Talk:List of United Kingdom general elections

message: When Margaret Thatcher was deposed as leader of the Conservative Party in 1990, she lost her post as Prime Minister, and was succeeded by the winner of the contest for Conservative Party leader, John Major.  No General Election was called, but did the Queen have a constitutional role here, or did Major simply inherit the office of Prime Minister as Thatcher's successor?
: The Queen's role was limited basically to appointing the person who could command a majority in Parliament ie. the leader of the largest pary, who happened to be Major. - Chrism 14:54, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Formally, the Queen had to take her Prime Minister's advice, and Margaret Thatcher told her to appoint John Major.  Thatcher could have gone on or suggested someone else, but she would have destroyed the Conservative government had she done so.  Note that the dates here for elections are not the same as the dates in UK prime ministers, notably in February/March 1974]] where Edward Heath delayed resigning. --Henrygb 16:27, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Fall of Thatcher, 1990

message: Out of curiosity, I would like to know why only the elections since 1945 are listed, when Wikipedia has articles on all elections since 1832? ...
Since I don't watch this page, it would be very nice if someone could reply on my talk page. Thanks! — Timwi 22:07, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  1945? 

message: Most voters choose who to vote for based on the candidates' parties, rather than the personalities or opinions of the candidates.
Is this statement NPOV? --Biekko 15:56, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reason for voting 

message: This anonymous edit from December was wrong, and I'm sorry I didn't spot it at the time. Irish and Commonwealth citizens can vote in UK parliamentary elections, for reasons explained in the Electoral Commission factsheet that I have added to the external links section: It is a legacy of the concept of "British Subject", which encompassed the whole Empire at the time of the 1918 Representation of the People Act. In fact, that might be worth explaining in the article... --rbrwr± 19:50, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eligibility (3) 

message: I may be wrong, but I believe it is common practice to list minority parliaments as a negative majority, e.g. the 1929 election resulted in a majority of –42 because Labour was 42 seats off from forming a majority. I have updated the majority column in the list of Election Results since 1918 for the three Hung Parliaments since 1918 and added a note; if anyone has any corrections, feel free to make them. Thalion 00:22, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sure the numbers for 1923 are wrong - Labour wasn't even the largest party and was about 67 seats behind the Conservatives alone, let alone when the Liberals are taken into account. Does anyone have the full figures for that Parliament? Timrollpickering 20:36, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hung Parliaments 

message: Not really sure how to fix this, but given Wikipedia's habbit of always linking calendar years, I very nearly didn't notice that the years in the general election table are links to articles about those specific elections, and not just to the year articles... Roy Badami 23:11, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table of Elections 

message: I am being a bit pedantic but the linkage of PMs to Parliaments is not complete. There were cases of appointments in the latter stages of a Parliament which have not bern caught by the existing list e.g. Balfour resigned in 1905 without advising a dissolution so Campbell-Bannerman's Premiership started in the 1900 Parliament (before he asked for a dissolution). I also noticed that Eden's Premiership started in the 1951 Parliament, but he is only included in the table for the 1955 Parliament. 
I suppose I will have to compare the dates of PMs appointments to dates of dissolutions to catch all these instances. --Gary J 03:41, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And if you think that's messy, there were slight overlaps when incumbant parties lost elections. In modern times a defeated PM often resigns the next day, even while some seats are still counting, but go back 70 years or more and sometimes there would be a few more days - perhaps also because of the movements of the monarch and leader of the opposition. In the 19th century there was a convention (which Disraeli broke, though Salisbury reverted to) that governments lived and died in the Commons, not in the election that determined the composition, so sometimes a government would wait until the Commons had reassembled and let it be voted out of office. Also with more fragmented parties and unclear outcomes, it wasn't always clear who had actually "won" the election. Baldwin in 1923/1924 is the last case of this, although Edward Heath may have been trying to do similar in February 1974. Timrollpickering 14:34, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Prime Ministers in Parliaments

message: Is there any source for the number of new people to the electoral roll, and the number of people who fall off it? Preferably for the individual constituencies?
I don't mean simply the net change of people on the roll, but the raw numbers of how many new electors? Or how many left the electoral roll? It would also be useful to find the number of people voting who didn't last time.
I think this would be very useful in analysing changing vote patterns: for example it would shed light on whether Labour voters are switching to Liberal or whether the Liberal voters are primarily new voters and the Labour voters are staying at home. BillMasen 18:26, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New/ex-electors 

