The electoral system : all a question of geography
Curtice, John (2025) The electoral system : all a question of geography. Parliamentary Affairs. ISSN 0031-2290 (In Press) (https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsaf023)
![]() |
Text.
Filename: Curtice-PA-2025-The-electoral-system-all-a-question-of-geography.pdf
Accepted Author Manuscript Restricted to Repository staff only until 1 January 2099. Download (319kB) | Request a copy |
Abstract
The outcome of the 2024 election (see Table 1) broke many a psephological record. The Conservatives sunk to their smallest ever share of the Britain-wide vote (24.4%) and lowest ever tally of seats (121, 20 fewer than the 141 the party won in Great Britain in 1906). Labour secured an overall majority while winning just 34.7% of the vote across Great Britain (and 33.8% across the whole of the UK). Never before had a party secured an overall majority on so low a share of the vote, let alone one as big as 174 - the previous low was the 36.1% of the vote (35.2% across the UK) that delivered Labour a majority of 66 in 2005. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats secured their highest tally of seats (72) since 1923 (when the then Liberal Party won 158 seats) even though, at 12.6%, the party’s share of the vote was lower than at all elections between February 1974 and 2010. At the same time, in England a record total of 14 candidates standing either for other parties or as an independent secured election, beating the previous record of eight in 1918. Indeed, despite a sharp fall in the Scottish National Party’s representation (from 48 to 9), the success of the Liberal Democrats and other smaller parties ensured that as many as 117 third-party MPs were elected across the UK as a whole, also the highest number since 1923.
ORCID iDs
Curtice, John
-
-
Item type: Article ID code: 92486 Dates: DateEvent21 March 2025Published21 March 2025AcceptedSubjects: Political Science > Political institutions (Europe) > Great Britain Department: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) > Government and Public Policy > Politics Depositing user: Pure Administrator Date deposited: 28 Mar 2025 15:04 Last modified: 29 Mar 2025 01:21 URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/92486