Majoritarian elections produce decisive governments that enact their policies with clear majorities. Hannah Bunting explains how parties competing in a winner-takes-all system secured a landslide for the UK Labour party with just a third of the popular support
On 4 July 2024, it was the UK’s turn to vote in this worldwide year of elections. Six weeks earlier, sitting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made the surprise announcement that the election would be much sooner than almost anyone had anticipated. With the party which had been in government for 14 years trailing 20 points in the polls, observers thought Sunak would wait for the opportune moment. July didn’t seem to be it, which ultimately proved to be true.
The Tories suffered their worst ever electoral defeat. They won just 121 seats, down 244 from the 2019 election, beating their previous record low of 156 seats in 1906. Would the result have been different if they had waited? Probably not. But the election's timing meant that Nigel Farage re-entered British politics as leader of Reform UK. Its predecessor parties, UKIP and the Brexit Party, had posed a right-wing threat to the Conservatives at previous contests. While Brexit barely featured in this campaign, Reform capitalised on the dissatisfaction among certain pockets of the electorate, hurting the Tories more than any other party. All five seats Reform won were gains from the Conservatives. Reform placed higher than the Conservatives in 139 seats.
All five seats won by Reform UK were gains from the Conservatives. Reform placed higher than the Conservatives in 139 seats
Labour won a landslide majority totaling 412 seats, up 209 from the last election. It wasn't the only victor. Smaller parties, traditionally squeezed out by first-past-the-post, made substantial gains. The Liberal Democrats are up 64 seats for their best-ever 72 MPs – mostly in the South West and South East. The Greens and Plaid Cymru each won four, Reform five, and England elected five Independents.
The purpose of an electoral system is to translate votes into seats. There are 650 seats in the UK, 18 of which, in Northern Ireland, are subject to a different party system. There are 57 seats in Scotland, 32 in Wales, and the remaining 543 are in England. At this election, more candidates than ever before competed for those seats. Nearly half of all constituencies had eight or more candidates on the ballot paper. The five mainstream parties – Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Reform and Green – stood in 90% of seats in Great Britain. The Scottish National Party (SNP) stood in all Scottish constituencies and Plaid Cymru stood in all of Wales.
Yet in the majoritarian voting system, only one candidate can win the seat. The mechanics of these systems have traditionally produced two-party systems. In a two-party contest, one party needs more than 50% of the vote to win in that constituency. The party with the most constituency wins then forms a decisive government with a majority of popular support. But as the number of parties increases, the proportion of the vote needed to win decreases. A candidate needs a plurality of support instead of a majority.
In a two-party contest, one party needs more than 50% of the vote to win. But as the number of parties increases, the proportion of the vote needed to win decreases
Labour won its 174-seat majority with just 33.7% of the popular vote. Almost two thirds of those who cast a ballot did so for a party that wasn’t Labour; still, Labour achieved a plurality of votes in by far the most constituencies. The party won 123 seats by getting less than 40% of the votes. It won three constituencies on less than 30% of votes. On a vote share increase of just 1.6%, Labour won 209 more seats than in 2019. The Conservatives won the fewest seats in their history on a popular vote share just ten points lower than Labour’s – 23.7%.
The effects of the electoral system become most apparent when we examine two aspects of this election: how smaller parties fared, and the efficiency of each party’s vote. To calculate the latter, we take the total number of votes a party received and divide it by the number of seats they won.
Each Labour seat required just 23,555 votes, making the party remarkably efficient. The Conservatives, by comparison, required double that – 56,424 – to gain each of their seats.
Even with the barriers of a winner-takes-all contest, the Liberal Democrats achieved their 72 seats with just 12.2% of the popular vote. That’s an increase of just 0.7% in share from 2019, but 64 more seats. Their efficiency comes in at 48,878 votes per seat.
Reform UK gained 14.3% of the overall vote. But to win each of their five seats, Reform had to attract nearly 35 times more individual votes than Labour needed for their constituency wins
Reform won more of the popular vote than any other smaller party, at 14.3%. However, they won a plurality of votes in only five constituencies, meaning they required 823,444 votes per seat – nearly 35 times the number for Labour. It’s a particularly inefficient result.
The Greens won 6.7% of all votes and four seats, which means they needed nearly half a million votes for each elected MP. Operating in only the regions of Scotland and Wales meant that the SNP and Plaid Cymru efficiency was lower, at 80,529 and 48,702 per seat respectively.
The churn in this election resulted in eleven former Tory cabinet members, and one Labour former shadow cabinet member, losing their seats. New big names will need to establish themselves in the new government. In particular, the Conservatives will need to regroup to form an effective opposition.
Parliament is now also more ideologically diverse. The right-wing representation now includes Reform, and some left-wing opposition comes from the Greens and Independents.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how many votes it took to elect the new government, Labour has a large majority to enact its policy platform. But calls are already mounting for electoral system reform. The UK has tested the limits of its existing one.
