January 1910 United Kingdom general election

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15 January – 10 February 1910 (1910-01-15 – 1910-02-10)

Dec 1910 →

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elected members →

All 670 seats in the House of Commons
336 seats needed for a majority

Turnout

86.8%

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	H. H. Asquith	Arthur Balfour	John Redmond
Party	Liberal	Conservative and Liberal Unionist	Irish Parliamentary
Leader since	30 April 1908	11 June 1902	6 February 1900
Leader's seat	East Fife	City of London	Waterford City
Last election	397 seats, 48.9%	156 seats, 43.4%	82 seats, 0.6%
Seats won	274	272	71
Seat change	123	116	11
Popular vote	2,712,511	2,919,236	74,047
Percentage	43.5%	46.8%	1.2%
Swing	5.4%	3.4%	0.6%

	Fourth party	Fifth party

Leader	Arthur Henderson	William O'Brien
Party	Labour	All-for-Ireland
Leader since	22 January 1908	March 1909
Leader's seat	Barnard Castle	North East Cork
Last election	29 seats, 4.8%	Did not contest
Seats won	40	8
Seat change	11	8
Popular vote	435,770	23,605
Percentage	7.0%	0.4%
Swing	2.2%	0.4%

Colours denote the winning party

Prime Minister before election

H. H. Asquith
Liberal

Prime Minister after election

H. H. Asquith
Liberal

The January 1910 United Kingdom general election was held from 15 January to 10 February 1910. The government called the election in the midst of a constitutional crisis caused by the rejection of the People's Budget by the Conservative-dominated House of Lords, in order to get a mandate to pass the budget.

The general election resulted in a hung parliament, with the Conservative Party led by Arthur Balfour and their Liberal Unionist allies receiving the most votes, but the Liberals led by H. H. Asquith winning the most seats, returning two more MPs than the Conservatives. Asquith's government remained in power with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party, led by John Redmond. Another general election was soon held in December.

The Labour Party, led by Arthur Henderson, returned 40 MPs. Much of this apparent increase (from the 29 Labour MPs elected in 1906) came from the defection, a few years earlier, of Lib Lab MPs from the Liberal Party to Labour.

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Results

UK General Election January 1910
			Candidates						Votes
Party		Leader	Stood	Elected	Gained	Unseated	Net	% of total	%	No.	Net %
	Conservative and Liberal Unionist	Arthur Balfour	594	272	130	14	+116	40.6	46.8	2,919,236	+3.4
	Liberal	H. H. Asquith	511	274	12	135	−123	40.9	43.5	2,712,511	−5.4
	Labour	Arthur Henderson	78	40	17	6	+11	6.0	7.0	435,770	+2.1
	Irish Parliamentary	John Redmond	85	71	0	11	−11	10.6	1.2	74,047	+0.6
	All-for-Ireland	William O'Brien	10	8	8	0	+8	1.2	0.4	23,605
	Independent Nationalist	N/A	10	3	3	2	+2	0.5	0.3	16,533
	Social Democratic Federation	H. M. Hyndman	9	0	0	0	0		0.2	13,479	−0.1
	Ind. Conservative	N/A	4	1	1	1	0	0.1	0.2	11,772
	Free Trader	John Eldon Gorst	4	0	0	0	0		0.2	11,553
	Independent Labour	N/A	6	0	0	1	−1		0.2	9,936
	Independent Liberal	N/A	3	1	1	0	+1	0.1	0.1	5,237
	Scottish Prohibition	Edwin Scrymgeour	1	0	0	0	0		0.0	756

Voting summary

Popular vote

Conservative & Liberal Unionist			46.82%
Liberal			43.51%
Labour			6.99%
Irish Parliamentary			1.19%
All-for-Ireland			0.38%
Others			1.11%

Seats summary

Parliamentary seats

Liberal			40.90%
Conservative and Liberal Unionist			40.60%
Irish Parliamentary			10.60%
Labour			5.97%
All-for-Ireland			1.19%
Others			0.75%

References

^ All parties shown.
^ "General Election Results 1885-1979". Archived from the original on 30 January 2012. Retrieved 13 February 2023.

Blewett, Neal (1972), The Peers, the Parties and the People: The General Elections of 1910^{[publisher missing]}
Clarke, P. F. (1975), "The electoral position of the Liberal and Labour parties, 1910–1914", English Historical Review, 90 (357): 828–836, doi:10.1093/ehr/xc.ccclvii.828
Craig, F. W. S. (1989), British Electoral Facts: 1832–1987, Dartmouth: Gower, ISBN 0900178302
O'Brien, Phillips Payson (2010), "The 1910 Elections and the Primacy of Foreign Policy", in Mulligan, William; Simms, Brendan (eds.), The Primacy of Foreign Policy in British History, 1660–2000, Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 249–259
Pelling, Henry (1967), Social Geography of British Elections 1885–1910^{[publisher missing]}
Sykes, Alan (1979), Tariff Reform in British Politics: 1903–1913, Oxford University Press
Sykes, Alan (1975), "The Confederacy and the purge of the Unionist free traders, 1906–1910", Historical Journal, 18 (2): 349–366, doi:10.1017/S0018246X00023724
Wald, Kenneth D. (1978), "Class and the vote before the first world war", British Journal of Political Science, 8 (4): 441–457, doi:10.1017/S0007123400001496

External links

Spartacus: Political Parties and Election Results
United Kingdom election results—summary results 1885–1979 Archived 30 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine

Manifestos

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This page was last edited on 19 March 2024, at 01:37