United Kingdom general election, 1924

29 October 1924

All 615 seats to the House of Commons
308 seats needed for a majority

Turnout

77.0% (

5.9%)

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Stanley Baldwin	Ramsay MacDonald	H. H. Asquith
Party	Conservative	Labour	Liberal
Leader since	23 May 1923	21 November 1922	30 April 1908
Leader's seat	Bewdley	Aberavon	Paisley (defeated)
Last election	258 seats, 38.0%	191 seats, 30.7%	158 seats, 29.7%
Seats won	412	151	40
Seat change	154	40	118
Popular vote	7,418,983	5,281,626	2,818,717
Percentage	46.8%	33.3%	17.8%
Swing	8.8%	2.6%	11.9%

Colours denote the winning party, as shown in the main table of results.
Northern Ireland and university constituencies not shown.

Prime Minister before election

Ramsay MacDonald
Labour

Subsequent Prime Minister

Stanley Baldwin
Conservative

The 1924 United Kingdom general election was held on Wednesday 29 October 1924, as a result of the defeat of the Labour minority government, led by Ramsay MacDonald, in the House of Commons on a motion of no confidence. It was the third general election to be held in less than two years.

The Conservatives, led by Stanley Baldwin, performed dramatically better, in electoral terms, than in the 1923 general election and obtained a large parliamentary majority of 209. Labour, led by Ramsay MacDonald, lost 40 seats. The election also saw the Liberal Party, led by H. H. Asquith, lose 118 of their 158 seats which helped to polarise British politics between the Labour Party and Conservative Party.

The fourth party in terms of number of candidates, number of seats and number of votes were not a party but a group of former National Liberals standing under the Constitutionalist label. They favoured Conservative/Liberal co-operation. Three of the seven Constitutionalists elected, including Winston Churchill, had been opposed by official Liberal candidates, and sat as Conservatives after the election. The other four sat as Liberals.

The Conservative landslide victory and the Labour defeat in this general election has been, in part, attributed to the Zinoviev letter, a forgery, which was published in the Daily Mail four days before the election. However, it is difficult to prove that this had a major impact on the election result. The Labour vote increased by around one million popular votes in comparison to the 1923 general election, however, the increase in the number of popular votes for the Labour Party may be due, in part, to the party putting up eighty-seven more candidates than it did in the previous year's general election.

It is widely speculated that the combination of Labour forming its first government in January 1924 and the Zinoviev letter helped to stir up anti-socialist fears in Britain among many traditional anti-socialist Liberal voters, who then switched their support to the Conservative Party. This partly helps to explain the poor performance of the Liberal Party in the general election. The party also had financial difficulties which allowed it to contest only 339 seats, a lack of distinctive policies after the Conservative Party dropped their support for protected trade, and poor leadership under Asquith.

Results

UK General Election 1924
			Candidates						Votes
Party		Leader	Standing	Elected	Gained	Unseated	Net	% of total	%	No.	Net %
	Conservative	Stanley Baldwin	534	412			+ 154	66.991	46.8	7,418,983	+8.8
	Labour	Ramsay MacDonald	514	151			− 40	24.552	33.3	5,281,626	+2.6
	Liberal	H. H. Asquith	339	40			− 118	6.504	17.8	2,818,717	−11.9
	Constitutionalist	N/A	12	7	7	0	+ 7	1.138	1.2	185,075	+1.1
	Communist	Albert Inkpin	8	1	1	0	+ 1	0.162	0.2	51,176	+0.1
	Sinn Féin	Éamon de Valera	8	0	0	0	0		0.2	34,181	N/A
	Independent	N/A	7	2	0	0	0		0.2	25,206	−0.1
	NI Labour	Sam Kyle	1	0	0	0	0		0.1	21,122	N/A
	Scottish Prohibition	Edwin Scrymgeour	1	1	0	0	0		0.1	14,596	0.0
	Independent Liberal	N/A	1	0	0	0	0		0.0	3,241	−0.1
	Independent Labour	N/A	1	0	0	0	0		0.0	1,775	−0.1
	Independent Unionist	N/A	1	0	0	0	0		0.0	517	−0.1
	Nationalist	Joseph Devlin	1	1	0	2	− 2		0.0	0	−0.4

Total votes cast: 15,856,215. Turnout 77.0%.^[1] All parties shown. The only Irish Nationalist candidate was elected unopposed. The Conservatives include the Ulster Unionists.

