In the UK's general election of 2024 voter turnout was estimated to have been 60 percent, the lowest turnout since 2001, when it was 59.4 percent. Between 1922 and 1997 voter turnout never fell below 70 percent, but in 2001 it dropped to just 59.4 percent. Since that low point, voter turnout has gradually recovered and reached 72.2 percent in the Brexit Referendum of 2016, which is still some way off the peak of 83.9 percent recorded in the 1950 General Election. The trend of low voter turnouts in recent times is also reflected in the European elections, which had its lowest voter turnout in 2014 at 42.61 percent. Labour rides wave of discontent to power in 2024 Labour's victory in the 2024 general election was broadly anticipated, with Keir Starmer's party enjoying a comfortable lead in opinion polls from late 2021 onwards. This gap widened further during Liz Truss' short time as Prime Minister, following an acute economic crisis in late 2022 which saw her resign after just 44 days, and propel Rishi Sunak to power. Although Sunak restored a degree of stability after the reigns of his predecessors, Johnson and Truss, he ultimately failed to convince the public he could address the main issues facing the country. By the time of the election, Labour was seen as being more competent on the economy, immigration, and healthcare, the three major issues for voters on the eve of the election. Among prospective Labour voters, the main reason for almost half of people intending to vote for them was to "get the Tories out", compared with just five percent who agreed with their policies. A winter election in 2019 The irregular timing of the 2019 general election, which took place on December 12, 2019, was due to the political chaos caused by Brexit, and the failure of the UK to agree a deal to leave the European Union that year. The Conservatives won 365 seats in this election, achieving a large enough majority to get their Brexit deal approved in the House of Commons after three and a half years of political chaos. Although the Conservatives then led the polls throughout much of 2020 and 2021, their popularity proceeded to sink considerably, especially due to Boris Johnson's alleged involvement in a number of political scandals, particularly that of "partygate". Following an avalanche of resignations from his government, Johnson himself resigned on July 7, 2022, paving the way for Truss to succeed him a few months later

Electoral registrations for parliamentary and local government elections as recorded in electoral registers for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Of the 3.85 million people who registered to vote in the United Kingdom between the 2019 general election announcement on October 29, 2019 and the registration cut-off date on November 26, 2019, over 1.4 million were under the age of 25. There is a clear correlation between the number of registrations and the displayed age groups, with older age groups progressively having fewer voter registrations

As of April 2025, the political party that 18 to 24 year-old's in Great Britain would be most likely to vote for was the Labour Party, at 39 percent, with Labour also the most popular party among those aged 25 to 49. Reform UK was the most popular party for the 50 to 64 age group, with 26 percent of voters saying they would vote for them. For the oldest age group, the Conservative Party was the most popular, with 35 percent of over 65s intending to vote for them. Reform surge in the polls Since winning the last UK general election in July 2024, the ruling Labour Party have steadily become more unpopular among voters. After winning 33.7 percent of the vote in that election, the party was polling at 24 percent in April 2025, only slightly ahead of Reform UK on 23 percent. A right-wing populist party, Reform benefited from the collapse in support for the center-right Conservative Party in the last election, winning several seats at their expense. While the next UK general election is not due to be held until 2029, the government will be keen to address their collapsing approval ratings, in the face of Reform's rising support. Economic headaches for Labour in 2025 Although Labour inherited a growing economy, with falling inflation, and low unemployment from the Conservatives, the overall economic outlook for the UK is still quite gloomy. The country's government debt is around 100 percent of GDP, and without large tax rises and spending cuts, the government hopes to create a stronger, more resilient economy to reduce the deficit. While this is still a possibility, the UK's economic prospects for 2025 were recently slashed, with growth of one percent forecast, down from an earlier prediction of two percent. Although mainly due to external factors such as the threat of increasing tariffs, and general geopolitical instability, the UK's faltering economy will add further problems to the embattled government.

