced proportional representation by the single transferable vote at the 1979 constitutional conference held here in Bermuda at Warwick Camp. It was vigorously opposed by the opposition PLP and went nowhere. It secured no legs in the wider community. It was regarded as too complicated and Dame Lois Browne-Evans, who led the charge for the PLP, made the point that Bermuda had not that long ago won universal suffrage and the next step in the march to democracy had to be single-seat constituencies of equal size, not proportional representation.

But that was almost 50 years ago. Bermuda boasts new generations of voters, which brings me back to the potential of the 2025 election to become a tipping point in local politics.

What got me thinking along those lines was New York Times bestseller Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. The book featured analyses of a number of social epidemics, out of which he came up with a rough formula that lighted on tipping points that brought about change. He postulated that there comes a point when something that seemed immoveable, and may have been that way for generations, is transformed into something else; in some cases overnight, once that tipping point has been reached. First, “overnight”, my word, is admittedly an exaggeration — a figure of speech, if you will.

When sufficient people decide that enough is enough, and that change is warranted, change will occur. And not before. Here’s the interesting point: Mr Gladwell asserts that his studies show that tipping points do not require a consensus for change. He reckons that 25 per cent of any group is the threshold for bringing about change.

His book does not delve into politics, sadly, but the tipping-point principle may well apply. Political parties qualify as membership groups and it may be that the 2025 election will prompt the requisite number of members to press for change, not just in substance but in the way in which they organise, operate and outreach whether as government or opposition.

The book also makes another important point. Invariably, there are overstories to be addressed and overcome before tipping points are reached.

This was the third successive win for the PLP, notwithstanding the usual swing of the political pendulum away from governments in times of economic challenge, and here think cost-of-living issues, grocery bills, electricity bills, rents, mortgages and health costs — felt keenly by many in Bermuda today. But, and arguably, the relevant overarching overstory here in Bermuda is that the PLP has since inception in 1963 been the party that has steadfastly fought for economic, social and political justice — goals that have resonated down through generations of voters, and for Black Bermudians in particular, the majority of voters.

For me, that is the overstory that has to be recognised and taken into account if the 2025 election is to prove as a tipping point in Bermuda politics.

Much will therefore turn on how the two elected parties perceive and react to the messages of the election. Neither the overall votes each party won nor the overall turnout proved a ringing endorsement for either.

Voters now get to watch wait and see what, if anything, changes.

• John Barritt is a former elected member of the Bermuda legislature where he served for 18 years. This is the start of a four-part series in which he takes a close look at the 2025 General Election and what it may mean. Dialogue is welcomed. John may be reached at jbarritt@ibl.bm

NEXT: That turnout