Results breakdown of the United Kingdom general election, 2010

This is the results breakdown of the United Kingdom general election, 2010.

Swing

The election was marked by no uniform national swing, with suburban and rural constituencies showing large swings from Labour to the Conservatives, but urban seats showing much smaller swings. Scotland recorded a small swing back to Labour.

Seats changing hands

The following table is a complete list of seats changing hands as a result of the election based on the notional results of the 2005 election, notwithstanding the results of by-elections to the 54th Parliament.^[1]

The Conservatives gained more seats than at any other general election since their landslide result in 1931. Labour lost a total of 94 seats, the second most seats it had lost in a single election.

England

Of the 533 seats in England, only 532 were contested on the day of the general election. Polling in Thirsk and Malton was delayed until 27 May due to the death of the UKIP candidate.^[2] The Conservatives won an absolute majority of seats in England with 61 seats more than all other parties combined, and securing an average swing of 5.6% from Labour.^[3]

Geographical representations of seats coloured by winning party can be misleading to the eye. Boundaries are drawn by number of electors not geography. This results in rural seats having a large area due to lower population density, while urban seats, with a high density of voters, are geographically quite small. A pure geographical representation of seats coloured by party can make parties with rural seats seem far more popular than urban ones. To counter this bias, the BBC published a map where each seat was an equal size hexagon.^[4][5]

Details of results are given below:

• 

  Northumberland

• 

  Tyne and Wear

• 

  Durham

• 

  Cleveland

• 

  Cumbria

• 

  Lancashire

• 

  North Yorkshire

• 

  West Yorkshire

• 

  South Yorkshire

• 

  Humberside

• 

  Merseyside

• 

  Greater Manchester

• 

  Cheshire

• 

  Derbyshire

• 

  Nottinghamshire

• 

  Lincolnshire

• 

  Shropshire

• 

  Staffordshire

• 

  West Midlands

• 

  Warwickshire

• 

  Leicestershire and Rutland

• 

  Northamptonshire

• 

  Herefordshire

• 

  Worcestershire

• 

  Gloucestershire

• 

  Oxfordshire

• 

  Buckinghamshire

• 

  Bedfordshire

• 

  Cambridgeshire

• 

  Norfolk

• 

  Suffolk

• 

  Essex

• 

  Hertfordshire

• 

  Berkshire

• 

  London

• 

  Cornwall

• 

  Devon

• 

  Somerset

• 

  Dorset

• 

  Avon

• 

  Wiltshire

• 

  Hampshire

• 

  Surrey

• 

  West Sussex

• 

  East Sussex

• 

  Kent

Wales

There were 40 seats contested in Wales. The number of Conservative seats rose from three to eight – the party gained one seat from the Liberal Democrats and four from Labour. Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru retained three MPs, including Arfon which the boundary changes had notionally given to Labour. Overall, Labour lost four seats but held on to its remaining 26.

Scotland

There were 59 seats contested in Scotland. Every constituency in Scotland was won by the party that had won it at the 2005 election, with Labour regaining the two seats they lost in by-elections since 2005. There was a swing to Labour from the Conservatives of 0.8% (with Labour increasing its share of the vote by 2.5% and the Conservatives increasing by just 0.9%), this left the Conservatives with just a single MP representing a Scottish constituency.

For Scottish results in full, see 2010 United Kingdom general election results in Scotland

Northern Ireland

There were 18 seats contested in Northern Ireland. Both Irish nationalist parties, Sinn Féin and SDLP, held their seats. The unionist parties, DUP and UUP (the latter contested the election as UCUNF—an electoral pact with the Conservatives), lost one seat each. The DUP lost Belfast East to the Alliance and in North Down the UUP's Sylvia Hermon left the party over the alliance with the Conservatives and retained her seat as an independent. This left the nationalist parties with eight seats, the unionist parties with eight seats (all DUP), the Alliance with one seat and an independent with one seat. It is the first time since the Partition of Ireland that unionist parties failed to secure a majority of Northern Ireland's Westminster seats in a general election. It was also the first time since Partition that a Nationalist party, Sinn Féin, topped the popular vote at a Westminster election, though winning three fewer seats than the DUP.

Sinn Féin, as an Irish republican party, refuse to take their seats at Westminster (see abstentionism). This leaves 645 MPs to take their seats at Westminster (after the Thirsk and Malton poll), reducing the effective threshold for a parliamentary majority from 326 to 323.

References

Elections and referendums in the United Kingdom
General elections	1801 co-option 1802 1806 1807 1812 1818 1820 1826 1830 1831 1832 1835 1837 1841 1847 1852 1857 1859 1865 1868 1874 1880 1885 1886 1892 1895 1900 1906 1910 (Jan) 1910 (Dec) 1918 1922 1923 1924 1929 1931 1935 1945 1950 1951 1955 1959 1964 1966 1970 1974 (Feb) 1974 (Oct) 1979 1983 1987 1992 1997 2001 2005 2010 2015 Next
Local elections	1889 1890 1892 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
European elections	1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 2014 2019
Referendums	1975 2011 2016
Elections and referendums in England (1264–1705) Scotland (Pre-1707) Great Britain (1708–1796) Ireland Northern Ireland Scotland Wales