Votes summary

Popular vote

Conservative			46.79%
Labour			30.68%
Liberal			17.78%
Constitutionalist			1.17%
Others			3.58%

Seats summary

Parliamentary seats

Conservative			66.99%
Labour			24.55%
Liberal			6.5%
Constitutionalist			1.14%
Independent			0.49%
Others			0.81%

Seats changing hands

All comparisons are with the 1923 election.
In some cases the change is due to the MP defecting to the gaining party. Such circumstances are marked with a *.
In other circumstances the change is due to the seat having been won by the gaining party in a by-election in the intervening years, and then retained in 1923. Such circumstances are marked with a †.

Gain	Gained from	Number	Seats
Communist	Liberal	1	Battersea North
Labour	Liberal	16	Stirling and Falkirk, Paisley, Edinburgh East, Gateshead, Rochdale, Bermondsey West, Southwark Central, Newcastle upon Tyne East, Newcastle upon Tyne West, Burslem, Middlesbrough East, Elland, Keighley, Penistone, Bradford South, Dewsbury
Labour	Conservative	7	Motherwell, Barrow-in-Furness, Liverpool West Toxteth, Lincoln, Peckham, Wolverhampton Bilston, Birmingham King's Norton
Labour gains:		23
Liberal	Labour	8	Walthamstow West, Bristol North, Hackney South, Norwich (one of two), Bradford East, Batley and Morley, Wrexham, Swansea West
Liberal	Independent Liberal	1	Cardiganshire
Liberal gains:		9
Conservative	Labour	55	Stirlingshire West, Renfrewshire East, Dunbartonshire, Lanark, Glasgow Partick, Lanarkshire North, Renfrewshire West, Glasgow Maryhill, Kilmarnock, Midlothian & Peebles North, Linlithgow, Berwick & Haddington, Reading, Birkenhead West, Crewe, Carlisle, Whitehaven, Derby (one of two), Barnard Castle, Leyton East, East Ham North, Essex SE, Maldon, Upton, Dartford, Gravesend, Bolton (one of two), Eccles, Oldham (one of two), Salford North, Salford South, Salford West, Warrington, Leicester East, Holland with Boston†, Greenwich, Kennington, Hammersmith North, St Pancras North, St Pancras South East, Norfolk South, Norwich (one of two), Kettering, Northampton, Enfield, Tottenham South, The Wrekin, Frome, Lichfield, Ipswich, Coventry, Wakefield, Bradford Central, Pontefract, Cardiff South
	Liberal	106	Bodmin, Cornwall North, Penryn and Falmouth, St Ives, Banff, East Aberdeenshire & Kincardineshire, Aberdeen and Kincardine Central, Forfarshire, Perth, Fife East, Argyll, Edinburgh West, Edinburgh North, Dumfriesshire, Galloway, Bedfordshire Mid, Luton, Abingdon, Newbury, Aylesbury, Wycombe, Huntingdonshire, Isle of Ely, Altrincham, Birkenhead East, Stalybridge and Hyde, Stockport (one of two), Wirral, Barnstaple, South Molton, Tavistock, Tiverton, Torquay, Totnes, Dorset North, Stockton-on-Tees, The Hartlepools, Chelmsford, Harwich, Stroud, Thornbury, Basingstoke, Portsmouth Central, Isle of Wight, Hemel Hempstead, Hull South West, Sevenoaks, Blackpool, Darwen, Lancaster, Lonsdale, Preston (one of two), Manchester Blackley, Manchester Exchange, Manchester Moss Side, Manchester Rusholme, Manchester Withington, Royton, Bootle, Liverpool Wavertree, Liverpool West Derby, Southport, Bosworth, Harborough, Leicester South, Gainsborough, Horncastle, Louth, Hackney North, Brixton, Islington East, Camberwell North-West, Hackney Central, Stoke Newington, Great Yarmouth, King's Lynn, Norfolk East, Hexham, Nottingham Central, Nottingham East, Finchley, Willesden East, Oxford†, Shrewsbury, Bath, Bridgwater, Taunton, Wells, Weston-super-Mare, Walsall, Sudbury, Chichester, Nuneaton, Rugby, Chippenham, Westbury, Devizes, Salisbury, Cleveland, Bradford North, Sowerby, Flintshire, Pembrokeshire, Brecon and Radnor, Cardiff East
	National Liberal	1	Loughborough
	Independent	1	Harrow¹
Conservative gains:		163
Constitutionalist	Liberal	4	Accrington, Heywood and Radcliffe, Stretford, Stoke
	Independent Liberal	1	Camborne
	Conservative	2	Epping, Walthamstow East
Ulster Unionist	Nationalist	2	Fermanagh and Tyrone (both seats)

¹previous MP had defected to Labour by the time of the 1924 election

References

↑ http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/rp2008/rp08-012.pdf

F. W. S. Craig, British Electoral Facts: 1832-1987
United Kingdom election results - summary results 1885-1909

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