message: Election data is inadequate.
Complete election results are needed, with number voting for each party percentage voting for each and number of seats won by each party for every election for which data is available.
Dave Leip's site for US elections might be used as a model:
 http://www.uselectionatlas.org/
If there is an equivialant for Dave Leip's site for UK elections somewhere on the internet it should be linked.  
NCDane (talk) 07:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Complete Election Results Needed 

message: A lot of the pre-1918 dates are wrong. The 1910 (December) election, for example, certainly didn't take place in January 1911. Does anyone know why there's so many errors, and could someone correct it?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.1.230.35 (talk) 02:11, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dates of elections are wrong 

message: Surely it should be called List of United Kingdom general elections? 93.96.236.8 (talk) 21:44, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Page name

message: The majority given for MacDonald's Labour is -98; however this is the figure for Baldwin's Conservatives after the election. The majority for the Labour government that replaced them was an even less impressive -232! Kmitch87 (talk) 17:31, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: 1923

message: "Note: A negative majority means that there was a hung parliament (or minority parliament) following that election. For example, in the 1929 election, Labour was 42 seats short of forming a majority, and so its majority is listed as −42."
This is incorrect, Labour's majority is listed as -42 because it fell 21 seats short of a majority: if they're not for you, they're agin you. Then again, maths tells me it should be -41 with the Conservative Speaker increasing it to -40.Kmitch87 (talk) 17:53, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Negative Majority

message: Why not "List of British general elections"? — Nearly Headless Nick {C} 16:51, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question 

message: Following the 2006/7 discussion, I have added: -
1.  Salisbury to the end of the 1880 Parliament (his 1885-6 ministry)
2.  Salisbury to the beginning and end of the 1892 Parliament (he met he Commons at the start of it, and advised its dissolution).
3.  Campbell-Bannerman to the end of the 1900 Parliament (he advised its dissolution).
4.  Bonar Law to the end of the 1918 Parliament (he advised its dissolution).
5.  Baldwin to the beginning of the 1923 Parliament (he met he Commons at the start of it).
Alekksandr (talk) 18:40, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Prime Ministers in Parliaments

message: I feel that it is best to only give this figure for the first government formed after an election.  E.g. it seems strange to record Churchill's 1945 caretaker Conservative Government as having the exact same majority as Baldwin's 1935 National Government, despite all the intervening by-elections.  The source cited, Rallings and Thrasher, only gives the initial majority.  I therefore propose to amend the page accordingly.  Alekksandr (talk) 21:19, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is the sources are not always in agreement with each other. Some MPs in earlier years walked a fine line between an independent who generally sympathised with the government and a semi-detached party member, and that's before you get to the mess of constituency organisations, and it's not always easy to tell which was which at a distance. The general histories and contemporary media also use their own figures - 179 has been in use since the day after the 1997 election. I think we'd need to hammer down which sources take precedence first or else we'll get endless changes as everyone "corrects" articles and makes them (in)consistent with one another. Timrollpickering (talk) 00:22, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Majorities

message: I don't understand the column heading Unseated but the figures match those for Unopposed - i.e. MPs elected to a seat without a contest from another candidate. I would change all these headings from 1885 to 1950 in the UK. From 1951, all parliamentary seats have been contested in general elections. --Gepid (talk) 08:03, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Unseated

message: Some of the cells have multi-line entries that appear to be intended to align with other multi-line entries in adjacent cells. However, because of line-wrapping they do not align, and the result is visually confusing. 109.157.11.203 (talk) 20:24, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table layout is confusing 

message: Conservatives had majority of 12 in 2015? On election page it says 330 seats. That is majority 5. May said in 2017 "If I lose six seats I lose." Where did 12 come from? ----
:It is a majority of 12. May said she loses if she loses 6, because those 6 would go to Labour and the majority would disappear. Its not how many more seats you have than the half way point, its how many more you have that all the other parties combined.
--2A00:23C4:6CAD:3100:9D27:EBC9:6FE4:2154 (talk) 23:30, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  2015 Majority 

message: It doesn't seem to represent party, or monarch, or anything else. What information is this supposed to convey, and why is it not clearly labeled?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.189.108.103 (talk) 03:25, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is the shading of the elections supposed to represent? 

message: Many of the prime ministers who were knighted at some point are listed as "Sir [insert name]", even in cases where they hadn't yet been knighted at the time (e.g. Churchill in 1940), and others with knighthoods have the "Sir" designation missing (e.g. Major, Blair). I think for consistency it would be better if all the "Sirs" were removed, as is the case in the article List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom. Mark and inwardly digest (talk) 17:33, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Sir" title 

message: Is this the share of the votes cast or share of the votes of the electorate? Keith-264 (talk) 15:08, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Share of the vote