The United Kingdom general election of 2010 was held on Thursday 6 May 2010 to elect members to theHouse of Commons. The election took place in 650 constituencies across the United Kingdom under the first-past-the-post system. None of the parties achieved the 326 seats needed for an overall majority. The Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, won the largest number of votes and seats but still fell twenty seats short. This resulted in a hung parliament where no party was able to command a majority in the House of Commons. This was only the second general election since World War II to return a hung parliament, the first being the February 1974 election. However unlike then, this time a hung parliament had been widely expected and therefore the country was better prepared for the constitutional process that would follow such a result.The coalition government that was subsequently formed was the first coalition in UK history to eventuate directly from an election outcome.
Coalition talks began immediately between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats and lasted for five days. There was an aborted attempt to put together a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition (although other smaller parties would have been required to make up the ten seats they lacked for a majority). To facilitate thisGordon Brown announced on the evening of Monday 10 May that he would resign as Labour Party leader. On Tuesday 11 May, Brown announced his resignation[3] as Prime Minister, marking the end of 13 years of Labourgovernment.This was accepted by Queen Elizabeth II, who then invited David Cameron to form a government and become Prime Minister. Just after midnight on 12 May, the Liberal Democrats emerged from a meeting of their Parliamentary party and Federal Executive to announce that the coalition deal had been "approved overwhelmingly", sealing a stable coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
None of the three main party leaders had previously led a general election campaign, a situation which had not occurred since the 1979 election. During the campaign, the three main party leaders engaged in a series oftelevised debates, the first such debates in a British general election campaign. The Liberal Democratsachieved a breakthrough in opinion polls after the first debate in which their leader Nick Clegg was widely seen as the strongest performer. However, on polling day their share of the vote increased by only 1% over the previous general election, and they suffered a net loss of five seats. Still, this was the Liberal Democrats' largest popular vote since the party's creation, and they found themselves in a pivotal role in the formation of the new government.
The share of votes for parties other than Labour or the Conservatives was 35% and was the largest since the1918 general election. In terms of votes it was the most "three-cornered" election since 1923, and in terms of seats since 1929. The Green Party of England and Wales won its first ever seat in the Commons, and theAlliance Party of Northern Ireland gained its first representation since 1974.
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