The total number of people registered to vote in Scottish Parliamentary and local government elections was 4,243,800, a decrease of 1,400 (0.03%) compared with December 2021; 955,300 electors (22.5% of the total electorate) had registered for postal voting in the Scottish Parliamentary and local government elections. This represented a very small increase of 800 (0.1%) compared with December 2021; of the 4,243,800 number of people registered to vote at Scottish Parliamentary and local government elections, 76,600 (1.8% of the total electorate) were aged 16 -17; just over 181,500 qualifying foreign nationals resident in Scotland were registered to vote in Scottish Parliamentary and local government elections (4.3% of the total electorate); the number of people registered to vote in UK Parliamentary elections was 4,012,700, a decrease of 16,000 (0.4%) compared with December 2021.

Numbers of people on local authority electoral registers.

The table shows total number of local government electors includes residential qualifiers and attainers, Peers and European Union citizens. Local government areas are unitary authorities, London boroughs and district councils in England; unitary authorities in Wales; council areas in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

This table is derived from data supplied to ONS by Electoral Registration Officers and shows the number of people who on 1 December were registered to vote in the parliamentary and local elections in the UK. The residence qualification requires a person to be normally living at the address on the qualifying date, even if temporarily absent. People having more than one place of residence, such as students, may therefore be included on more than one register.

In Northern Ireland, eligibility for registration requires three month's residence within the province. Overseas electors are not resident in the United Kingdom, but must previously have been resident here and included in the electoral register (unless they were too young to register). They are registered in the same parliamentary constituency as before they went abroad. Attainer is the term used to describe a person who attains the age of 18 during the currency of the register, and is entitled to vote at an election held on or after his or her eighteenth birthday.

Annual data available on the ONS website.

There are two tables of UK Electoral Statistics reflecting the number of electors registered to vote in the UK in 2013.

Source agency: Office for National Statistics

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Electoral Statistics for UK

This dataset contains a spreadsheet with the participant's alias together with some political and socio-demographic data and the anonymised pre-election transcripts. There are twenty-four transcripts in the dataset, one set are in Word and the other in OpenDocument Text. Files are named according to who participated in the focus group or interview. Each transcript contains a table with some basic sociodemographic and political data on the participants.

Participants participated in an icebreaker and were asked their opinions on the snap election, the party leaders, what considerations were going into their vote choice, and impressions of the campaign. If there was time or it was not discussed, they were asked which campaign messages stood out to them and their views on tactical voting.

All participants’ names were changed to a permanent alias that allows them to be tracked across elections and any direct or indirect identifiers removed to protect their anonymity.  The transcripts were then formatted to create two levels of headings: topics and aliases. This is designed to help researchers more easily find the information they need. Please be aware that while topic headings have been added to the transcripts, participants sometimes provide information that anticipates later questions or provide additional information to a prior question later in the in discussion. If you are interested in a particular topic, we encourage to review the entire transcript to capture all the relevant data.

The post-election dataset and leader’s evaluation answers data will be released in 2025.

The Qualitative Election Study of Britain (QESB) is a longitudinal qualitative dataset documenting the real-world discourse of ordinary people, with rich data on their politics, over multiple elections and referendums. The QESB dataset consists of a series of longitudinal transcripts (in Word and Open Office Documents) covering multiple elections and referendums, with over 1.1 million words from 252 and participants to date. The data, structured by election year and pre and post election topics (e.g., impressions of the campaign, impressions of the party leaders, stories of their vote choice and election day), includes comprehensive socio demographic information (e.g. age, gender, regional location) and political indicators (e.g party affiliation, vote choice, including whether and how they voted in the EU referendum).

QESB has a core set of questions that have been asked at each election since 2010, including the pre-election topics such as perceptions of the campaigns, perceptions of the party leaders, most important issues, and the post-election topics of voluntary self-reported vote choice, recounting the story of their election day, and perceptions of the new government to allow researchers to identify topics of interest across time.

