United Kingdom 1983 general election
Final results from ParlGov, read : Conservative Party won 397 of 650 seats with 42.4% of the vote; 72.8% of registered voters cast a ballot, down 3.2 points on 1979.
- United Kingdom
- Held
Result
Seats and votes by party
| Party | Seats | ± seats | % | ± points | Votes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative Party | 397 | +58 | 42.4 | −1.5 | 13,012,316 |
| Labour Party | 209 | −60 | 27.6 | −9.3 | 8,456,934 |
| Liberal Party | 17 | +6 | 25.4 | +11.6 | 7,780,949 |
| Scottish National Party | 2 | 0 | 1.1 | −0.5 | 331,975 |
| Ulster Unionist Party | 11 | +6 | 0.8 | 0.0 | 259,952 |
| Democratic Unionist Party | 3 | 0 | 0.5 | +0.3 | 152,749 |
| Social Democratic and Labour Party | 1 | 0 | 0.4 | 0.0 | 137,012 |
| Plaid Cymru | 2 | 0 | 0.4 | 0.0 | 125,309 |
| Sinn Féin | 1 | 0.3 | 102,701 | ||
| Green Party of England and Wales | 0 | 0.2 | 53,848 | ||
| Ulster Popular Unionist Party | 1 | 0.1 | 22,681 | ||
| Social Democratic Party | 6 |
± is the change against the United Kingdom 1979 general election, party by party.
Votes by party
- Conservative Party 13,012,316
- Labour Party 8,456,934
- Liberal Party 7,780,949
- Scottish National Party 331,975
- Ulster Unionist Party 259,952
- Democratic Unionist Party 152,749
- Social Democratic and Labour Party 137,012
- Plaid Cymru 125,309
- Sinn Féin 102,701
- Green Party of England and Wales 53,848
- Ulster Popular Unionist Party 22,681
- Social Democratic Party
ParlGov lists parties with at least 1 percent of the vote or 2 seats, so the rows do not add up to the valid votes. How we read it.
Share of the vote
Turnout
72.8% of the 42,192,999 registered voters cast a ballot (30,722,241 ballots), down 3.2 points on 1979. 30,671,137 of them were valid votes. The lowest turnout since 1970 in our data. How turnout is counted.
Votes and seats
- Conservative Party42.4% of votes61.1% of seats
- Labour Party27.6% of votes32.2% of seats
- Liberal Party25.4% of votes2.6% of seats
- Ulster Unionist Party0.8% of votes1.7% of seats
- Democratic Unionist Party0.5% of votes0.5% of seats
- Scottish National Party1.1% of votes0.3% of seats
- Plaid Cymru0.4% of votes0.3% of seats
- Social Democratic and Labour Party0.4% of votes0.2% of seats
- Sinn Féin0.3% of votes0.2% of seats
- Ulster Popular Unionist Party0.1% of votes0.2% of seats
The Gallagher index of disproportionality is 21.1 (0 when seats follow votes exactly); the effective number of parties is 3.1 by votes and 2.1 by seats; Conservative Party led Labour Party by 14.8 points of the vote. How these are computed.
Sources and licence
Sources and licence
- ParlGov 2024 Release (Döring and Manow), Harvard Dataverse (source). Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal
- Wikidata, party colours (P465) (source). Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal
Our text and compilation: CC BY 4.0. How to reuse and cite this page.