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All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority |
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2005 election • MPs |
2010 election • MPs |
2015 election • MPs |
2017 election • MPs |
The United Kingdom General Election of 2017 is scheduled to take place on 8 June 2017. Each of the 650 parliamentary constituencies will elect one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons, the lower house of Parliament.
In line with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, an election had not been due until 7 May 2020, but a call for a snap election by Prime Minister Theresa May received the necessary two-thirds majority in a 522 to 13 vote in the House of Commons on 19 April 2017. The Conservative Party, which has governed since 2015 (and was the majority party in a coalition government from 2010 to 2015), is defending a majority of 17 against the Labour Party, the official opposition. The third-largest party is the Scottish National Party, which won 56 of the 59 Scottish constituencies in 2015.
Political positions on the negotiations following the UK's invocation of Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union in March 2017 to leave the EU are expected to dominate the election campaign.
Each parliamentary constituency of the United Kingdom elects one MP to the House of Commons using the "first past the post" system. If one party obtains a majority of seats, then that party is entitled to form the Government, with its leader as Prime Minister. If the election results in no single party having a majority, then there is a hung parliament. In this case, the options for forming the Government are either a minority government or a coalition government.