In June and July 2024, seventy-six eligible voters took part in pre-election online and in-person focus groups for the 2024 UK General Election. The Qualitative Election Study of Britain seeks to capture the complexities of why people vote the way they do by recording people talk about politics in their own words. Founded in 2010, it is the world’s longest running qualitative election study, providing researchers with a unique data resource for thematic, content, narrative and discourse analysis.

This dataset contains a spreadsheet with the participant's alias together with some political and socio-demographic data and the anonymised pre-election transcripts. There are twenty-four transcripts in the dataset. Files are named according to who participated in the focus group or interview. Participants were asked their opinions on the snap election, the party leaders, what considerations were going into their vote choice, and impressions of the campaign. The post-election dataset and leader’s evaluation answers data will be released in 2025.

Approximately 32 million people voted in the United Kingdom's general election of 2019, with 13.94 million of these votes going to the Conservative party. The Labour Party received the second highest number of votes at 10.29 million, with the Liberal Democrats earning the third highest number of votes at 3.67 million.

The purpose of this study was to produce an ecological dataset for use in studies of the 1997 British General Election and especially to be linked to data on individual voters in the 1997 British Election Study and related surveys.Many researchers interested in voting behaviour in Britain want to study individuals in their ecological (or geographical) contexts, but find this difficult because of problems in assembling relevant datasets. Most are constrained to studies at one particular spatial scale only and restricted to a relatively small number of census data variables. Ecological analysis is thus under-developed in British electoral study. To counter this, and to provide a much better resource base for studies of the 1997 General Election the project aimed to assemble a more comprehensive dataset to facilitate a wide range of ecological analysis and through linkage to the British Election Study allow individual voter's behaviour to be studied in geographical context.

The Labour Party won a landslide victory in the 2024 general election in the UK increasing the number of seats won by 211, when compared with 2019. By comparison, the incumbent Conservatives saw their number of seats fall by 251 compared with their 2019 victory.

The British Election Longitudinal News Study 2015–2019 (BELNS) contains campaign coverage relating to three general elections: 2015, 2017, 2019 and the 2016 EU referendum. Media included are national newspapers, local newspapers, television and radio news. The print newspaper component tracks topic and general election candidate coverage across 46 national and local sources, including actor-level sentiment in the 2015, 2017 and 2019 general elections. The television and radio component tracks topic and general election candidate coverage across 24national and local sources, including actor-level sentiment in the 2017 and 2019 general elections and the 2016 EU referendum. For issues, the data are at the outlet-day level on topics that correspond to mii, the “SINGLE MOST important issues facing the country” asked in all waves of the British Election Study Panels 2014 to 2023 (Fieldhouse et al. 2019) as open-ended response items. The unit of analysis is the news source with repeated measures for each day during the study period, with variables corresponding to election period (GE2015, GE2017, GE2019, Brexit), and topics. For the candidate data, the unit of analysis is the candidate standing for election (or political figure during the referendum) and the variables relate to: election period (GE2015, GE2017, GE2019) or the EU Referendum in 2016, number of stories in which candidate was mentioned across all sources, as well as sentiment per source using different measures.

Elections results data including name, party, number of votes, elected papers issued and papers rejected. Also see: * Election of Local Councillors - summary by party * Council elections dashboard * European Parliamentary Election

British Election Study (BES)
The BES series constitutes the longest academic series of nationally representative probability sample surveys in the country. Its broad aim is to explore the changing determinants of electoral behaviour in contemporary Britain. The surveys have taken place immediately after every general election since 1964. Since the election series was originated in 1963 by David Butler and Donald Stokes under the name of Political Change in Britain, 1963-1970 (see under GN 33099), it has been under the direction of a number of academics over time.

Besides the main election surveys, other datasets have also been produced. For example, some studies have included separate sub-samples for ethnic minorities and areas such as Scotland and Northern Ireland (held under SNs 681, 3171, 3889, 3891, and 4622), and several inter-election panel studies have been undertaken between 1969 and 2001 that follow the same individuals interviewed in the cross-sectional surveys (see SNs 422, 2983, 3888, 4000 4028 and 4620). The 2015 study also includes an internet panel which follows a separate sample of voters across six separate waves in 2014-2015, and continues forward into the next electoral cycle - please see the British Election Study Data website for details.

