2017 General Election Results

Author:
Doug Cowan, Head of Digital

Posted on the 29th August 2017

While Labour achieved a nearly proportional result, getting just over 40 percent of the seats on 40 percent of the vote, the Conservatives took a skewed seat-share, with just under 49 percent of the seats on 42 percent of the vote.

Party Vote % Vote % change Seats Seats
change
Seats % Seat % change
Conservative 42.4 5.5 318 -13 48.9 -2
Labour 40 9.5 262 30 40.3 4.6
SNP 3 -1.7 35 -21 5.4 -3.2
Lib Dem 7.4 -0.5 12 4 1.8 0.6
DUP 0.9 0.3 10 2 1.5 0.3
Sinn Féin 0.7 0.2 7 3 1.1 0.5
Plaid Cymru 0.5 -0.1 4 1 0.6 0.2
Green Party 1.6 -2.1 1 0.2
UKIP 1.8 -10.8 0 -1 -0.2
SDLP 0.3 0 -3 -0.5
UUP 0.3 -0.1 0 -2 -0.3
Others 1 n/a 1 0.2 n/a

Yet other parties that have traditionally been marginalised in this system continued to be underrepresented. The Liberal Democrats’ 7.4 percent of the vote translated into just 12 seats (less than 2 percent of seat share) and the Greens only retained their one seat despite attracting over half a million votes – the largest votes per MP ratio. UKIP also attracted over half a million votes but no MPs in return.

Read our full report

Read more posts...

What’s wrong with First Past the Post?

First Past the Post (FPTP) is the name for the voting system used to elect Members of Parliament (MPs) to Westminster. It’s also used in a variety of other elections across the UK, including local...

Posted 07 May 2025

In a representative democracy, we ought to have a Parliament that matches the way people voted

New research on the chilling effect of voter ID published

New research published last month by Dr Tom Barton at Kings College London shows the potential detrimental effect of new voter ID laws on turnout. The research shows that the Voter ID requirement deterred and...

Posted 07 May 2025

research shows that the Voter ID requirement deterred and effectively disenfranchised an estimated 10,571 potential voters