Election Day (United Kingdom)

It has been suggested that this tradition arose as the best of several circumstances: Friday pay-packets would lead to more drunken voters on Fridays and weekends; having the election as far after a Sunday as possible would reduce the influence of Sunday sermons; many towns held markets on Thursdays, thus the local population would be travelling to town that day anyway.^[1]

Before the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and again since it was repealed, a general election in the UK follows the dissolution of Parliament by the Monarch on the advice of the Prime Minister of the day. The Prime Minister thus has the power to choose the date of the election. Thursday has been the customary day to hold elections since the 1930s.^[2] The Levellers proposed that elections be held on the first Thursday in every second March in the Agreement of the People in 1647.^[3]

Between 2011 and 2022, under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act all future General Elections were automatically scheduled on the first Thursday in May every five years, barring special circumstances; only one such election took place in 2015. To call an early election, either a vote of no confidence in the government, which required a simple majority, or a vote in favour of an earlier election, which required a two-thirds majority of the House of Commons was needed. Only one election took place through these means in 2017.

Historically, elections took place over the course of a four-week period until 1918. Election days were then as follows:

and elections have been on Thursdays since then: