GB Historical DB

Westminster Parliamentary Election results by party since 1832

Table ID:
VOTES_1832_ON     (1253440)
Contents:
Westminster Parliamentary Election results by party since 1832
Approx. number of rows:
162,730
Table type:
Raw Data
Documentation Author:
Paula Aucott
Chronology:
The data cover the period 1832 to 2023.

Sources:

  1. 1882-1885 data was taken from the book, British Parliamentary Election Results 1832-1885 compiled and edited by F.W.S.Craig, published by The Macmillan Press Ltd.(1977). A transcription of this data was obtained from the Data Archive. The data was supplied in excel sheets. Further work was done by GBHGIS Project staff to compile the data into a single excel table. However, there was some uncertainty concerning the accuracy of the actual figures given, so Ben Jakobek re-keyed all the votes given to individual parties for the 1832-1880 period.
  2. 1885-1918 data was compiled from the book, British Parliamentary Election Results 1885-1918 compiled and edited by F.W.S.Craig, published by The Macmillan Press Ltd.(1977). A transcription of the 1885-1918 General Election data was obtained from the Data Archive. The data was supplied in excel documents divided into individual years by the Data Archive. Further work was done by Ben Jakobek and Barnes Adesulure in winter 2007 to compile the data into a single excel table adding sequence numbers and full party names.
  3. 1918-1949 data was compiled from the book, British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949 compiled and edited by F.W.S.Craig, published by The Macmillan Press Ltd.(1977). A transcription of the 1918-1949 General Election data was obtained from the Data Archive. The data was supplied in excel documents divided into individual years by the Data Archive. Further work was done by Ben Jakobek and Barnes Adesulure in winter 2007 to compile the data into a single excel table adding sequence numbers and full party names. In addition Northern Ireland and the University constituencies data was manually entered in Spring 2009 as it was not included in the transcription from the Data Archive.
  4. 1885-1949 by-election data was not included in the transcriptions obtained from the Data Archive. This data was entered manually by Barnes Adesulure and Alexandra Nicholls at Portsmouth in autumn and winter 2008.
  5. 1950-1970 data was taken from the book, British Parliamentary Election Results 1950-1970 compiled and edited by F.W.S.Craig, published by The Macmillan Press Ltd.(1977). A transcription of the data 1950-1951 was obtained from Danny Dorling of the University of Oxford. The data was supplied in excel spreadsheets. Further work was done by GBHGIS Project staff to compile the data into a single excel table and manually add the Northern Ireland data. The 1952-1970 data was entered via excel spreadsheets by the GBHGIS Project team in Summer 2008.
  6. 1971-1992 General Election data was obtained as a transcription done by Iain Outlaw. This was obtained along with permission to use the data from Richard Kimber via his political resources.net website. This data was supplied in excel spreadsheets. Further work was done by GBHGIS Project staff to manipulate the data into a suitable format.
  7. 1971-1979 by-election data was entered by GBHGIS Project staff from published results in back copies of national newspapers.
  8. 1997-2005 General Election data and 1979-2015 by-election data was manually entered by GBHGIS Project staff from reports authored by the House of Commons Library. This data was supplemented with data from Wikipedia where the House of Commons data compiled all smaller party results under a single recorded party name of 'Other' in 1997 and 2005. Wikipedia was also used to add the Total Eletorate and Turnout figures for 1997.
  9. General Election data for 2010-2019 were downloaded as spreadsheets and edited to fit the format we required. The 2010 results came from the website of the Electoral Commission, http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/our-work/our-research/electoral-data. The later results all came from the website of the House of Commons Library. 'General Election 2015' came from here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7186/, 'General Election 2017: full results and analysis' came from here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7979/, 'General Election 2019: full results and analysis' came from here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8749/.
  10. Results for By-elections held since 2015 were downloaded as PDF reports from the website of the House of Commons Library. The data contained within these reports were manually added to an excel spreadsheet in the format we required. 2015-17 results were in 'By-elections since the 2015 General Election' http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7417, 2017-19 results were in 'By-elections in the 2017-19 Parliament' https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8280/CBP-8280.pdf, 2019-23 results were in 'By-elections results in the 2019 Parliament' https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9225/CBP-9225.pdf.
  11. All reports authored by the House of Commons Library are under crown copyright. The pre-2009 reports used were originally released under a click-use licence which we obtained. More recent reports are considered to be under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0: http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/copyright/open-parliament-licence/ All data obtained from the House of Commons Library listed above have been released under this licence.
  12. Further results for General and By-elections will be added as new elections occur. Current data is complete up to 2nd August 2023.

