We in the U.S. probably pay much more attention to the United Kingdom than it merits. The advantage of having a mostly shared language, the British Broadcasting Corporation being one of the premier news organizations, the cultural ties , and the history of U.S. news companies basing their foreign desk in London means that it Americans get a lot of international news out of the United Kingdom and much less from other countries.
Today, the United Kingdom will cast ballots to elect a new House of Commons. As the name suggests, the House of Lords is not a fully-democratic body (although recent changes have created an electoral process in which only some of the hereditary nobility hold seats in the House of Lords with the heredity nobility choosing who gets to fill those seats). And membership in the House of Lords is for life (except those, like the bishops of the Church of England, who hold a seat by virtue of their office). So the election is only for the House of Commons. But in the U.K.’s current political system, almost all of the power rests with the House of Commons. The House of Lords has the right to propose amendments to legislation passed by the Commons, but, ultimately, the Lords are expected to go along with whatever the Commons ultimately passes after the back and forth over amendments.
The House of Commons is composed of 650 members. Like in the U.S., the seats are distributed to the different regions of the country based on population. The rules are not quite as strict as in the U.S. in terms of the permitted variation, and there are some remote districts which are “protected” by law, but the general principle of “one person, one vote” remains. The district lines, since the 1940s, are drawn by nonpartisan boundary commissions (one for each of the four “nations” — England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales — which comprise the United Kingdom.) As such, the first step in drawing the lines is determining how many seats each nation gets (and within England, the seats are further allocated by region). The process is somewhat drawn out with multiple rounds of maps being published and the public getting to comment on it. While the review starts every eight years, it has to be completed before the next election or the process stars over after the next election. As a result, this election features the first new maps since the 2010 election. In discussing the likely swing in this election, you have three different baselines: 1) the number of seats actually held at the end of parliament; 2) the number of seats won in 2019 (as there are usually multiple vacancies during the five-year term of a parliament with the by-elections — what we could call special elections — having a different result than the last general election and sometimes members change parties); and 3) “notional” seats (a guess at what the results would have been in 2019 under the new lines).
Now for the process, each of the 650 members are elected from single-member districts (called constituencies. The constituencies are named after their component parts (e.g., Edinburgh South), In each constituency, there is a returning officer (a local nonpartisan official) who runs the election. The count starts on Thursday evening after the polls close at 10 p.m., (British time). While there are some in the U.S. who will note how quickly the count is conducted (taking between two and eight hours) and that it is a hand count, there are two things to note about this count. First, there is only one race on the ballot which makes doing a hand count relatively simple. Second, with 650 constituencies and less than 50 million registered voters, the average district has around 75,000 registered voters (which is smaller than state house seats in some states). With a turnout averaging around 66%, that means that you are looking at around 50,000 voters per constituencies, and each election authority is only responsible for that one seat.
One last process thing, the BBC has strict regulations on what they can say on Thursday before the polls close. So, if you go to the BBC coverage of the election, what you will get is the quaint BBC custom of posting pictures of “dogs at polls,” voters who combined taking their dog for a walk with voting.
The other thing is that each of the nations really does have its own separate politics as reflected by each having their own boundary commissions. Additionally, in England (the largest nation), there are distinct regions with different tendencies. Those differences will drive the results.
Starting with Northern Ireland, the politics of Northern Ireland are all about the relationship of Northern Ireland to the rest of Ireland and the United Kingdom. In fact, the “British” parties generally do not run in Northern Ireland. Instead, some of the parties in Northern Ireland are loosely affiliated with the main parties in Britain. The main divide in Northern Ireland is between the “nationalists” (predominately Catholic) who want the “Six Counties” to unify with Ireland and the “unionists” (predominately Protestant) who want “Ulster” to stay with the United Kingdom. Both the nationalists and the unionists have multiple parties competing for their votes. On the Unionist side, the traditional main party prior to the 1990s was the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) which was loosely aligned with the Conservative Party in Britain. But after the UUP reached an agreement with nationalist groups to end the paramilitary terror campaigns in the 1990s, many unionists switched to the more hardline Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) thinking that the UUP gave up too much. The DUP will normally support the Conservative Party in the U.K. parliament, but it is much more independent than the UUP is. And there are some parties that think the DUP has not taken a hard enough line in the local parliament (which is set up to require cooperation between the unionists and the nationalists). A similar thing has happened on the nationalist side. Back in the old days, the main part on the nationalist side was the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) which was loosely aligned with the Labour Party in Britain. But, many nationalists switched to supporting Sinn Fein (the Republican party associated with the Irish Republican Army) thinking that the SDLP did not get enough in the agreements to restore local control to Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein is now the largest party in Northern Ireland. The problem with Sinn Fein for elections to the United Kingdom Parlaiament is that, for several reasons, they never actually take their seats in the U.K. parliament and, thus, every seat that Sinn Fein wins actually lowers the total voting membership in the U.K. Parliament (even though they do their seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly). In the middle, for those who are tired of the nationalist-unionist divide is the Alliance Party (loosely affiliated with the Liberal Democrats in Britain). Given the divide between nationalist and unionist, there are some seats which are firmly unionist in which the race will be between the DUP and UUP, and there are some which are nationalist in which the race will be between Sinn Fein and the SDLP. But there are some seats which are in the middle and, in those seats, the splits within the nationalists and the unionists will determine which party wins. In other words, in those seats, the nationalists or unionist being evenly divided between their preferred parties opens the door to the other side winning the seat. But Northern Ireland only has eighteen seats. As such, it is a rare parliament when the results in Northern Ireland have any impact on who has the majority. The big issue in this election is whether Sinn Fein will duplicate its results in the Assembly elections and, for the first time ever, be the party that won the most seats to the U.K. Parliament from Northern Ireland. (In the last election, the DUP won eight of the eighteen seats to seven for Sinn Fein.)
