United Kingdom general election, 1945

← 1935

5 July 1945

1950 →

← outgoing members

elected members →

All 640 seats in the House of Commons
321 seats needed for a majority

Turnout

72.8% (

1.7%)

	First party	Second party

Leader	Clement Attlee	Winston Churchill
Party	Labour	Conservative
Leader since	25 October 1935	9 October 1940
Leader's seat	Limehouse	Woodford
Last election	154 seats, 38.0%	386 seats, 47.8%
Seats won	393	197
Seat change	239	189
Popular vote	11,967,746	8,716,211
Percentage	47.7%	36.2%
Swing	11.7%	11.6%

	Third party	Fourth party

Leader	Archibald Sinclair	Ernest Brown
Party	Liberal	Liberal National
Leader since	26 November 1935	1940
Leader's seat	Caithness and Sutherland (defeated)	Leith (defeated)
Last election	21 seats, 6.7%	33 seats, 3.7%
Seats won	12	11
Seat change	9	22
Popular vote	2,177,938	686,652
Percentage	9.0%	2.9%
Swing	2.3%	0.8%

PM before election

Winston Churchill
Conservative

Subsequent PM

Clement Attlee
Labour

1931 election • MPs
1935 election • MPs
1945 election • MPs
1950 election • MPs
1951 election • MPs

External image
Map of the election results (Great Britain)

Winston Churchill
Conservative

Clement Attlee
Labour

The United Kingdom general election of 1945 was held on 5 July 1945, with polls in some constituencies delayed until 12 July and in Nelson and Colne until 19 July, because of local wakes weeks. The results were counted and declared on 26 July, owing in part to the time it took to transport the votes of those serving overseas.

The result was an unexpected landslide victory for Clement Attlee's Labour Party, over Winston Churchill's Conservatives, the first time the party had lost the popular vote in a general election since the 1906 election; they would not win it again until 1955. This resulted in Labour winning its first majority government, and a mandate to implement its postwar reforms. The 12.0% national swing from the Conservative Party to the Labour Party remains the largest ever achieved in a British general election.

Held less than two months after VE Day, it was the first general election since 1935, as general elections had been suspended during the Second World War. Attlee, leader of the Labour party, refused Churchill's offer of continuing the Wartime Coalition until the Allied defeat of Japan. Parliament was dissolved on 15 June.

...
Wikipedia