Notes:

  1. The data here is a combined table of all General and By-Election results since 1832. Originally this data was held in two separate tables 'votes_1832_2008' and 'votes_1974_2005_oth'. They had differing levels of detail and completeness. The current file contains the most detail available taken from both these earlier tables. The most recent election statistics have also been added to it.
  2. The data covers Westminister Parliamentary Constituencies in Great Britain from 1832 onwards, in Northern Ireland from 1922 onwards and the university constituencies between 1832-1948.
  3. The number data is all in a single column called votes. Categories including votes per party candidate, total electorate, total votes cast, turnout and quota are all included in this single column but identified via the cand_seq and party_code columns.
  4. Where a university Constituency had 2 or 3 seats a system of Proportional Representation (by single transferable vote) was used. Recorded are the final vote counts, the order of successful election and the quota required for election i.e.the minimum number of votes needed to be elected.
  5. The 1832-1970 data was originally given a value of 1 where the election was unopposed. This led to confusion where there was actually 1 vote. Therefore the string 'unopp' was substituted in the relevant places throughout the dataset. This caused problems for calculations being run on the data. This data is now initially loaded into a character column and then copied across to the numeric "votes" column substituting 'unopp' for -1 as it is copied. A column has been added to flag these rows where the election was unopposed.
  6. Where a Constituency had 2 or more seats (1885-1948) the General Election data transcriptions had been amended to amalgamate all candidate votes to be distributed amongst the parties. Although we corrected the errors observed by the Data Archive this method of re-distributing seats was incompatible with our desired use for the data. Therefore all two seat data was manually re-entered to show number of votes as given by Craig.
  7. Where the number of seats was not given this has been assumed to mean there was only 1 seat and has been noted accordingly.
  8. There were two General Elections held in both 1910 and 1974. These are distinguished by the identification of the month the elections were held in, January and December in 1910 and February and October 1974.
  9. The Total votes cast figure is derived in some cases. It comes from summing all the votes for candidates. In the 2017 and later General Elections there is a count of valid votes and invalid votes rather than total votes.
  10. Votes are identified by party only, individual candidates are not named in this dataset.
  11. The name of this table was altered when the end year was updated due to later data being added to the file. To eliminate repetition of this problem the table name was altered from 'votes_1832_2016' to be 'votes_1832_on'.

Checking:

  1. The spreadsheet was visually checked to ensure all rows contained some data.
  2. The accuracy of the number of votes was verified by re-keying all the numbers between 1832 and 1885.
  3. The names of the constituencies 1997-2008 in the original data were checked against the list given in the gazetteer derived from R.H.A. Cheffins 'Parliamentary Constituencies and their Registers since 1832' and the Periodic Reviews of the National Boundary Commissions. Four contained typos which could not be substantiated in Cheffins, other House of Commons Library research papers or on the Electoral Commisssion website. They have been corrected by script and are: Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, Dorset Mid and Poole North, Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, Linlithgow and East Falkirk.
  4. The geographical units have been cross-checked against the GBHGIS administrative unit gazetteer to ensure that all units are correctly identified. The unit names and types have been standardised. Each unit has a unique unit ID assigned to it and this can be used to cross-reference against other data-sets.

Indices:

IndexTypeColumn(s) indexed
votes_1832_on_pkey Primary key rec_num
votes_1832_on_g_unit_idx Unique g_unit, election_date, party_code
votes_1832_on_idx Unique constituency, election_date, party_code, rec_num
votes_1832_on_year_idx   election_year, rec_num

Constraints:

The table has the following associated constraints:

ConstraintTypeDetails
votes_1832_on_pkey Primary Key See details above for primary key index
votes_1832_on_fk_party_code Foreign Key Column(s) {6} link to table party_codebook, column(s) {2}.


Columns within table:

ColumnTypeContents
con_seq Integer number. Identifying Number of the Constituency.
seats Integer number. Number of Seats within the Constituency.
constituency_raw Text string (max.len.=104). Name of Constituency in original data.
constituency Text string (max.len.=104). Cleaned name of Constituency.
cand_seq Integer number. Candidate sequence number.
party_code Text string (max.len.=104). Code for party name.
votes Floating point number. Number of votes as figures (unopposed candidates given as -1).
party_label Text string (max.len.=154). Name of party. Number in brackets separates the candidates from the same party. Also identifies total electorate, turnout, number of votes and quota
election_year Integer number. Year of Election.
election_month Text string (max.len.=34). Month of Election.
election_day Integer number. Day of Election.
election_date Database date value. Date of Election, held as database date value.
end_election_year Integer number. Year Election ended when over multiple days.
end_election_month Text string (max.len.=34). Month Election ended when over multiple days.
end_election_day Integer number. Day Election ended when over multiple days.
end_election_date Database date value. Date Election ended when over multiple days, held as database date value.
adj Text string (max.len.=8). Indicates 1979 results with adjusted constituency boundaries
election_type Text string (max.len.=6). Letter code identifying whether General election (G) or By-election (B).
election_prop Integer number. Number 1, 2 or 3 denotes order in which successful candidates elected in university constituencies practising Proportional Representation.
g_authority Text string (max.len.=1004). Source for the information. NB anything included here must be an authority ID defined in the main g_authority table.
nation Text string (max.len.=34). Name of Nation constituency contained within (not all rows).
notes Text string (max.len.=1004). Comments including reason for instigation of a by-election.
unopp_flag Text string (max.len.=12). Flag indicating where election was unopposed (unopposed candidates given as -1 in votes column).
g_unit Integer number. Unique ID number for constituency unit.
rec_num Integer number. Sequence number of order of list in book or original spreadsheet.