January 1910 United Kingdom general election ← 1906 15 January – 10 February 1910 (1910-01-15 –1910-02-10 ) Dec 1910 →
670 seats in theHouse of Commons Registered 7,694,741 Turnout 6,234,435pp ) First party Second party Third party Leader H. H. Asquith Arthur Balfour John Redmond Party Liberal Conservative andLiberal 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 Popular vote 2,712,511 2,919,236 74,047 Percentage 43.5% 46.8% 1.2% Swing pp pp pp 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 Popular vote 435,770 23,605 Percentage 7.0% 0.4% Swing pp pp
Colours denote the winning party
Composition of the House of Commons following the election.
TheJanuary 1910 UK general election was held from 15 January to 10 February 1910. Called amid aconstitutional crisis after theConservative -dominatedHouse of Lords rejected thePeople's Budget , theLiberal government, seeking a mandate, lost their majority.
The result was ahung parliament :Arthur Balfour ’sConservatives and theirLiberal Unionist allies won the most votes, butAsquith ’sLiberals secured the most seats, edging out the Conservatives by two. WithIrish Parliamentary Party support, Asquith remained in power. Another election followed inDecember .
TheLabour Party , led byArthur 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, ofLib Lab MPs from the Liberal Party to Labour.
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 Ind. 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
Total votes cast: 6,234,435.
[ 1] Electorate: 7,694,741 (7,201,029 in contested seats)
Turnout: 86.8%
[ 2] 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%
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%
Election poster from "Labour Party and Democratic League" (a faction of the British Labour Party) Blewett, Neal (1972),The Peers, the Parties and the People: The General Elections of 1910 , Palgrave Macmillan London,doi :10.1007/978-1-349-00652-6 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
3.6pp)
_UK_parliament.svg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
