January 1910 UK Election Map: The One Caused By A Constitutional Crisis

The map above shows the results of the January 1910 UK General Election – the first of two that year. The number of seats won out of 670 by the major parties (and % vote share) were as follows:

Liberal:

Conservative and Liberal Unionist:

Irish Parliamentary: 71. Leader:

Labour Representation Committee:

Notable things about the January 1910 election include:

The election was caused by a constitutional crisis, when the Conservative-dominated House of Lords rejected the Liberal government’s “People’s Budget”, which proposed to fund a raft of social programmes such as National Insurance and Old Age Pensions.
Asquith was forced to go to the country by King Edward VII, who said he would consent to the creation of dozens of new Liberal peers in order to pass the budget, if the people would give the constitutional change an electoral mandate.
Asquith was only able to govern after the election with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party.
The government quickly collapsed, leading to a second General Election in 1910, in December of that year.

A note on the map: Constituencies varied in the number of Member returned, with most constituencies returning 1 member, and the largest returning 2 members. Hatched colouring is used in constituencies returning members from separate parties. So, a 1:1 hatch indicates that 1 of the 2 members returned came from 1 party, with the remaining member coming from another. The colouring is also used to indicate this.

Also see other elections:

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