Accounting for nonexistent UK Liberals

Welcome to my personal blog where I don't have to justify why I'm making a post.


I am going to calculate what the electoral results in the UK would have been like if the Liberals had run a full slate of candidates during the period they did not.

The math I'm using is thus:
First I am presuming each riding is the same size. I'm doing this for two reasons. First it's my personal blog so if I want to write "riding" instead of "constituency" I can, and secondly, while being incorrect, this assumption saves a hell of a lot of time with the calculation.
Second, I will divide the Liberal results by the number of ridings they ran in to find the per-riding vote, then I will presume that 2/3rds of that is their 'base' nation-wide vote, and add that figure to the remaining ridings they did not run in; before adding it back up to get a total. I will then adjust Labour and Conservative popular vote figures to account for these new Liberal votes.


1951
44.4% Con
45.1% Lab
9.8% Lib

1955
45.8% Con
42.7% Lab
10.2% Lib

1959
46.0% Con
40.9% Lab
12.4% Lib

1964
41.1% Con
41.8% Lab
15.7% Lib

1966
39.5% Con
45.3% Lab
13.5% Lib

1970
44.4% Con
41.2% Lab
11.4% Lib

1974 Feb
36.8% Con
36.1% Lab
21.5% Lib

1974 Oct*
39.2% Con
35.8% Lab
18.3% Lib

* In this election the Liberals ran 619 candidates, compared to Labour's 623, and the Tories 622. As such no math was done and the real and actual results are presented.


Compare this to Thatcher's victory in 1979 on 42.9%
Foot's 1983 loss on 27.6%, vs the Alliance on 25.4%
Blair's 1997 victory at 43.2%, vs the Tory loss on 30.7%

As well as the most recent elections

2005
32.4% Con
35.2% Lab
22.0% L-D

2010
36.1% Con
29.0% Lab
23.0% L-D

2015
36.9% Con
30.4% Lab
7.9% L-D


This helps put recent highs/lows into proper perspective, as the modern L-Ds try to run full slates, while the old party did not, and as such, popular vote statistics can get skewed so that some parties appear to be doing worse than they actually are.