How many UK MPs won when most voters chose someone else?
The most extreme case in the 2019 general election: an MP elected on 32.4% of the vote in South Down — meaning 67.6% 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 2019 cycle that produced 229 MPs who took less than half the votes in their constituency (35.3% of the 649 seats). The Conservative Party turned 43.7% of votes into 56.2% of seats; Liberal Democrats took 11.6% of votes but 1.7% of seats. Across the whole result the vote-to-seat gap was highly disproportional — see the Gallagher index for how that's measured.
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Constituencies, coloured by winning party
Every Westminster constituency under 2019 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 365
- Labour Party 202
- Liberal Democrats 11
- Scottish National Party 48
- Green Party 1
- The Brexit Party 0
National FPTP audit
| Seats won without majority support | 229 of 649 (35%) |
|---|---|
| Disproportionality (Gallagher index) | Highly disproportional |
| Largest over-representation | Conservative Party +12.6% seat-share gap |
| Largest under-representation | Liberal Democrats -9.9% seat-share gap |
| Total seats audited | 649 across 31,974,240 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.
64 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 | South Down | Sinn Féin | Chris Hazzard | 16,137 | 32.4% | −17.6 pts | 29.2% |
| 2 | Sheffield, Hallam | Labour Party | Olivia Blake | 19,709 | 34.6% | −15.4 pts | 33.4% |
| 3 | Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath | Scottish National Party | Neale Hanvey | 16,568 | 35.2% | −14.8 pts | 32.6% |
| 4 | South Antrim | Democratic Unionist Party | Paul Girvan | 15,149 | 35.3% | −14.7 pts | 29.0% |
| 5 | Ynys Môn | Conservative Party | Virginia Crosbie | 12,959 | 35.5% | −14.5 pts | 30.1% |
| 6 | East Lothian | Scottish National Party | Kenny MacAskill | 21,156 | 36.2% | −13.8 pts | 29.5% |
| 7 | East Dunbartonshire | Scottish National Party | Amy Callaghan | 19,672 | 37.1% | −12.9 pts | 36.8% |
| 8 | Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross | Liberal Democrats | Jamie Stone | 11,705 | 37.2% | −12.8 pts | 36.6% |
| 9 | Hemsworth | Labour Party | Jon Trickett | 16,460 | 37.5% | −12.5 pts | 34.8% |
| 10 | Barnsley East | Labour Party | Stephanie Peacock | 14,329 | 37.6% | −12.4 pts | 29.2% |
| 11 | Hartlepool | Labour Party | Mike Hill | 15,464 | 37.7% | −12.3 pts | 28.9% |
| 12 | Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford | Labour Party | Yvette Cooper | 18,297 | 37.9% | −12.1 pts | 35.3% |
| 13 | Ceredigion | Plaid Cymru | Ben Lake | 15,208 | 37.9% | −12.1 pts | 22.1% |
| 14 | Kensington | Conservative Party | Felicity Buchan | 16,768 | 38.3% | −11.7 pts | 38.0% |
| 15 | Wimbledon | Conservative Party | Stephen Hammond | 20,373 | 38.4% | −11.6 pts | 37.2% |
| 16 | Doncaster North | Labour Party | Edward Miliband | 15,740 | 38.7% | −11.3 pts | 32.9% |
| 17 | Carmarthen East and Dinefwr | Plaid Cymru | Jonathan Edwards | 15,939 | 38.9% | −11.1 pts | 34.5% |
| 18 | Kingston upon Hull East | Labour Party | Karl Turner | 12,713 | 39.2% | −10.8 pts | 35.4% |
| 19 | Ashfield | Conservative Party | Lee Anderson | 19,231 | 39.3% | −10.7 pts | 27.6% |
| 20 | Cities of London and Westminster | Conservative Party | Nickie Aiken | 17,049 | 39.9% | −10.1 pts | 30.7% |
Sorted ascending by winning share. Click a constituency name to see the full candidate record.
How these numbers are computed: methodology. Source data: House of Commons Library general election results 2019, retrieved 2026-05-19, generated 2026-05-19 (Open Parliament Licence v3.0).