Did most resident doctors vote to strike?
The health secretary Wes Streeting has said on X and in a public letter that “the majority of resident doctors in the BMA did not vote to strike”.
Yet many people on social media have said most doctors did vote to strike, and in its announcement yesterday the BMA itself said “A resounding majority of you voted in favour of taking strike action to continue the fight for pay restoration.”
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So who’s right?
The answer depends on how you interpret what each side is saying about the numbers.
It’s true that more than 90% of the votes cast in the BMA’s ballot supported strike action, but it’s also true that turnout was 55.32%. This means nearly half of eligible doctors didn’t vote at all, so the yeses don’t quite make up the majority of them.
Put simply, 53,766 people were eligible to vote in the ballot, and 26,766—or 49.8% of them—supported strike action.
In that sense, both sides are correct in different ways. However, it’s important to recognise that we don’t know how the doctors who didn’t vote feel about striking.
