At the up coming UK general election there’s a realistic possibility of a hung parliament. All serious polls point to a Conservative election win, but with UKIP’s strong showing in the 2009 EU elections and the Tories appearing to be turning their back on Euroscepticism, could Eurosceptic UKIP split the Conservative vote (Eurosceptic Conservative MPs created UKIP after all) in key seats and prevent the Tories a clear majority over the Labour party?

If something like this happens, it’s probably the Liberal Democrats who will benefit from a hung parliament with the possibility of a coalition government between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats or the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats.

I suppose it all depends how Eurosceptic the British public are and how important Europe is as a reason to vote during a general election, can UKIP match it’s EU election results or will their support slip during what many British people see as a ‘real’ election: local and EU elections are notorious for protest voting which tend not to equate to similar results at general election time.

Could make for interesting politics after the general election :-)

Interesting UK Hung Parliament Facts

Britain doesn’t do hung parliaments :-) Since World War II we’ve had one hung parliament: in 1974 Labour won 301 seats the Conservatives 297 seats.

At the next general election there are 650 parliamentary seats (up 4 from 2005).

A majority requires 326 seats won by one party.

The Conservative party to win a clear majority requires a massive swing from Labour to Conservative.

Since World War II there’s only been two general elections with a similar swing from one party to another.