The electorate has voted…
…and they’ve voted for “Change”
Britain has been to the polls!
On Thursday 4th July, the UK electorate voted for their next government, giving Kier Starmer’s Labour Party a landslide victory with a majority of 172 seats in parliament
Overall, Labour won 411 seats vs. the 121 Rishi Sunak’s conservatives. This results was one of the best results for Labour (their largest majority was under Tony Blair in 1997, 178)
At the same time, it is the worst result for the Conversative Party in modern history, a worse performance than even the 1906 election where they won 156 seats
What happened during the campaign?
While it may have not been the most interesting, or closely fought, campaign, there were some moments that are worth noting
Firstly, there was a set of constituency boundary changes which takes place every 8 years to reflect population changes across the country. Based on these new boundaries, the Conservatives would have actually won an additional 7 seats in the 2019 election (coming from Labour, 2, Lib Dems, 3, and Plaid Cymru, 2)
One thing that some people may not realise is that no party actually had a candidate standing in every seat
In total, the Conservatives had 635 candidates standing in the 650 constituencies, with Labour putting forward 631. This is predominantly because these parties don’t put candidates forward in Northern Ireland
Then there were some candidates caught in a betting scandal, where it was discovered that some individuals had made bets on various features of the election, including 4 unsuccessful candidates that had been named by the press during the election (although 6 others and 7 met police officers were also named, and as many as 15 Tory candidates are allegedly being investigated by the Gambling Commission)
And finally, there was an equal amount of scrutiny given to polls ahead of the election with ordinally wide divergence in the predicted results, with some MRP polls giving Labour a lead of 256 with the Tories left on only 78 seats
Even the most pessimistic of polls, such as the Economist’s two weeks before, had Labour on a 116-seat majority with the Tories retaining only 184 seats
It wasn’t only Labour having a party
In some of the other big stories of the night:
- the Liberal Democrats won their highest seat count in their history with 72, an improvement of 64 on the last parliament, and even more than they achieved during the 2010 election (59) when they became the minority partner in the coalition government
- Reform UK, in their first general election since they formed out of UKIP and the Brexit Party had a great night, winning 5 seats including Clacton - with Nigel Farage winning a seat for the first time in 8 attempts
- While, 5 seats is below the 13 they were predicted in the Exit Poll, Reform demonstrated their popularity across the country by coming second in 98 seats
- And to cap off a dreadful night for the Tories, 11 cabinet ministers lost their seats including Grant Shapps (former Defence Secretary) and Penny Mourdant (former Leader of the House of Commons). Plus former Prime Minister Liz Truss lost her South West Norfolk seat by 630 vote (0.8% of the vote)
Some of the smaller parties also had good nights:
- The Green Party increased their seat count to 4, including wins in Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire from the Conversatives
- Plaid Cymru doubled their seat count from 2 to 4 after winning Caerfyrddin and Ynys Môn from the Tories
- And Sinn Fein became the largest party in Northern Ireland, despite not improving on their existing total of 7 seats, after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) lost 3 seats - to the TUV, UUP and the Alliance
On the other end of the scale, the Scottish National Party (SNP) lost their dominance among Scotland’s MPs, seeing their total fall from 48 seats to only 9, their worst showing since 2010 when they only won 6 seats
And while Labour will be very pleased with overall performance, there were a few blemishes on the night:
- Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s ex-leader, won his seat (Islington North) as an Independent. Having originally joined the Labour Party almost 60 years ago, he’s now held that seat since 1983, or 41 consecutive years or 11 parliaments, making him the longest standard MP
- They also struggled in two Leicester seats, after the Conservatives took their only gain of the night in Leicester West (thanks to two former Labour MPs taking almost 20% of the vote from Labour’s candidate) and John Ashworth, the Shadow Paymaster General, lost in Leicester South to Shockat Adam (also Independent) with a swing of 35%. In both cases, voters went for candidates who opposed Labour’s stance on the war in Gaza
- And the Shadow Culture Secretary, Thangam Debbonaire, lost their seat to the Greens in Bristol South with their candidate, Carla Denyer winning with a majority of over 10,000
What does this tell us about the popularity of each party?