The 2015 study was themed Voters in Context and was designed to help our understanding of long-term political change, and the role of national and sub-national variations in the political and social context in shaping citizens’ attitudes and behaviour. The survey tackles questions concerning key contemporary questions concerning political representation, accountability and engagement, and aims to help explain the fragmentation of party support in 2015.

British Election Study 2015 Face-to-Face Post-Election Survey
The BES 2015 Face-to-Face Post-Election Survey is an address-based random probability sample study of eligible voters living in 600 wards in 300 Parliamentary Constituencies in England, Scotland, and Wales; 2,987 people completed the survey.

The fieldwork was conducted by GfK between 8 May 2015 and 13 September 2015 and achieved an overall response rate of 55.9%. The face-to-face dataset also includes a self-completion Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) module that was answered by 1,567 respondents. Full details of the methodology and fieldwork are available in the technical report, and questionnaire details can be found in the codebook.

UK electoral system sectors, including overseas, anonymous and Parliamentary electors, EU citizens, and those who opted out, by local authority: annual data.

Teh boundaries of the UK Parliamentary General Election Polling Districts in the City of London

The data set was created as part of the ESRC funded project Economic Policy and Political Myopia. The aim of the project was to study the degree of political myopia in public policy today and in the past both from an empirical and a theoretical perspective. The data on the number of voters in municipal boroughs in 1852-1884 was collected to investigate the link between spending on urban sanitation and the local voting franchise.

This statistic shows the number of votes for political parties in the general election in the United Kingdom in 2017. The Conservative Party had gained the greatest number of votes, with roughly 13.67 million people voting for the party under leadership of Theresa May. By comparison, Jeremy Corbyn's party had acquired a similarly large number of votes, with 12.88 million people having voted for the Labour Party, Third largest party by voter turnout were the Liberal Democrats with 2.37 million votes.

This data is associated with article: Understanding the modern election campaign: Analysing campaign eras through financial transparency disclosures at the 2019 UK general election.This dataset presents how political parties spent their money at the 2019 UK General Election. The dataset was constructed by manually coding invoices published by the Electoral Commission on their Political Finance Database, available at: https://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/.We developed codes inductively, attempting to capture the different types of activities described within the data set. We identified nine ‘macro’ categories within which there are 41 subcategories, described below. The dataset is presented alongside data points provided by the Electoral Commission, including the political party name, supplier name, amount spent, and the Electoral Commission’s own spending categories. Each of these are detailed in the codebook.

This study is part of a larger investigation that surveyed both cross-section and panel samples between 1963 and 1970, in an effort to analyze political change in Great Britain. Interviewing was conducted in four waves: the first wave in 1963, an election-free year, and the next three waves subsequent to the general elections in 1964, 1966, and 1970. The present study contains the data resulting from the 1963 national cross-section sample. POLITICAL CHANGE IN BRITAIN, 1964 (ICPSR 7233) presents data obtained from the 1964 electorate sample, POLITICAL CHANGE IN BRITAIN, 1966 (ICPSR 7234) includes the interviews administered to the 1966 electorate sample, and POLITICAL CHANGE IN BRITAIN, 1963-1970 (ICPSR 7250) comprises the master file that brings together the 1963, 1964, and 1966 samples as well as 11 additional panels. The interviews focused on the phenomenon of political change. General political attitudes and behaviors were ascertained, as well as possible sources for their change. Variables assessed respondents' sources of political information, perceptions of political parties and leaders, and views on governmental responsiveness, economic well-being, and other salient issues. Other questions probed partisan self-identification and the extent of political participation. The respondents' knowledge of members of parliament from their constituencies, and perceptions of social class and trade-union influence were also investigated. Semantic differential scales were employed to assess respondents' perceptions of the three main parties. Extensive demographic data were collected, including age, sex, marital status, number of children, religion, education, occupation, and income.