UK General Elections
Every United Kingdom general election from 1802 to 2024: the results, the leaders, the turnout, the governments they made, and the story of each — plus referendums, devolved elections, European elections and mayoral contests.
General elections
58
1802–2024
Latest
2024
Labour · Keir Starmer
Commons seats today
650
Electorate
48.2m
registered voters, 2024
The chronology
Every general election, newest first, grouped into eight eras. Click any election for the full result, the party table and the story.
The Brexit Realignment · 2015–2024
Four elections in nine years, framed by two referendums. Old class loyalties dissolved: the SNP swept Scotland, the Red Wall fell in 2019, and in 2024 FPTP produced the most disproportional result in British history.
New Labour · 1997–2010
Blair's 1997 landslide began thirteen years of Labour government, devolution and a supreme era of electoral professionalisation, ending in the first hung parliament and first formal coalition since the war.
Crisis and Thatcherism · 1974–1992
Two elections in 1974 delivered hung-parliament instability and a strong third-party vote. Thatcher's three victories remade the political economy while the opposition split, and FPTP turned a divided anti-Conservative vote into 18 years of Tory rule.
The Postwar Settlement · 1945–1970
Attlee's 1945 landslide built the welfare state; the Conservatives governed for thirteen years without dismantling it. Two-party dominance peaked, with Labour and the Conservatives together taking nine of every ten votes.
Labour's Rise · 1918–1935
The 1918 franchise revolution enfranchised women and working-class men, Sinn Féin swept Ireland out of Westminster, and Labour displaced the divided Liberals within a decade. Depression-era crises produced the century's biggest landslides.
The Mass Franchise · 1868–1910
Gladstone and Disraeli made elections national duels, Ireland made them existential, and successive Reform Acts tripled the electorate. By 1910 the Lords, Home Rule and a rising Labour movement had brought the constitutional order to a breaking point.
Reform and Realignment · 1832–1865
The 1832 Reform Act began the slow expansion of the franchise. Whigs and Tories fractured over Corn Laws and free trade, re-forming as the Liberal and Conservative parties by mid-century.
The Unreformed Commons · 1802–1831
Before the Great Reform Act, elections were contests of patronage more than votes: rotten boroughs, tiny electorates and hundreds of uncontested seats. Governments were made and unmade in Parliament, not at the polls.
A century in charts
The statistical arc since the 1918 franchise revolution, from the House of Commons Library dataset. Hover any point for the exact figure.
Turnout, 1918–2024
The 1950 peak of 83.9% and the modern slide: no election since 1997 has cleared 70%.
The two-party grip
Conservative + Labour share of votes versus seats. The gap between the lines is first-past-the-post at work: the vote share collapsed after 1970, the seat share barely moved until 2024.
Women in the Commons
One woman was elected in 1918. The share passed 10% only in 1997, on Labour's all-women shortlists, and reached a third by 2019.
Votes versus seats, 2024
The most disproportional result in British history: each bar pair shows a party's vote share (muted) against its seat share (solid).
Records & superlatives
Highest turnout since 1918
83.9%
1950 general election
Lowest turnout since 1918
57.2%
1918 general election
Largest majority since 1918
492
National, 1931
Most votes for one party
14,094,116
Conservative, 1992
Most seats since 1918
470
Conservative, 1931
Biggest winner's bonus
+29.5 pts
Labour turned 33.7% of votes into 63.2% of seats, 2024
The referendums
Britain governed without referendums until 1973; it has held them at every constitutional fork since.
| 8 March 1973 | Northern Ireland | Northern Ireland border pollNationalist parties boycotted the poll. | Remain in UK | 98.9% | 58.7% |
| 5 June 1975 | United Kingdom | European Community membershipThe UK's first nationwide referendum. | Yes to staying in | 67.2% | 63.9% |
| 1 March 1979 | Scotland | Scottish devolutionOnly 32.8% of the whole electorate voted Yes; the Act required 40%. | Yes majority, but failed the 40% threshold | 51.6% | 63.6% |
| 1 March 1979 | Wales | Welsh devolution | No | 79.7% | 58.6% |
| 11 September 1997 | Scotland | Scottish devolution63.5% also backed tax-varying powers. | Yes-Yes | 74.3% | 60.2% |
| 18 September 1997 | Wales | Welsh devolutionPassed by fewer than 7,000 votes. | Yes | 50.3% | 50.1% |
| 7 May 1998 | London | Greater London Authority | Yes | 72.0% | 34.1% |
| 22 May 1998 | Northern Ireland | Good Friday Agreement | Yes | 71.1% | 81.1% |
| 4 November 2004 | North East England | North East regional assemblyThe rejection ended plans for English regional assemblies. | No | 77.9% | 47.2% |
| 3 March 2011 | Wales | Welsh law-making powers | Yes | 63.5% | 35.6% |
| 5 May 2011 | United Kingdom | Alternative Vote | No | 67.9% | 42.0% |
| 18 September 2014 | Scotland | Scottish independenceThe highest turnout at any nationwide UK vote since 1918; 16- and 17-year-olds voted for the first time. | No | 55.3% | 84.6% |
| 23 June 2016 | United Kingdom | EU membershipLeave here shown as the winning share. Leave won every counting region except London, Scotland and Northern Ireland. | Leave | 51.9% | 72.2% |
Devolved & European elections
Since 1999 the UK has run parallel democracies under proportional systems, where the SNP and Plaid Cymru routinely outperform their Westminster results. May 2026 redrew the map: the SNP won a fifth term at Holyrood while Plaid Cymru ended a Labour winning streak in Wales that stretched back to 1922, leaving all three devolved governments led by parties opposed to the union for the first time. European Parliament elections ran from 1979 until Brexit.
