United Kingdom general election, 1924

United Kingdom general election, 1924
United Kingdom
29 October 1924

All 615 seats to the House of Commons
308 seats needed for a majority
Turnout 77.0% (Increase5.9%)
  First party Second party Third party
 
Leader Stanley Baldwin Ramsay MacDonald H. H. Asquith
Party Conservative Labour Liberal
Leader since 23 May 1923 21 November 1922 30 April 1908
Leader's seat Bewdley Aberavon Paisley (defeated)
Last election 258 seats, 38.0% 191 seats, 30.7% 158 seats, 29.7%
Seats won 412 151 40
Seat change Increase 154 Decrease 40 Decrease 118
Popular vote 7,418,983 5,281,626 2,818,717
Percentage 46.8% 33.3% 17.8%
Swing Increase 8.8% Increase 2.6% Decrease 11.9%

Colours denote the winning party, as shown in the main table of results.
Northern Ireland not shown.

PM before election

Ramsay MacDonald
Labour

Subsequent PM

Stanley Baldwin
Conservative

1922 election MPs
1923 election MPs
1924 election MPs
1929 election MPs
1931 election MPs

The 1924 United Kingdom general election was held on Wednesday 29 October 1924, as a result of the electoral defeat of the Labour minority government, led by Ramsay MacDonald, in the House of Commons on a motion of no confidence. It was the third general election to be held in less than two years.

The Conservatives, led by Stanley Baldwin, performed dramatically better, in electoral terms, than in the 1923 general election and obtained a large parliamentary majority of 209. Labour, led by Ramsay MacDonald, lost 40 seats. The election also saw the Liberal Party, led by H. H. Asquith, lose 118 of their 158 seats which helped to polarise British politics between the Labour Party and Conservative Party.

The fourth party in terms of number of candidates, number of seats and number of votes were not a party but a group of former National Liberals standing under the Constitutionalist label. They favoured Conservative/Liberal co-operation. Three of the seven Constitutionalists elected, including Winston Churchill, had been opposed by official Liberal candidates, and sat as Conservatives after the election. The other four sat as Liberals.

The Conservative landslide victory and the Labour defeat in this general election has been, in part, attributed to the Zinoviev letter, a forgery, which was published in the Daily Mail four days before the election. However, it is difficult to prove that this had a major impact on the election result. The Labour vote increased by around one million popular votes in comparison to the 1923 general election, however, the increase in the number of popular votes for the Labour Party may be due, in part, to the party putting up eighty-seven more candidates than it did in the previous year's general election.

It is widely speculated that the combination of Labour forming its first government in January 1924 and the Zinoviev letter helped to stir up anti-socialist fears in Britain among many traditional anti-socialist Liberal voters, who then switched their support to the Conservative Party. This partly helps to explain the poor performance of the Liberal Party in the general election. The party also had financial difficulties which allowed it to contest only 339 seats, a lack of distinctive policies after the Conservative Party dropped their support for protected trade, and poor leadership under Asquith.

Results

UK General Election 1924
Candidates Votes
Party Leader Standing Elected Gained Unseated Net % of total % No. Net %
  Conservative Stanley Baldwin 534 412 + 154 66.991 46.8 7,418,983 +8.8
  Labour Ramsay MacDonald 514 151 − 40 24.552 33.3 5,281,626 +2.6
  Liberal H. H. Asquith 339 40 − 118 6.504 17.8 2,818,717 −11.9
  Constitutionalist N/A 12 7 7 0 + 7 1.138 1.2 185,075 +1.1
  Communist Albert Inkpin 8 1 1 0 + 1 0.162 0.2 51,176 +0.1
  Sinn Féin Éamon de Valera 8 0 0 0 0 0.2 34,181 N/A
  Independent N/A 7 2 0 0 0 0.2 25,206 −0.1
  NI Labour Sam Kyle 1 0 0 0 0 0.1 21,122 N/A
  Scottish Prohibition Edwin Scrymgeour 1 1 0 0 0 0.1 14,596 0.0
  Independent Liberal N/A 1 0 0 0 0 0.0 3,241 −0.1
  Independent Labour N/A 1 0 0 0 0 0.0 1,775 −0.1
  Independent Unionist N/A 1 0 0 0 0 0.0 517 −0.1
  Nationalist Joseph Devlin 1 1 0 2 − 2 0.0 0 −0.4

Total votes cast: 15,856,215. Turnout 77.0%.[1] All parties shown. The only Irish Nationalist candidate was elected unopposed. The Conservatives include the Ulster Unionists.

Votes summary

Popular vote
Conservative
 
46.79%
Labour
 
30.68%
Liberal
 
17.78%
Constitutionalist
 
1.17%
Others
 
3.58%

Seats summary

Parliamentary seats
Conservative
 
66.99%
Labour
 
24.55%
Liberal
 
6.5%
Constitutionalist
 
1.14%
Independent
 
0.49%
Others
 
0.81%

References

See also

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/26/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.