United Kingdom General election 2015 — Results

How the vote works

The House of Commons is elected by first-past-the-post: the country is divided into 650 single-member constituencies, and the candidate with the most votes in each wins the seat. There is no second round and no proportional top-up, so a party can win a Commons majority on well under 40% of the national vote, while a party whose support is evenly spread but rarely first — as UKIP was in 2015 — can poll millions of votes for almost no seats. The party that commands the confidence of the Commons forms the government and its leader becomes prime minister; the unelected House of Lords cannot ultimately block the Commons. Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, 2015 was the first British election held to a pre-scheduled five-year date rather than at a time of the prime minister's choosing.

Compiled and reviewed from official results by ElectioMap. See our data methodology.