 "Britain's Labour Party leader Keir Starmer during his campaign for UK's general election. PTI")
Labour may have won a massive victory in the 2024 UK polls, but a look at the data shows that its vote share hasn’t increased meaningfully since 2019.
The party won 412 seats with a 34 per cent vote share under Sir Keir Starmer.
Under Jeremy Corbyn five years ago, Labour won 202 seats with a 32.3 per cent vote share.
So, what gives?
How did Labour marginally increase win their vote share and yet win so many more seats?
Let’s take a closer look:
First, let’s note that turnout for the 2024 polls is hovering at an anemic 60 per cent. That’s the second lowest since 1885 and barely above the lowest turnout ever in 2001 (59 per cent).
Labour has taken a huge chunk out of the Scottish National Party in Scotland. The party has picked up 36 seats in Scotland, while the SNP lost 38 seats. Labour increased its vote share in Scotland by 17 points, while the SNP’s vote share was down by 15 points.
As per BBC, Labour gained seat gains in the Midlands, North and South as well as London. However, interestingly, the party also shed support in areas with a large Muslim population. It won 39 per cent of the vote share compared to 61 per cent in 2019.
However, these areas didn’t vote for the Tories either. The Conservative Party vote share has nearly halved in these areas to 13 per cent in 2024 compared to 25 per cent in 2019.
According to BBC, the reason why the Labour Party performed so well this time is that support for the Conservative Party has simply cratered. The Tories in 2024 received just 24 per cent of the vote compared to a 43.6 per cent vote share. The party won 121 seats this time compared to 365 seats in 2019.
The Guardian noted that the election also saw the lowest combined vote share for Labour and the Conservatives since 1945. As per I_ndian Express_, Farage’s Reform UK party, which won four seats in Tory strongholds, has eaten away into the margins of the Conservative Party.
The Guardian also said that the difference between the vote share and the number of seats one is the highest to date. Financial Times wrote about Labour’s win, “No British political party has ever won such a big majority with so few votes”.
Reform, despite broadly increased its support across the UK, has been unable to convert its vote share into tangible results. The Nigel Farage-led outfit won just four seats despite getting a 14.3 per cent vote share. The Liberal Dems, meanwhile, won 71 seats despite getting a 12.2 per cent vote share.
The newspaper stated that though British politics has seen such fragmentation for decades, it hasn’t been to this extent. “It is why the electoral system is creaking, as more parties gain moderate vote shares the winning post in a constituency can be quite low and why future elections may be even harder to call,” the newspaper noted.
Experts put the difference between seats and vote share down to the UK’s “first-past-the-post” voting system. This is not the same as the proportional representation system used by other countries.
In an increasingly multiparty political environment, with voters less committed than ever to the two main parties, first-past-the-post creates hugely distorted results,” Steve Gilmore, a spokesperson from Make Votes Matter, which campaigns for the introduction of proportional representation in the UK, told Al Jazeera.
“A party’s share of the seats in parliament bears little resemblance to the share of the vote they received. In other words, on Friday, parliament will not represent how the country voted.”
Regardless of how he won, Starmer has vowed to bring change to the UK. “The work for change begins immediately,” Starmer said. “We will rebuild Britain. …. Brick by brick we will rebuild the infrastructure of opportunity.”
He has his work cut out for him. Labour faces a weary electorate impatient for change against a gloomy backdrop of economic malaise, mounting distrust in institutions and a fraying social fabric. It remains to be seen how the party will govern.
With inputs from agencies