2024 United Kingdom general election

2024 United Kingdom general election

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All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326[a] seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Registered	48,208,507
Turnout	28,924,725 59.8% ( 8.4 pp)[2]
First party Second party Third party   Leader Keir Starmer Rishi Sunak Ed Davey Party Labour Conservative Liberal Democrats Leader since 4 April 2020 24 October 2022 27 August 2020 Leader's seat Holborn and St Pancras Richmond and Northallerton[d] Kingston and Surbiton Last election 202 seats, 32.1% 365 seats, 43.6% 11 seats, 11.6% Seats won 411[b] 121 72 Seat change 211[c] 251[e] 64[f] Popular vote 9,708,716 6,828,925 3,519,143 Percentage 33.7% 23.7% 12.2% Swing 1.6 pp 19.9 pp 0.6 pp
A map presenting the results of the election, by party of the MP elected from each constituency
Composition of the House of Commons after the election
Prime Minister before election Rishi Sunak Conservative Prime Minister after election Keir Starmer Labour

The 2024 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 4 July 2024, to elect 650 members of Parliament to the House of Commons, the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The opposition Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, defeated the governing Conservative Party, led by Rishi Sunak, in a landslide victory.

The election was the first general election victory for Labour since 2005, and ended the Conservatives' fourteen-year tenure as the primary governing party. Labour achieved a 174-seat simple majority, and a total of 411 seats, a single-party figure surpassed only by Tony Blair in 1997.^[b] The party's vote share was 33.7%, the lowest of any majority party on record, making this the least proportional general election in British history according to the Gallagher index.^[3] Labour won 211 more seats than the previous general election in 2019, but half a million fewer total votes. The party became the largest in England for the first time since 2005, in Scotland for the first time since 2010, and retained its status as the largest party in Wales.^[4] It lost seven seats: five to independent candidates in seats with sizeable Muslim populations, largely attributed to its stance on the Israel–Hamas war; one to the Green Party of England and Wales; and one to the Conservatives.

The Conservative Party was reduced to 121 seats on a vote share of 23.7%, the worst result in its history. It lost 251 seats in total, including those of twelve Cabinet ministers and South West Norfolk, the seat of the former prime minister Liz Truss.^[5] It also lost all its seats in Wales.^[6] The Conservatives' notional loss of 251 seats represents the highest decrease for any party at a single election in British history, narrowly surpassing 1906, and the corresponding Labour gain of 211 is the largest since 1945. The combined Labour and Conservative vote share was 57.4%, the lowest since the December 1910 general election.

Smaller parties took a record 42.6% of the vote in the election: the Liberal Democrats, led by Ed Davey, made the most significant gains, of seventy-two seats, with a total of 3.5 million votes; like Labour, this represented a decline in their vote from 2019. It was the party's best-ever result and made it the third-largest party in the Commons, a status it had previously held but lost at the 2015 general election.^[7] Reform UK achieved the third-highest vote share at 14.3%, with over four million votes, which won them five seats, and the Green Party of England and Wales won four seats; both parties achieved their best parliamentary results in history. In Wales Plaid Cymru won four seats. In Scotland the Scottish National Party was reduced from forty-eight seats to nine and lost its status as the third-largest party in the Commons.^[8] In Northern Ireland, which has a distinct set of political parties,^[9] Sinn Féin retained its seven seats and therefore became the largest party; this was the first election in which an Irish nationalist party won the most seats in Northern Ireland. The Democratic Unionist Party won five seats, a reduction from eight at the 2019 general election. The Social Democratic and Labour Party won two seats, and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Unionist Party and Traditional Unionist Voice won one seat each, and the independent unionist Alex Easton won North Down. Many of the record number of newly-elected independent MPs, including the former leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn, formed the Independent Alliance group in parliament.

Labour entered the election with a large lead over the Conservatives in opinion polls, and the potential scale of the party's victory was a topic of discussion during the campaign period.^[10][11] The economy, healthcare, education, infrastructure development, environment, housing, energy, immigration, and standards in public office were main campaign topics. There was relatively little discussion of Brexit, which was a major issue during the 2019 general election. This general election was the first in which photo identification was required to vote in person in Great Britain,^[g] the first fought using the new constituency boundaries implemented following the 2023 periodic review of Westminster constituencies, and the first called under the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022.^[12] This was also the first election to be held under the reign of King Charles III.^[13]

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