Understanding The Most Disproportionate UK Election
The 2024 UK General Election broke records; the most fragmented election on record, the highest proportion of votes for minor parties in any UK election, and the lowest combined vote share for the two largest parties, Labour and the Conservatives.
Yet the Labour Party was able to double its seats with only a 1.6% increase in vote share. Our researchers found that the factors behind this increase are largely unrelated to the Labour Party’s own popularity and are unlikely to remain stable, and that understanding these is vital to interpreting the future of UK politics.
Returning to the pre-2017 trend of increasing fragmentation and volatility in British elections, the 2024 UK General Election saw voters under a first-past-the-post system deliver a large majority for Labour.
“Interpreting the reasons for this landslide, where 411 (of 650) seats were decided on a vote share of less than 34%, is central to us understanding what will happen next”, said Professor Jane Green, Professor of Political Science and British Politics, and Director of the Nuffield Politics Research Centre.
The study looked at four contributing factors towards this result; the exceptional efficiency of votes for Labour, the split on the right giving votes to Reform and lowering thresholds in constituencies Labour won from the Conservatives, tactical voting which was stronger on the left, and the double anti-incumbency vote in Scotland, where swings to Labour were larger.
The new research took a deep-dive into evidence for the factors presented by Professor Green on the ITV News election night special programme, when she explained the result live on the night.
“There really were three key factors that made Labour’s vote more efficient on election night,” added Marta Miori, a doctoral researcher at the University of Manchester and co-author on the paper. “Fragmentation on the right, which helped them gain seats with fewer votes; tactical voting on the left, which spread their vote more efficiently; and two unpopular governments in Scotland, which made victory easier.”
The researchers found that it is the efficiency of support which is increasingly important. For example Reform, who despite improving in the polls, have a challenge to concentrate their support in seats, especially three-way marginals where whilst Reform takes votes from Labour and the Conservatives, this benefitted the Labour party more in 2024.
Anti-incumbency voting also benefited parties on the ‘left’, as on both sides people wanted the incumbent Conservative Party out of power. This, allied to tactical voting between Liberal Democrat and Labour party supporters, spread the Labour vote in a much more efficient way than in 2019.
The researchers add that now that the Labour Party are in power, the Scottish elections in 2026 could provide an early indication of any anti-incumbency sentiment forming against them.
“While everyone is understandably looking at opinion polls, our research shows it is the distribution of the vote that matters just as much, perhaps even more,” Prof. Green concluded.
“The relationship between votes to seats was unusually critical in 2024 meaning the same will be true to understanding the stability of Labour’s majority, or otherwise, going forward.”