1923 United Kingdom general election

The 1923 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 6 December 1923. The Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, won the most seats, but Labour, led by Ramsay MacDonald, and H. H. Asquith's reunited Liberal Party gained enough seats to produce a hung parliament. It is the most recent UK general election in which a third party won over 100 seats. The Liberals' percentage of the vote, 29.7%, has not been exceeded by a third party at any general election since.

1923 United Kingdom general election
6 December 1923
All 615 seats in the House of Commons
308 seats needed for a majority
Turnout71.1%, 1.9 pp
  First party Second party Third party
 
Leader Stanley Baldwin Ramsay MacDonald H. H. Asquith
Party Conservative Labour Liberal
Leader since 23 May 1923 21 November 1922 30 April 1908
Leader's seat Bewdley Aberavon Paisley
Last election 344 seats, 38.5% 142 seats, 29.7% 115 seats, 28.8%
Seats won 258 191 158
Seat change 86 49 43
Popular vote 5,286,159 4,267,831 4,129,922
Percentage 38.0% 30.7% 29.7%
Swing 0.5 pp 1.0 pp 0.9 pp
Colours denote the winning party—as shown in § Results
Prime Minister before election

Stanley Baldwin
Conservative

 Prime Minister after election

Ramsay MacDonald
Labour

MacDonald formed the first ever Labour government with tacit support from the Liberals. Rather than trying to bring the Liberals back into government, Asquith's motivation for permitting Labour to enter power was that he hoped they would prove to be incompetent and quickly lose support. Being a minority, MacDonald's government only lasted ten months and another general election was held in October 1924.

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