VOTERS in this year's General Election would be "as well buying a lottery ticket as being handed a ballot paper" campaigners for electoral reform have said, after a report revealed the potentially random outcomes from votes cast on May 7.

With three months to polling day, a paper drawn up by polling analyst, Professor John Curtice, has highlighted the impact of the move away from the traditional two-party political landscape to one where voters are increasingly spreading their votes across six parties.

In a foreword to the report, entitled 'The Lottery Election', Darren Hughes of the Electoral Reform Society writes that Westminster's first-past-the-post system "seems to be collapsing before our eyes".

The independent campaign group has long called for a more democratic voting system which would see more votes translated into seats, such as proportional representation.

With polls predicting that neither Labour nor the Conservatives are likely to capture enough votes to form a majority Government, smaller parties including the LibDems, Greens, UKIP and nationalists, especially the SNP, will play a vital role in deciding who ends up at Downing Street and what shape a second Coalition Government would take.

Hughes, deputy chief executive of the Society, said: "Professor John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde uses polling data to demonstrate how tiny shifts in support among the parties can have dramatic effects on the shape of the next Parliament, and therefore the next government.

"Indeed after reading this report it is hard not to conclude that voters will not so much be handed a ballot paper for the General Election but rather a ticket in a national lottery, so random do some of the outcomes feel."

Among the potential scenarios outlined by Curtice are the UKIP taking a third of all votes cast - as a series of nationwide polls have so far predicted - but finishing sixth in terms of the number of seats gained.

Another anomaly highlighted by Curtice is that with the SNP are on track to decimate Labour in Scotland, the Nationalists could become the third largest party in the House of Commons - with kingmaker status in the likely event of a hung parliament - even though their UK-wide vote share, as a Scotland-only party, would in fact be tiny.

Hughes added that, on Curtice's assessment, first-past-the-post "has even stopped doing the one thing it was meant to be good at - delivering clear, decisive results".

"This is an election where it looks like there will be no relationship between votes cast and seats won," said Hughes. "Using a two-party system to conduct six party politics just won't work. The current voting system is not fit for purpose."

Successive UK polls by organisations including YouGov, Ipsos Mori and ICM have consistently put the SNP well ahead of Labour in Scotland, on average 20 points ahead - potentially enough to take 52 seats in Scotland against six for Labour.

However, as Curtice points out, their predicted landslide victory is based on polls suggesting they will take "rather less than half" of the votes cast - around 45% - such is the "harsh logic of first past the post".

But the system is not entirely on the SNP's side, he adds. Due to the wider geographical spread of SNP support, compared to Labour, if the SNP's lead halved to ten points it could see Labour cross the finish line with 41 seats compared to 35 for the SNP.

"The SNP feast could yet turn to famine," writes Curtice. "Unlike the SNP's vote, Labour support varies a lot from one constituency to another. In 2010, it won 40% or more in 37 seats, while in 16 it won less than a third.

"Labour was either well dug in - or a hopeless cause.

"Consequently even quite a modest improvement in Labour's poll position could yet transform its prospects.

"Say the SNP's lead fell to ten points. Many of those places where Labour were dug in five years ago would still have their heads standing above the somewhat diminished SNP tide."