Just How Safe Is Labour After the Election
Just how safe is Labour after the election? What would the seat share look like if they lost their marginal seats.
The 2024 UK General Election was one of the most dramatic and interesting general elections of my lifetime. After fourteen years of Conservative rule, they were removed by a massive 174-seat majority to Labour.
Looking at the share of seats (63%), it looks like Labour have certainly managed to pull off quite an impressive victory however, the share of the vote tells a very different story winning just 33.7% of the votes.
In the UK, we use a voting system called first-path-the post (winner takes all) where the winning party must get the most votes. Even if the winning party was just one vote ahead of the second party, they win the seat.
This is what is known as a marginal seat (less than 5% majority) and there are quite a few of them as shown in the distribution below.
Putting this into perspective, Labour would have a total of 51 marginal seats and the Conservatives would have 39.
Hypothetically speaking, if these Labour marginal seats fell into the hands of the nearest opposition, the total result would put Labour at just 363 seats, Conservatives on 165, Lib Dems on 77 and Reform on 7.
Even if Labour did lose these seats, it certainly looks like Labour are safe for now considering that also, there are very few "safe" Conservative seats.
Data provided by Electoral Calculus.
