The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy where executive power is delegated by legislation and social conventions to a unitary parliamentary democracy. From this a hereditary monarch, currently King Charles III, serves as head of state while the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, currently Rishi Sunak since 2022, serves as the elected head of government.
The 1997 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 1 May 1997. The governing Conservative Party led by the prime minister John Major was defeated in a landslide by the opposition Labour Party led by Tony Blair, achieving a 179-seat majority and a total of 418 seats, the highest ever won by Labour as of June 2024. It remains the most recent election in which a party won an overall majority from opposition.
The 1983 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of the Labour Party in 1945, with a majority of 144 seats and the first of two consecutive landslide victories.
The 1992 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 9 April 1992, to elect 651 members to the House of Commons. The governing Conservative Party led by the prime minister John Major won majority of 21, and would be the last time that the Conservatives would win an overall majority at a general election until 2015. It was also the last general election to be held on a day which did not coincide with any local elections until 2017. This election result took many by surprise, as opinion polling leading up to the election day had shown a narrow but consistent lead for the Labour Party under leader Neil Kinnock.
The 1970 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 18 June 1970. It resulted in a surprise victory for the Conservative Party under leader Edward Heath, which defeated the governing Labour Party under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The Liberal Party, under its new leader Jeremy Thorpe, lost half its seats. The Conservatives, including the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), secured a majority of 30 seats. This general election was the first in which people could vote from the age of 18, after passage of the Representation of the People Act the previous year, and the first UK election where party, and not just candidate names were allowed to be put on the ballots.
The 1987 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 11 June 1987, to elect 650 members to the House of Commons. The election was the third consecutive general election victory for the Conservative Party, who won a majority of 102 seats and second landslide under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who became the first Prime Minister since the Earl of Liverpool in 1820 to lead a party into three successive electoral victories.
The politics of Scotland operate within the constitution of the United Kingdom, of which Scotland is a country. Scotland is a democracy, being represented in both the Scottish Parliament and the Parliament of the United Kingdom since the Scotland Act 1998. Most executive power is exercised by the Scottish Government, led by the First Minister of Scotland, the head of government in a multi-party system. The judiciary of Scotland, dealing with Scots law, is independent of the legislature and the Scottish Government. Scots law is primarily determined by the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government shares some executive powers with the Scotland Office, a British government department led by the Secretary of State for Scotland.
Warwick and Leamington is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since the 2017 general election by Matt Western, of the Labour Party.
The 2005 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 5 May 2005, to elect 646 members to the House of Commons. The governing Labour Party led by the prime minister Tony Blair won its third consecutive victory, with Blair becoming the second Labour leader after Harold Wilson to form three majority governments. However, its majority fell to 66 seats; the majority it won four years earlier had been of 167 seats. This was the first time the Labour Party had won a third consecutive election. The Liberal Democrats won seats for the third time in a row, and scored the highest Liberal seat number since World War II. As of the 2024 general election this is the last Labour victory in a general election.
The 2010 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 6 May 2010, to elect Members of Parliament to the House of Commons. The election took place in 650 constituencies across the United Kingdom under the first-past-the-post system. The election resulted in a large swing to the opposition Conservative Party led by David Cameron similar to that seen in 1979, the last time a Conservative opposition had ousted a Labour government. The governing Labour Party led by the prime minister Gordon Brown lost the 66-seat majority it had previously enjoyed, but no party achieved the 326 seats needed for a majority. The Conservatives won the most votes and seats, but still fell 20 seats short. This resulted in a hung parliament where no party was able to command a majority in the House of Commons. This was only the second general election since the Second World War to return a hung parliament, the first being the February 1974 election. This election marked the start of Conservative government for the next 14 years.
Kensington is a former constituency in Greater London which first existed between 1974 and 1997 and was recreated in 2010. It was replaced by the Kensington and Bayswater constituency, first contested at the 2024 general election.
This is an overview of United Kingdom general election results since 1922. The 1922 election was the first election in the new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, after the creation of the Irish Free State removed Southern Ireland from the UK.
There are five types of elections in the United Kingdom: elections to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, elections to devolved parliaments and assemblies, local elections, mayoral elections, and police and crime commissioner elections. Within each of those categories, there may also be by-elections. Elections are held on Election Day, which is conventionally a Thursday, and under the provisions of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 the timing of general elections can be held at the discretion of the prime minister during any five-year period. All other types of elections are held after fixed periods, though early elections to the devolved assemblies and parliaments can occur in certain situations. The five electoral systems used are: the single member plurality system (first-past-the-post), the multi-member plurality, the single transferable vote, the additional member system, and the supplementary vote.
The 2014 European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's component of the 2014 European Parliament election, held on Thursday 22 May 2014, coinciding with the 2014 local elections in England and Northern Ireland. In total, 73 Members of the European Parliament were elected from the United Kingdom using proportional representation. England, Scotland and Wales use a closed-list party list system of PR, while Northern Ireland used the single transferable vote (STV).
The 2015 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 7 May 2015 to elect 650 Members of Parliament to the House of Commons. It was the only general election held under the rules of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and was the last general election to be held before the United Kingdom would vote to end its membership of the European Union (EU). Local elections took place in most areas of England on the same day. The governing Conservative Party led by the prime minister David Cameron won an unexpected victory; opinion polls and political commentators had predicted that the results of the election would cause a second consecutive hung parliament whose composition would be similar to the previous Parliament, which was in effect from the previous national election in 2010. Opinion polls turned out to have underestimated the Conservatives, however, as they won 330 of the 650 seats and 36.9% of the votes, giving them a majority of ten seats.
The 2015 United Kingdom general election in England was held on Thursday, 7 May 2015 for 533 English seats to the House of Commons. The Conservatives won a majority of seats in England for the second time since 1992.
The 2019 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 12 December 2019, with 47,567,752 registered voters entitled to vote to elect members of the House of Commons. The governing Conservative Party led by the prime minister Boris Johnson won a landslide victory with a majority of 80 seats, a net gain of 48, on 43.6% of the popular vote, the highest percentage for any party since the 1979 general election, though with a narrower popular vote margin than that achieved by Labour over the Conservatives in 1997. This was the second national election to be held in 2019 in the United Kingdom, the first being the 2019 European Parliament election.
WARNING: This Wikipedia page has inaccuracies according to the House of Commons General Election 2005 report.
The 2017 United Kingdom general election in Wales was held on 8 June 2017; all 40 seats in Wales were contested. The election for each seat was conducted on the basis of first-past-the-post.
A general election was held in the United Kingdom on Thursday 9 June 1983 and all 72 seats in Scotland were contested.
