It resulted in a second (though reduced) landslide victory for the three-party National Government, which was led by Stanley Baldwin of the Conservative Party after the resignation of Ramsay MacDonald due to ill health earlier in the year.

As in 1931, the National Government was a coalition of the Conservatives with small breakaway factions of the Labour and Liberal parties, and the group campaigned together under a shared manifesto on a platform of continuing its work addressing the economic crises caused by the Great Depression.

The party achieved its then-best-ever result in terms of share of the popular vote, and won back around half of the seats it had lost in the previous election.

The Liberals, who had split from the National Government over the issue of free trade, continued their decline, losing more than half of their seats (including that of leader Sir Herbert Samuel).

[1] As in 1931 the election was dominated by the impact of the Great Depression—in particular persistently high unemployment—and the National Government sought to continue its program of reforms designed to repair the economy.

[3] However, foreign policy and defence were significantly more important than in the previous election, with the role of the League of Nations, the increasing belligerence of the Empire of Japan, the remilitarisation of Germany under Adolf Hitler, and the Italian invasion of Abyssinia all key issues.

The election also marked the continued decline of the Liberals from a natural party of government into a fringe third-party within a two-party system dominated by the Conservatives and Labour.

The resulting parliamentary term would see two changes of Prime Minister: Neville Chamberlain took over from Baldwin in 1937, and subsequently formed a new cross-party wartime coalition—which included the Labour and Liberal parties—in 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War.