How many UK MPs won when most voters chose someone else?
The most extreme case in the 2017 general election: an MP elected on 29.2% of the vote in Ceredigion — meaning 70.8% of people who voted there chose someone else, and they still won the seat. Under First Past the Post that’s how every Westminster contest works: a candidate wins by being top of the poll, regardless of share, with no minimum threshold. Across the whole 2017 cycle that produced 174 MPs who took less than half the votes in their constituency (26.8% of the 649 seats). The Conservative Party turned 42.4% of votes into 48.8% of seats; Liberal Democrats took 7.4% of votes but 1.8% of seats. Across the whole result the vote-to-seat gap was moderately disproportional — see the Gallagher index for how that's measured.
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Constituencies, coloured by winning party
Every Westminster constituency under 2017 boundaries, shaded by the party that took the seat. Hover for the winning share; click to open the full candidate record. Northern Ireland is included — Westminster elections use First Past the Post across the whole UK.
- Conservative Party 317
- Labour Party 262
- Liberal Democrats 12
- Scottish National Party 35
- UK Independence Party 0
- Green Party 1
National FPTP audit
| Seats won without majority support | 174 of 649 (27%) |
|---|---|
| Disproportionality (Gallagher index) | Moderately disproportional |
| Largest over-representation | Conservative Party +6.4% seat-share gap |
| Largest under-representation | Liberal Democrats -5.5% seat-share gap |
| Total seats audited | 649 across 32,151,505 valid votes |
Excluded from headline metrics: 1 speaker. What these tokens mean.
Vote share vs seat share by party
Each party gets its own pair below: filled bar for vote share, outlined bar for seat share. The signed gap on the right is what First Past the Post produced — not what any party did wrong.
66 smaller parties (under 1% of valid votes) hidden — the full party-by-party totals are in the CSV downloads.
Constituencies won without majority support — lowest winning shares
Every row here is a constituency where First Past the Post seated a candidate the majority of voters did not back. The winning candidate’s name appears as a factual record of who took the seat; the subject of analysis is the voting method that produced the result.
| # | Constituency | Winning party | Winning candidate | Votes | Share of votes Winning candidate's votes ÷ valid votes in the constituency. | Below quota Winner's share minus the proportional quota (50% for a single-member seat). Negative = won the seat below the quota. | Runner-up share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ceredigion | Plaid Cymru | Ben Lake | 11,623 | 29.2% | −20.8 pts | 29.0% |
| 2 | Belfast South | Democratic Unionist Party | Emma Little Pengelly | 13,299 | 30.4% | −19.6 pts | 25.9% |
| 3 | Lanark and Hamilton East | Scottish National Party | Angela Crawley | 16,444 | 32.6% | −17.4 pts | 32.1% |
| 4 | North East Fife | Scottish National Party | Stephen Gethins | 13,743 | 32.9% | −17.1 pts | 32.9% |
| 5 | Edinburgh North and Leith | Scottish National Party | Deidre Brock | 19,243 | 34.0% | −16.0 pts | 31.2% |
| 6 | Edinburgh West | Liberal Democrats | Christine Jardine | 18,108 | 34.3% | −15.7 pts | 28.6% |
| 7 | Dunfermline and West Fife | Scottish National Party | Douglas Chapman | 18,121 | 35.5% | −14.5 pts | 33.9% |
| 8 | Edinburgh South West | Scottish National Party | Joanna Cherry | 17,575 | 35.6% | −14.4 pts | 33.4% |
| 9 | Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross | Liberal Democrats | Jamie Stone | 11,061 | 35.8% | −14.2 pts | 29.2% |
| 10 | Argyll and Bute | Scottish National Party | Brendan O'Hara | 17,304 | 36.0% | −14.0 pts | 33.2% |
| 11 | East Lothian | Labour Party | Martin Whitfield | 20,158 | 36.1% | −13.9 pts | 30.6% |
| 12 | Linlithgow and East Falkirk | Scottish National Party | Martyn Day | 20,388 | 36.3% | −13.7 pts | 31.1% |
| 13 | Midlothian | Labour Party | Danielle Rowley | 16,458 | 36.4% | −13.6 pts | 34.4% |
| 14 | Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath | Labour Party | Lesley Laird | 17,016 | 36.8% | −13.2 pts | 36.3% |
| 15 | Stirling | Conservative Party | Stephen Kerr | 18,291 | 37.1% | −12.9 pts | 36.8% |
| 16 | Central Ayrshire | Scottish National Party | Philippa Whitford | 16,771 | 37.2% | −12.8 pts | 34.4% |
| 17 | Paisley and Renfrewshire North | Scottish National Party | Gavin Newlands | 17,455 | 37.4% | −12.6 pts | 31.8% |
| 18 | Rutherglen and Hamilton West | Labour Party | Gerard Killen | 19,101 | 37.5% | −12.5 pts | 37.0% |
| 19 | Airdrie and Shotts | Scottish National Party | Neil Gray | 14,291 | 37.6% | −12.4 pts | 37.1% |
| 20 | Glasgow North | Scottish National Party | Patrick Grady | 12,597 | 37.6% | −12.4 pts | 34.5% |
Sorted ascending by winning share. Click a constituency name to see the full candidate record.
How these numbers are computed: methodology. Source data: UK Parliament psephology database, retrieved 2026-05-19, generated 2026-05-19 (Open Parliament Licence v3.0).