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Amajority government is agovernment by one or moregoverning parties that hold anabsolute majority of seats in alegislature. Such a government can consist of one party that holds a majority on its own, or be acoalition government of multiple parties. This is as opposed to aminority government, where the government does not have a majority, and needs to cooperate with opposition parties to get legislation passed. Agovernment majority determines the balance of power.[1] A government is not a majority government if it only has a majority when counting parties outside the government that have aconfidence agreement with it.
A majority government is usually assured of having its legislation passed and rarely if ever, has to fear being defeated in parliament, a state also known as aworking majority.[2] In contrast, a minority government must constantly bargain for support from other parties in order to pass legislation and avoid being defeated onmotions of no confidence. Single-party majority governments tend to be formed in the aftermath of strong election performances.
The term "majority government" may also be used for a stable long-term coalition of two or more parties to form an absolute majority. One example of such an electoral coalition is inAustralia, where theLiberal andNational parties have run as an electoral bloc, known simply asthe Coalition, for decades. The largest majority government in Australia was elected in1975, when the Coalition won 71.65% of the seats, 91 out of 127, in alandslide victory. Majority governments with a larger absolute number of seats have been elected since, with the Coalition andLabor each winning 94 seats in1996 and2025 respectively. This however amounted to a smaller majority and seat share due to theHouse of Representatives being considerably larger than in 1975.
Inelectoral systems where one party usually wins a majority of seats on their own, such asfirst past the post, coalitions are rare, but may happen when an election returns ahung parliament. An example of this was the2010–2015 coalition government in theUnited Kingdom, which was composed of theConservative Party and theLiberal Democrats. The Conservatives won the most seats of any single party in the 2010 election, but fell short of an absolute majority. However, by combining with the Liberal Democrats a solid majority in theHouse of Commons was created. This was the first true coalition government in the UK sinceWorld War II.
Majority government differs fromconsensus government ornational unity government in not requiring a consensus or supermajority.
