How many seats does a party need to get a majority?

Steph Brawn
·2-min read
There are 650 seats in total, so a majority is achieved when a party hits the golden figure of 326
There are 650 seats in total, so a majority is achieved when a party hits the golden figure of 326

VOTERS will have heard a lot in recent days about whether any party is going to win a majority in the House of Commons.

There are 650 seats in total, so a majority is achieved when a party hits the golden figure of 326, as this guarantees they will have more seats than anyone else.

At the 2019 General Election, the Conservatives won 365 seats meaning they achieved a comfortable majority.

By the time the General Election was called though at the end of May, that number had slipped to 345 after several by-election defeats and multiple MPs losing the whip.

If a majority is achieved, the government's 'working majority' is actually always larger than the seats the party has won, given that two groups of MPs in Parliament do not vote - the Speaker and Deputy Speaker, and the Sinn Fein members who do not take up their seats in the Commons.

READ MORE: New General Election poll puts SNP ahead of Labour

It is common for a party's 'working majority' to decline during a term as MPs resign or lose the whip, but it is not always the case. In 1997 and 2015, parliaments ended with virtually identical government majorities to those with which they had started.

If no party achieves a majority then you end up with a hung parliament, meaning parties need to find a way to work together to get legislation over the line.

This happened in 2017 when then-prime minister Theresa May called a snap election.

The Conservatives won the most seats with 317 but this was not enough for a majority so they ended up drawing up an agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who held the balance of power with 10 seats.

A poll by YouGov this week suggested Keir Starmer's Labour Party are on course for the biggest majority any single party has achieved since 1832, with some huge Conservative names projected to lose their seats.

However, polls cannot be treated as fact, and we will have to wait and see how the electorate cast their ballots. The first reliable indication we will get of a result will be the exit poll which we can expect at 10pm on Thursday.

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