When you turn to the British part of the United Kingdom, there are five main British parties (British in the sense that they run in all three nations) for this election: the governing Conservative Party, the official opposition Labour Party, the Liberal Democrat Party, the Greens, and Reform — a quasi-new party. I describe Reform as a quasi-new Party because it used to be the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). The nationalist challenge of UKIP from the right heading into the 2015 election is what forced the Conservatives to agree to the Brexit referendum. When Brexit was approved that led to the decline of UKIP, but many think that the Conservatives botched Brexit (in reality, Brexit was the botch and there was no way that the United Kingdom was ever going to get the deal for Brexit that UKIP delusionally thought would happen) and UKIP is back as strong as ever with the rebranding as the Reform Party. Reform ran on a limited basis in 2019 as the Brexit Party (mostly in Labour seats to help the Conservatives). This time Reform is running in most seats and are definitely challenging the Conservatives.
In the last election, the Conservatives got around 43.6% of the vote, Labour took around 31.1%, the Liberal Democrats took around 11.5%, the Greens took around 2.6%, and Reform (running as the Brexit Party) took around 2.0%. Since the start of the campaign, the polls have showed a major collapse for the Conservatives with about half of that collapse going to Labour (the centrists who are tired of the Conservative Party) and the other half going to Reform (those who think that the Conservatives screwed up their glorious vision for Brexit). There has been some slide for both the Conservatives and Labour since the campaign started (which could be very significant) but the gap between the two major parties has stayed at around 20%!!! (with the final polls showing a margin of 18%). With the caution that, as you would expect, there is some deviation from poll to poll, the current numbers suggest that Labour is looking at just under 40% of the vote, that the Conservatives are looking at just over 20%, that Reform is looking at something like the mid to upper teens, that the Liberal Democrats are looking at the low teens, and the Greens are looking at around 5%.
As these number hint, the Conservatives are looking at a bloodbath and Labour is looking at a significant majority. But the numbers hide what may actually happen because of the quirks of a single-member first-past-the-post election system. As in the U.S., there are areas which tend to vote Conservative and areas which tend to vote Labour, but when, you add in the other parties, things get more complex.
In Scotland and Wales, you have nationalist parties running in addition to the British parties. In Scotland, in recent years, the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) has been the strongest party. But due to internal divisions, there is now a second nationalist party, Alba, headed by the former leader of the SNP. In the last election, the SNP finished first and won 48 of the 59 Scottish seats, and Labour finished third with only one seat behind six seats for the Conseravtives and four for the Liberal Democrats. The current polling suggests that Labour will finish first. In redistricting, Scotland lost two seats. Given the collapse of the Conservatives and the decline of the SNP, we are looking at a likely pattern in which the Conservatives will lose most of their seats to the SNP (as Labour is too far behind in those seats) while the SNP will lose most of their seats to Labour. And the SNP is also likely to lose seats to the Liberal Democrats. Current projections have Labour ending at over 30 seats, the SNP slipping below 20 seats, the Liberal Democrats somewhere around 4-6 seats, and the Conservatives hoping to avoid being shut out in Scotland (which could come down to a potentially close three-way race with the SNP and Labour).
In Wales, the nationalist Party (Plaid Cymru) has not been the largest party. Labour has been the strongest party in Wales, but there are seats where Plaid Cymru has been strong. Like Scotland, Wales lost seats in redistricting — going from 40 seats to 32 seats. In the last election, Labour won 22 seats to 14 for the Conservatives with Plaid Cymru picking up the last four. As in Scotland, the split of the Conservative vote between the Conservatives and Reform is likely to be a disaster for the Conservatives without gaining any seats for Reform. There just is not a realistic seat where the Conservative margin of victory was high enough for Reform to win by getting the most Conservative votes or for the Conservatives to win either. Both the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru are hoping to pick up a seat or two from the collapse of the Conservatives, but the primary beneficiary will be Labour.
