1923 United Kingdom general election

1923 United Kingdom general election

← 1922 6 December 1923 1924 →
← outgoing members elected members →
All 615 seats in the House of Commons 308 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	71.1%, 1.9 pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader Stanley Baldwin Ramsay MacDonald H. H. Asquith Party Conservative Labour Liberal Leader since 23 May 1923 21 November 1922 30 April 1908 Leader's seat Bewdley Aberavon Paisley Last election 344 seats, 38.5% 142 seats, 29.7% 115 seats, 28.8%[a] Seats won 258 191 158[note 1] Seat change 86 49 43 Popular vote 5,286,159 4,267,831 4,129,922 Percentage 38.0% 30.7% 29.7% Swing 0.5 pp 1.0 pp 0.9 pp
Colours denote the winning party—as shown in § Results
Prime Minister before election Stanley Baldwin Conservative Prime Minister after election Ramsay MacDonald Labour

The 1923 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 6 December 1923.^[1] The Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, won the most seats, but Labour, led by Ramsay MacDonald, and H. H. Asquith's reunited Liberal Party gained enough seats to produce a hung parliament. It is the most recent UK general election in which a third party won over 100 seats (158 for the Liberals) and the most narrow gap, of a "mere" 100 seats, between the first and third parties since. The Liberals' percentage of the vote, 29.7%, has not been exceeded by a third party at any general election since.

MacDonald formed the first ever Labour government with tacit support from the Liberals. Rather than trying to bring the Liberals back into government, Asquith's motivation for permitting Labour to enter power was that he hoped they would prove to be incompetent and quickly lose support. Being a minority, MacDonald's government only lasted ten months and another general election was held in October 1924.

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