Scottish Parliament
Senedd Cymru / Welsh Parliament
Northern Ireland Assembly
European Parliament, 1979–2019
Great Britain seats; Northern Ireland elected 3 MEPs by STV throughout. The last two contests were won by insurgent parties that no longer exist: UKIP in 2014 and the Brexit Party in 2019.
| 1979 | Con · 60 MEPs · 50.6% | Lab · 17 MEPs | 32.7% |
| 1984 | Con · 45 MEPs · 40.8% | Lab · 32 MEPs | 32.9% |
| 1989 | Lab · 45 MEPs · 40.1% | Con · 32 MEPs | 36.8% |
| 1994 | Lab · 62 MEPs · 44.2% | Con · 18 MEPs | 36.5% |
| 1999 | Con · 36 MEPs · 28.0% | Lab · 29 MEPs | 24.0% |
| 2004 | Con · 27 MEPs · 26.7% | Lab · 19 MEPs | 38.5% |
| 2009 | Con · 25 MEPs · 27.7% | Lab · 13 MEPs | 34.5% |
| 2014 | UKIP · 24 MEPs · 27.5% | Lab · 20 MEPs | 35.4% |
| 2019 | Brexit · 29 MEPs · 31.6% | LD · 16 MEPs | 36.9% |
Local & mayoral elections
Local elections are Britain's rolling opinion poll: some 20,000 councillors elected in annual waves, plus directly elected mayors (London since 2000, metro mayors since 2017) and police commissioners since 2012.
Metro-mayoral contests
Latest directly-elected mayoral contest per authority: London since 2000, combined-authority mayors since 2017.
| London | Sadiq Khan (Labour) | 2024 | 40.5% |
| Cambridgeshire and Peterborough | Paul Bristow (Conservative) | 2025 | 32.9% |
| East Midlands | Claire Ward (Labour) | 2024 | 27.5% |
| Greater Lincolnshire | Andrea Jenkyns (Reform) | 2025 | 30.2% |
| Greater Manchester | Bev Craig (Labour) | 2026 | 25.1% |
| Hull and East Yorkshire | Luke Campbell (Reform) | 2025 | 29.8% |
| Liverpool City Region | Steve Rotheram (Labour) | 2024 | 24.0% |
| North East | Kim McGuinness (Labour) | 2024 | 31.0% |
| South Yorkshire | Oliver Coppard (Labour) | 2024 | 27.3% |
| Tees Valley | Ben Houchen (Conservative) | 2024 | 30.8% |
| West Midlands | Richard Parker (Labour) | 2024 | 29.8% |
| West of England | Helen Godwin (Labour) | 2025 | 30.0% |
| West Yorkshire | Tracy Brabin (Labour) | 2024 | 32.7% |
| York and North Yorkshire | David Skaith (Labour) | 2024 | 29.9% |
Council seats held, 1973–2026
Total councillors by party across Great Britain: the Commons Library series to 2025, with the July 2026 composition from Open Council Data. Labour's base peaked in the mid-1990s before the 1997 landslide; Reform UK went from 14 seats in 2024 to over 2,300 after May 2026, when they won 1,453 of the seats up for election.
How UK general elections work
First past the post
One MP per constituency; the candidate with the most votes wins, no majority required. The system rewards geographically concentrated support and punishes evenly spread votes.
650 constituencies
The Commons has had between 615 and 707 seats since 1918. A party needs 326 for a bare majority today, though Sinn Féin's abstention lowers the practical bar.
The timetable
Parliaments run a maximum of five years; Prime Ministers choose the date within that window. Two elections in one year has happened twice, in 1910 and 1974.
Governments, not presidents
Voters elect a Parliament; the Crown appoints whoever can command it. Hung parliaments produce minority governments or coalitions, as in 1910, the 1920s, 1974, 2010 and 2017.