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2024 年イギリス総選挙の分析

The Analysis of the 2024 British General Election

Japanese (日本語)

国際文化学研究 : 神戸大学大学院国際文化学研究科紀要

64

51-91

神戸大学大学院国際文化学研究科

2025-09

The British general election of July 2024 produced the worst-ever result for Conservatives and a Labour landslide. Since the UK exited from the EU on January 2020, the Brexit itself was no longer a salient political issue and the election politics has returned to ‘normal pattern’. In my analysis of the British general election of 2024, I emphasize that the Conservatives devastating defeat as well as Labour landslide can be explained by the following three factors: the public evaluation about the party competence in economic management, the popularity of party leaders, and the support of the mass media. Furthermore, the loss of trust in the conservative party, which was led to by ‘Partygate’ under Johnson government, should be added to critical causes of the dramatic collapse of the Conservative vote. The most remarkable feature of the 2024 election was that the Labour Party doubled its seats with a 1.6 point increase in vote share. The Labour Party’s vote share of 33.7% was historically lowest for a winning party. Such a distinctly peculiar feature cannot be necessary explained by the above-mentioned factors. We should notice following two factors. First, the 2024 general election saw an exceptional degree of electoral efficiency for Labour. The electoral efficiency means how votes translate into seats. The Labour Party targeted its campaign on marginal seats in this election. The anti-Conservative tactical voting among Liberal Democrat supporters contributed also to increase electoral efficiency. The second factor is two party blocs under the fragmented party system. As measured by the index of the effective number of parties, the UK party system is now close to being a five-party system. Under such a fragmented party system, the vote choice was structured by two party blocs: right-conservative party bloc (Conservatives and Reform UK) and left-liberal party bloc (Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens and SNP). We can see the bulk of vote switching in the 2024 general election came from changing parties within the blocs rather than between them. It is especially noteworthy that less than 30% of Conservative supporter defected to the Reform UK. We may, therefore, reasonably conclude that the Labour’s landslide majority in the 2024 general election was facilitated by a split within the right-conservative party bloc.

two party blocs

紀要論文