2015 United Kingdom general election

A general election to select Members of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom (UK) took place on 7 May 2015. This was the first election whose date was known well in advance, a result of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011. The coalition government of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats contested the election as competing parties. The latter announced, as they did for the previous election, that, if no party were to get an overall majority, they would give priority in negotiations to the largest party in the Commons.

Timetable ([1]):

• 30 March: dissolution of Parliament
• 9 April: nomination deadline; there were 3971 candidates ([2])
• 7 May: polling day
• 7/8 May: counting and announcement of results
• 18 May: new Parliament meets to (re)elect Speakers and swear in members
• 27 May: Queen's Speech: votes on this over the following days should confirm the Government

There were 650 seats to be filled.

Highlights

Run-up to election day

This was the first time that an election campaign had been fought since the introduction of fixed-term five-year parliaments, along with a mandatory six-week campaign. This was at first dominated by two debates between the party leaders on national television, in which seven parties took part; Northern Irish parties, however, were excluded, despite occupying 18 seats in the Commons. The period also saw much speculation over any post-election deals between the parties, as none were expected to win a majority of seats. In particular, the role of the Scottish National Party was much-debated since the party was expected to make a major breakthrough in Scotland, taking many seats from Labour.

Polls

Throughout the campaign the polls gave fairly consistent predictions: Conservatives and Labour roughly equal, both well short of a majority, with the Scottish National Party in third place. Over the course of the campaign there was a very slight overall drift towards the Conservatives. A substantial last-minute swing to the Conservatives was indicated by an exit poll announced shortly after the polls closed, predicting them to be just short of an overall majority.

Results

The turnout was 66.1%. As results came in overnight they gradually indicated a small overall majority for the Conservative party. The big winners, though, were the SNP: the three main nationwide parties were left with just one seat each in Scotland, with the SNP winning 50 seats more than in the previous election. The big losers were the Liberal Democrats, who lost most of their seats. It was the Conservatives' share of those seats that gave them their majority. The modest number of changes between the two largest parties went in both directions and almost cancelled out.

The election gave a larger difference between proportions of votes and seats than any previous one, with 24.2% of seats going to the "wrong" party ([3], page 38).

Aftermath

The Liberal Democrat ministers resigned to be replaced by Conservatives. The leaders of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties resigned. Both parties experienced substantial increases in membership, with the former growing more in absolute numbers but the latter relative to existing totals.

Full party listing

• 330 Conservative ([4]) (36.9% of the vote[5])
• 232 Labour (30.4% of the vote)
• 56 Scottish National Party (4.7% of the overall vote)
• 8 Liberal Democrat (7.9% of the vote)
• 8 Democratic Unionist (0.6% of the vote)
• 4 Sinn Féin (0.6% of the vote)
• 3 Plaid Cymru (0.6% of the vote)
• 3 Social Democratic and Labour Party (0.3% of the vote)
• 2 Ulster Unionist (0.4% of the vote)
• 1 Green (3.8% of the vote)
• 1 United Kingdom Independence Party (12.6% of the vote)
• 1 independent
• the Speaker

Note, in calculating majorities for most purposes, that the Speaker, his 3 deputies (2 Labour and 1 Conservative) and Sinn Féin do not vote. Thus in practice the Conservatives have 329 votes out of 642, a majority of 16. This may not apply to the Salisbury Convention, which has never been formally defined.