1950 United Kingdom general election
23 February 1950
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All 625 seats in the House of Commons 313 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Opinion polls | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Turnout | 28,771,124 83.9% (11.1 pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Colours denote the winning party | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Composition of the House of Commons after the election | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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elected_members, elected_mps.A general election was held in the United Kingdom on Thursday, 23 February 1950, and was the first after a full term of a majority Labour government. It was also the first general election after the abolition of plural voting and university constituencies. The general election saw Labour returned to power, but its majority was dramatically reduced from 146 seats to just 5, with a sizeable swing towards the Conservatives, who gained 90 seats.
Another general election was called for the following year, which the Conservative Party won, returning Churchill to power after six years in opposition. Turnout in this general election increased to 83.9%, the highest turnout in a United Kingdom general election under universal suffrage, and represented an increase of 11.1 percentage points from 72.8% turnout in 1945.
1950 was also the first general election to be covered on television, although no recording was made of the live broadcast, which was the standard practice at the time. Richard Dimbleby hosted the BBC coverage of the election, which he would later do again for the 1951, 1955, 1959 and the 1964 general elections. On this occasion, Dimbleby was joined in the BBC Alexandra Palace studios by R. B. McCallum, Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, and author of The British General Election of 1945, and David Butler, research student of Nuffield College. The programme ran from 10:45 pm until just after 1:00 am.