2024 Election Results | Labour landslide - how do you feel about it?

JustV

The general election results are in! It's a Labour landslide.



Labour took an astounding 412 seats (63% of the total), a 211 seat increase on the 2019 election. The Conservatives lost 251 seats - two thirds of their previous total - leaving them with just 121.

Liberal Democrats made huge gains, and Reform UK and the Green party gained a few seats.

The SNP were pretty much wiped out by Labour in Scotland, winning only 9 of their previous 48 seats.

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The big question though - how do you feel about this result? The election poll was very pro-Labour, so I'm guessing y'all are quite pleased, but let me hear your thoughts!

JustV

For data nerds, here's how the voter shares compare with the number of seats:



You might notice Reform UK got a huge chunk of the vote share (outperforming the Liberal Democrats even), but they only won a few seats. Likewise, Labour got double the percentage of seats compared to their vote share. This is a quirk of our voting system (first past the post).

sinead276

Personally, I'm glad they won and the tories are gone. I pretty much knew my area was going to remain a Labour constituency (it hasn't really been anything but), but I was just glad we've got a change and hopefully one for the better.

Also as a potential data nerd, it was interesting to see how Reform technically got more votes than the Lib Dems, but less seats (in my view - thank god for that)

Lets just hope Labour can keep their promises and actually help improve the country

JustV

Thanks for your thoughts @sinead276! I think everyone's got their fingers crossed for Labour now. A lot of folks wanted the change, I guess let's hope they deliver something meaningful.

sinead276 wrote:

Also as a potential data nerd, it was interesting to see how Reform technically got more votes than the Lib Dems, but less seats (in my view - thank god for that)

Yeah! This is wild - I saw a graph somewhere that showed this election had the most disproportionate ratio of votes to seats on record (for Labour).

The Lib Dems seemed to target their campaigning very specifically in constituencies they knew they could win, so they squeezed a lot of value out of every vote they received, but Reform's votes were more spread out, getting lots of them but never coming first in their races.

Amy22

I think for me I have got a bit of a mixed opinion on labour personally (specifically to do with how Kier mentioned about banning gender ideology being taught in schools which I think is wrong). But the main thing is that I am glad that we have managed to vote out the tories at least and hopefully labour can start to do better for the UK. I was suprised by the massive turnout of labour votes recently compared to times before.

independent_

Shhhh, but i'm a scottish labour voter who used to vote SNP (my friends rl will hate me for this). We needed change in Scotland as well. For what it's worth I hate first past the post, but if it hadn't been, reform uk could have got a much higher seat number which absolutely terrifies me. So I'm very happy

JustV

independent_ wrote: »

Shhhh, but i'm a scottish labour voter who used to vote SNP (my friends rl will hate me for this). We needed change in Scotland as well. For what it's worth I hate first past the post, but if it hadn't been, reform uk could have got a much higher seat number which absolutely terrifies me. So I'm very happy

Ha! A rebel in the ranks huh?

Good to hear your perspective @independent_. I know we have a few Scottish folks here so I wonder if they'd say a similar thing. Seems change was the order of the day!

I've seen a few people say exactly what you said - that they don't like first past the post, but they're glad Reform kinda got screwed by it. An interesting conflict I suppose. 🤔

JustV

Amy22 wrote: »

I think for me I have got a bit of a mixed opinion on labour personally (specifically to do with how Kier mentioned about banning gender ideology being taught in schools which I think is wrong). But the main thing is that I am glad that we have managed to vote out the tories at least and hopefully labour can start to do better for the UK.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts @Amy22! I think quite a few people feel this way - a lot of progressives were very unhappy with Labour's position on trans rights in the run up to the election (rightly so IMO), but as you say I think getting the Tories out is what they cared about most.

Amy22 wrote: »

I was suprised by the massive turnout of labour votes recently compared to times before.

So! There's a funny thing about this if you're interested in the data. Keir Starmer's Labour actually got less of the vote share than Jeremy Corbyn's Labour in 2017. From Full Fact:

Labour has won 63% of the seats in the House of Commons, at the time of writing, and 33.7% of the vote share.

Labour’s vote share this time around was lower than in 2017 when it won 41% and 262 (40%) seats, but higher than in 2019 when it achieved 32.9% of the vote share and 202 (31%) seats.

But because Labour's vote share was spread more widely and more tactically than 2019, and because the Conservative vote was split so heavily by Reform UK, Labour still dominated.

A bit wild, really.

Skive

sinead276 wrote: »

Also as a potential data nerd, it was interesting to see how Reform technically got more votes than the Lib Dems, but less seats (in my view - thank god for that)
3

This is nothing to celebrate. It only highlights that in the UK that it all cites are equal. You may feel that Reform getting very few seats is a victory? But it has come at the cost of democracy.

The solution to this is proportional representation.

independent_

I definitely agree that PR is the way to go. We have a version of it in Scotland and it does work quite well in that parties like the greens get more seats in the regional vote. However reform and their policies frankly terrify me, so in a small way it's a worth a celebration (though that is my opinion and is not shared by all)