1906 United Kingdom general election

1906 United Kingdom general election

← 1900 12 January – 8 February 1906 (1906-01-12 – 1906-02-08) Jan 1910 →

All 670 seats in the House of Commons
336 seats needed for a majority
Turnout83.2% (Increase8.1 pp)
  First party Second party
 
Leader Henry Campbell-Bannerman Arthur Balfour
Party Liberal Conservative and Liberal Unionist
Leader since December 1898 11 June 1902
Leader's seat Stirling Burghs Manchester East (defeated)
Last election 183 seats, 45.1% 402 seats, 50.2%
Seats won 397 156
Seat change Increase214 Decrease246
Popular vote 2,565,644 2,278,076
Percentage 48.9% 43.4%
Swing Increase3.8% Decrease6.8%

  Third party Fourth party
 
Leader John Redmond Keir Hardie
Party Irish Parliamentary Labour Repr. Cmte.
Leader since 6 February 1900 28 February 1900
Leader's seat Waterford City Merthyr Tydfil
Last election 77 seats, 1.8% 2 seats, 1.3%
Seats won 82 29
Seat change Increase5 Increase27
Popular vote 33,231 254,202
Percentage 0.6% 4.8%
Swing Decrease1.2% Increase3.5%

Colours denote the winning party

Composition of the House of Commons after the election

Prime Minister before election

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
Liberal

Prime Minister after
election

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
Liberal

The 1906 United Kingdom general election was held from 12 January to 8 February 1906. The Liberals, led by Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman, won a landslide majority at the election. The Conservatives led by Arthur Balfour, who had been in government until the month before the election, lost more than half their seats, including party leader Balfour's own seat in Manchester East, leaving the party with its fewest recorded seats ever in history until 2024. The election saw a 5.4% swing from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Party, the largest-ever seen at the time (and if only looking at seats contested in both 1900 and 1906, the Conservative vote fell by 11.6%).[1] This has resulted in the 1906 general election being dubbed the "Liberal landslide", and is now ranked alongside the 1924, 1931, 1945, 1983, 1997, 2001, and 2024 general elections as one of the largest landslide election victories.[2][3]

The Labour Representation Committee was far more successful than at the 1900 general election and after the election would be renamed the Labour Party with 29 MPs and Keir Hardie as leader. The Irish Parliamentary Party, led by John Redmond, achieved its seats with a relatively low number of votes, as 73 candidates stood unopposed. This election was a landslide defeat for the Conservative Party and their Liberal Unionist allies, with the primary reason given by historians being the party's weakness after its split over the issue of free trade (Joseph Chamberlain had resigned from government in September 1903 in order to campaign for Tariff Reform, which would allow "preferential tariffs"). Many working-class people at the time saw this as a threat to the price of food, hence the debate was nicknamed "Big Loaf, Little Loaf". The Liberals' landslide victory of 125 seats over all other parties led to the passing of social legislation known as the Liberal reforms.

This was the last general election in which the Liberals won an absolute majority in the House of Commons, the last general election in which neither Labour nor the Conservatives won the popular vote, and the only election held between 1886 and 1945 in which the Conservatives did not win the popular vote. It was also the last peacetime election held more than five years after the previous one prior to passage of the Parliament Act 1911, which limited the duration of Parliaments in peacetime to five years. In this election the Conservatives were reduced to their lowest seat count in the party's history, a record not broken until 2024, 118 years later.

  1. ^ Craig, F. W. S. (1974), British Parliamentary Election Results, 1885–1918, Macmillan
  2. ^ BBC NEWS – Programmes – BBC Parliament – 1906: The Liberal landslide, 9 February 2006
  3. ^ "UK general election results live: Rishi Sunak to resign as Conservative Party leader after crushing election defeat". BBC News. Retrieved 5 July 2024.