Labour Landslide?

The results of the British election are in, and the general media narrative seems to be describing it as a Labour "landslide." I think that this is an inaccurate description.

The "landslide" description is supported by the number of seats won. Here are the results for the 4 parties receiving the most total votes:

Labour: 412 seats, +214
Conservative: 121 seats, -251
Reform UK: 4 seats, +4
Liberal Democrat: 71 seats, +63

This is an astonishing drubbing for the Conservatives, and a very big win for Labour, in number of seats. Labour has over 63% of the seats in the House of Commons.

I think that the popular vote tells a very different story. Labour did rather poorly in the popular vote, but won a huge number of seats because the Conservative vote collapsed.

Labour won 33.8% of the vote, up just 1.7% from its defeat in 2019. The Liberal Democrats, who captured a large number of seats, were up only 0.6% from 2019. The Conservatives hemorrhaged votes, down 19.9%. It was Nigel Farage's Reform UK party that had the biggest increase, up 12.3%, from 2.0% in 2019 to 14.3% in 2024. Here is a tabular comparison between 2024 and 2019 results:

Labour: +1.7% : 32.1% to 33.8%
Conserv: -19.9% : 43.6% to 23.7%
Reform: +12.3% : 2.0% to 14.3%
Lib Dem: +0.6% : 11.6% to 12.2%

I've also compared the 2024 results to the average results for the prior 6 elections between 2001 and 2019. Note that in this calculation, I consider Reform to be the successor of Farage's former party UKIP. The figures are:

Labour: -0.8% : 33.8% in 2024; average 34.6%
Conserv: -13.5% : 23.7% in 2024; average 37.2%
Reform: +11.6% : 14.3% in 2024; average 2.7%
Lib Dem: -2.8% : 12.2% in 2024; average 24.0%

The combined total for other parties was 5.5% higher, up to 16.0% in 2024 from a 2001-2019 average of 10.5%.

My conclusion is that the Labour party is not popular. Rather, the Conservative party is astonishingly unpopular, and this gave Labour an opportunity to capture a huge Parliamentary majority despite lackluster popular support.