General Election 2024: How Britain Voted
| Published date | 01 September 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20419058241282452 |
| Author | John Curtice |
| Date | 01 September 2024 |
SEPTEMBER 2024•POLITICAL INSIGHT9
Rishi Sunak took the country by
surprise when, on 22 May, he stood
in the pouring rain outside Number
10 Downing Street to announce
that the UK would have a general election six
weeks later. Although the Conser vatives’ five-
year term in oce was coming to an end – an
election had to be held in January 2025 at the
latest – given that the party was on average
as much as 20 points behind in the polls,
it was widely assumed the election would
not be held until the Autumn, most likely
November. Any other decision simply looked
likely to hasten Mr Sunak’s departure.
That indeed proved to the case when
the ballot boxes were opened and counted
in the small hours of 5 July. As Table 1
shows, support across Great Britain for
the Conservatives fell by over 20 points
compared with the last election in 2019 to
just 24 per cent. It was by far and away the
party’s lowest level of support in its history.
The Conservatives were left with only 121
seats, well below the previous all-time low of
144 (excluding seats in Ireland) in 1906. No
previous government has suered so heavy a
rebu from the electorate.
Yet, at the same time, support for the
principal opposition party, Labour, barely
increased. At 35 per cent, its share of the
General Election 2024:
How Britain Voted
July’s General Election result reveals an increasingly fragmented
electorate motivated more by antipathy for the incumbent
Conservative government than by enthusiasm for Labour, writes
John Curtice.
vote in Great Britain was only two points up
on what it achieved under Jeremy Corbyn’s
leadership in 2019. While it did well in
Scotland, the party barely advanced at all in
England and fell back in Wales. Labour’s tally
was well adrift of the 41 per cent Jeremy
Corbyn, Sir Keir Starmer’s predecessor as
Labour leader, had secured in 2017, let alone
the 44 per cent that swept Sir Tony Blair
to power in his landslide victory in 1997.
Nevertheless, Labour won 412 seats, and
thus an overall majority of 174. Never had a
party secured an overall majority on so low
a share of the vote, let alone a majority that
was so large.
Labour was not the only party to win many
more seats while barely improving its vote
share. The Liberal Democrats’ share of the
vote increased by less than a point, and at
12.5 per cent their tally was well short of the
level of support the party and its predecessors
© Ron Fassbender / Alamy Stock Photo
Political Insight September 2024 BU.indd 9Political Insight September 2024 BU.indd 921/08/2024 16:2321/08/2024 16:23
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