Seats is one thing, but looking at turnout and the popular vote tells a different story
Labour won 33.7% of the vote across the country, the lowest share for a triumphant party in modern history (Tony Blair’s 2005 victory was the next lowest with 35.2% of the popular vote)
The cause of their large parliamentary victory was much more about the dramatic fall in support for the Tories
Their vote share, at 23.7%, almost halved compared to the previous election and was the lowest the party had achieved in living memory, with a large portion going to Reform UK
This cements a growing trend, with the popularity of the two major parties slowing diminishing, along with the rising popularity of smaller parties
Back in the 1950s, Labour and the Conservatives regularly commanded over 90% of the popular vote between them. Since then, other parties have steadily taken votes away from the main two parties with this election (this has now been reduced to under 60%)
One way of comparing this with other countries is with the Gallagher Index - a measure of the difference between the seat share and vote share for a winning party. Since WW2, only the French Legislative Elections in 1993 had a less representative result (winning a higher % of seats than votes)
Combine that with turnout, at 60%, which was at the lowest level since 2001 (59%) and second lowest in recorded history, and it gives the impression of an electorate that is looking for “change”
One way of interpreting these results is in growing support for more left-wing parties:
- The more left-of-centre parties (Labour, Lib Dem or Green) received a greater share of the vote, 52.3%, than right-of-centre parties (Conservatives or Reform, 38%)¹
- This is compared to 46.2% and 45.6%, respectively, in the 2019 election
- Part of this trend, though, is about demographics as opposed to people changing their mind. Since 2019, millions of young voters have come of age. And only 8% of voters aged between 18–24 (who mostly fall into this category) voted for the Conservatives, compared with 46% of people over 70 years old)
However, another perspective is that the Conservatives and Reform UK still received the second and third highest number of votes, and it wouldn’t have to change a lot at the next election for the result to look quite different
What are the other indications of changing voting patterns?
One new trend to add into this was the shrinking of the average majority of victories across the country:
- On average, each victorious MP won by c. 6,700 votes (vs. 11,000 in 2019) - to really understand what this means, check out this great visual
- And the number of constituencies won with less than a 100 vote majority increased to 7, up from only 1 seat at the last election
- Kier Starmer will be aware that this will make Labour’s job of defending their big majority that much harder in five years time
One result of this is that one of the largest proportions of voters backed a candidate that did not win in their seat. 58% of the electorate voted for a candidate that did not win, much higher than the post-war average of 47%
Regardless though, congratulations to David Pinto-Duschinsky (Hendon, Labour), Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole, Labour) and Richard Holden (Basildon & Billericay, Conservative) who all won their seats with the tiny majorities of 15, 18 and 20, respectively
Are there alternative ways to elect a Government?
Britain’s current electoral system, known as First Passed the Post (FPTP) is fairly common around the world, but there are alternatives²:
- 70 countries some form of majoritarian electoral system, of which FPTP is the most common (43 countries use this format in some form, including the UK, US and Canada) with most of the remaining being some form of two round system (like France)
- 83 countries have either a fully-proportional, or semi-proportional, system, normally referred to as Proportional Representation (PR). This includes number of European (like Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands) and South American nations (like Brazil and Argentina)
- 32 of these democracies then have a mix of different models, with some seats being elected using a majoritarian model (such as FPTP) and others using a proportional model (such as PR), like Italy, Japan or Mexico
- There are also 5 nations that have a different set up called Single Transferrable Vote (STV), including Ireland
- And despite the fact that the UK had considered another model, the Alternative Vote (AV, also known as Instant Run-off Voting) in a referendum in 2011, only 2 countries in the world use this model: Australia and Papua New Guinea
Note¹: parties that only contest seats in the devolved parts of the Union, i.e. SNP, Plaid Cymru or the Northern Irish parties, have not been included in either left- or right-of-centre
Note²: sadly, the best source I could find for this was Wikipedia which doesn’t necessarily include all countries and their electoral systems. Therefore, take these stats with a pinch of salt. All results are based on elections for these countries lower houses (or their only house if they don’t have two chambers), not their upper houses or presidential elections
Check out more GoodStats about Politics:
- Bi- Bi- Boris! The British and their bi-election
- Northern Ireland marks 25 years of peace; Have you had a Good Friday?
- Boris, the Prime Minister who was ‘oven ready’…although his Ministers didn’t agree