England was the big winner in redistricting. But that is not completely accurate. As in the U.S., there has been a shift from the old industrial areas in the north which lost 6 seats to the southern part of the England which gained twelve seats. These different regions have historically had different tendencies. In the north, there are very few districts in which the Liberal Democrats are competitive. In the south, there are regions where the Liberal Democrats have been second to the Conservatives. And this is the real issue for Reform and the Conservatives. If Reform is merely splitting the Conservative vote, it needs seats in which it can get more votes than the Conservatives in which the Conservatives had such a large margin of victory (i.e. getting over 65% of the vote) that the split does not allow Labour or the Liberal Democrats to get the seat. If the Conservatives barely won the seat in 2019, the split guarantees a win for Labour or the Liberal Democrats.
In 2019, the appeal of Brexit actually allowed the Conservatives to win the “Red Wall” seats (in the United Kingdom, Labour is red and the Conservatives are blue) in the old industrial areas in the north similar to how Trump won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in 2016. But the Conservatives are looking at losing all of those seats and more. There are a handful of seats (maybe up to 10) in which the pro-Brexit vote is strong enough that Reform could win the seat, but the collapse in the Conservative vote could lead to Labour getting close to 90% of the seats in Yorkshire, the north, and the Midlands.
It is a different story in the south and the east. While the Greens are not strong nationally, there are a handful of seats in these regions where the Greens are competitive and could win. And, most significantly, there are a large number of seats where the Liberal Democrats have been the number two party behind the Conservatives. If the Liberal Democrats are going to make big gains, it’s going to be in this half of England. While projecting seats based on national votes is hard (as national swings are never uniform on a seat-by-seat basis either on an absolute term or as a percentage of the vote in the last election), the Liberal Democrats are looking at gaining around 50 (and maybe more seats) in the south and east. Since the projected national gain for the Liberal Democrats is only around 60 seats, it should be clear that the south and east will play a large role in who is the official opposition when parliament convenes in mid-July.
While elections always have a way of surprising, as Thursday evening progresses in the U.S. (which in the U.K. will actually be the early hours of Friday), the projection is for an utter disaster for the Conservatives. Currently, the Conservatives hold 344 seats. The worst that the Conservatives (the oldest established political party in Europe) has ever done is slightly over 150 seats. But, on Saturday morning, the Conservatives are very likely to find themselves with under 80 seats. And right now, it looks like 50-50 as to whether the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats will be the second largest party. The Liberal Democrats (or their predecessors the Liberals) have not been the official opposition since 1922. And the Conservatives have always either been in government or the official opposition dating back to when political parties were mere loosely affiliated factions in the aftermath of the American Revolution.
As in the U.S., results will be released on a rolling basis. Unlike the U.S., there is no preliminary count and projections. Votes are counted on a constituency-wide basis and there is no release of one polling place followed by another. There might be rumors of who is leading in the count, but there are no actual numbers until the final result is announced. And, as in the U.S., there are certain areas that pride themselves on being very quick to get results out, and others that have no problem taking their time. Given this history, some of the British papers actually publish the expected time when certain constituencies will probably be announced.
The first news on Thursday evening will be the release of exit polls at 10 p.m. in Britain (5 p.m. in New York and 2 p.m. in Los Angeles. Exit polls are always approximations, but, in the past, projections based on the exit polls have usually been accurate to within a handful of seats. As such, the exit polls will be the first firm indication of whether the election is as much of a landslide as the pre-election polls indicate. (Until the polls close, there will be no preliminary exit polls). The first real results will come in about ninety minutes or so after the polls close. The seats which historically count the quickest are currently held by Labour. As such, the margins will matter more than the winner — whether the type of swing suggested by the exit polls is actually materializing. Over the next three or so hours, results will come at a rate of about one constituency every two to three minutes (a little slower at first but then faster as it nears 3:00 a.m. in the U.K. and 10 p.m. in New York). For the majority of seats, it will take between five and seven hours to count the results. In short, at around 3:00 a.m., there will be some hint of how things are shaking out and how accurate the exit polls are, but by 5:00 a.m., the numbers will be very firm. Barring close races, with the exception of one or two remote seats, all the results should be in by 7:00 a.m. British time (1:00 a.m. in New York).
The real fun in the U.K. starts after all of the votes are in. There is no transition period. By the afternoon, the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will have offered his resignation to King Charles III (and it is weird writing that) and the King will have named Keir Starmer as the new Prime Minister. Mr. Starmer will immediately begin calling his colleagues and confirming their appointments to the cabinet. On Saturday and Sunday, additional calls will be made to others in the Labour Party naming them to second tier positions (mostly on Saturday) or third tier positions (mostly on Sunday) in the new government. On Monday, morning the new members of the government will be taken to their new offices to begin work.
