List of United Kingdom general elections

Universal suffrage, on an equal basis for men and women over the age of 21, was established in 1928.

Before 1918, general elections did not occur on a single day and polling was spread over several weeks.

A negative majority means that there was a hung parliament (or minority government) following that election.

No attempt is made to define a majority before 1832, when the Reform Act disenfranchised the rotten boroughs; before then the Tory party had an undemocratically entrenched dominance.

Particularly in the early part of the period, the complexity of factional alignments, with both the Whig and Tory traditions tending to have some members in government and others in opposition factions simultaneously, make it impossible to produce an objective majority figure.

A graph showing shares of the vote received by each political party in the UK since 1832. The graph shows the UK being dominated by two political parties, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party, until around 1900, when the Labour Party rises and takes a large share of votes away from the Liberals. Miscellaneous parties and independents represent an insignificant amount of vote share until around 1996.
Shares of the vote in general elections since 1832 received by Conservatives [ note 1 ] (blue), Liberals/Liberal Democrats [ note 2 ] (orange), Labour (red) and others (grey) [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ]