The 650 United Kingdom House of Commons seats are elected by first past the post (FPTP), in which the candidate with the most votes wins the seat.

At Thursday’s general election, Labour won a landslide. After declarations from 645 of the 650 seats, Labour had won 411 seats (up 210 since the 2019 election), the Conservatives 119 (down 249), the Liberal Democrats 71 (up 63), the Scottish National Party (SNP) nine (down 38), independents six (up six), the far-right Reform four (up four), the Greens four (up three) and the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru four (up two).

Vote shares for national parties were 33.8% Labour (up 1.6), 23.7% Conservative (down 19.9), 14.3% Reform (up 12.3), 12.2% Lib Dem (up 0.6) and 6.8% Greens (up 4.1). The crash in the Conservative vote helped both Labour and the Lib Dems to gain seats, while Reform was inefficiently distributed. Labour had less vote share than the combined total for the Conservatives and Reform (38.0%).

In my election day preview for The Poll Bludger, I said that final polls gave Labour about an 18-point lead over the Conservatives, but Labour only won by ten. Despite this, Labour still won a seat landslide.

The Conservative seat number was well below the 165 they won at their previous........

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