Prof Sarah Birch
Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. Her research interests include elections, environmental politics and democratic theory. Her current work focuses on the political effects of climate change.
Email: Sarah.birch@kcl.ac.uk
UK Election 2024
Section 1: Democracy and representation
1. Public anxiety and the electoral process (Prof Barry Richards)
2. How Nigel Farage opened the door to No. 10 for Keir Starmer (Prof Pippa Norris)
3. The performance of the electoral system (Prof Alan Renwick)
4. Tory downfall is democracy rectifying its mistakes (Prof Stephen Barber)
5. Votes at 16 and decent citizenship education could create a politically aware generation (Dr Ben Kisby, Dr Lee Jerome)
6. “An election about us but not for us”: the lack of communication for young people during GE2024 (Dr James Dennis)
7. Election timing: masterstroke or risky gamble? (Prof Sarah Birch)
8. The dog that didn’t bark? Electoral integrity and administration from voter ID to postal votes (Prof Alistair Clark)
9. A political gamble? How licit and illicit betting permeated the campaign (Dr Matthew Wall)
10. Ethnic diversity in politics is the new normal in Britain (Prof Maria Sobolewska)
11. Bullshit and Lies on the campaign trail: do party campaigns reflect the post-truth age? (Prof Darren Lilleker)
12. Stoking the culture wars: the risks of a more hostile form of polarised politics (Dr Jen Birks)
A defining feature of parliamentary systems is that the government has the power to decide when to call an election. The 2011 Fixed-Term Parliaments Act created a temporary hiatus to this aspect of the British constitution, but before and since that time, one of the most significant political tools of UK prime ministers has been the ability to determine when they will reapply for their jobs.
The 2024 General Election was not called when it was expected. Most media outlets and political commentators had been predicting an autumn campaign. Yet voters trooped to the polls on 4th July, making this the first parliamentary election held in that month since the unusual circumstances of 1945. In fact, there have only been two previous polls in months other than May or June since the October 1974 general election (April 1992 and December 2019).
The timing of the 2024 election raises two principal questions: what accounts for the choice of 4th July? And, was this a wise choice?
There was potentially some logic to the date, as the economy was showing signs of stabilising. Moreover, the longer Sunak waited to go to the people, the more homeowners would come to the end of their fixed-term mortgages and face steep interest rate hikes. An early poll also meant that other parties had less time to select candidates and fill their campaign war chests.
Indeed, inflation fell to the Bank of England’s target of 2 % during the election campaign, which might have been expected to have helped the Tories. But there was little they could do about interest rates, due to the political independence of the Bank. We know from the distribution of election results that seats with larger numbers of mortgage-holders were more likely to vote Labour, suggesting that interest rate rises were one of the principal reasons why the Conservatives fared so badly. Had Sunak delayed further, the result could have been even worse for them.
Whether the timing of the election was a wise choice in other respects is a different question. Even without the benefit of hindsight, July was a dubious time to call a poll, due to the risk of heatwaves. The stereotypical British summer is hardly scorching, but it can be and it has been. Temperatures reached 40 degrees for the first time in history in July 2022, and this is the hottest month in much of the UK. There had already been several elections in 2024 that were adversely affected by heatwaves, including those in India, Mexico, Romania and the Maldives. In administrative terms, July was therefore arguably not an appropriate time to call voters to the polls and to ask local authority staff to enable them to vote, especially given that the average UK poll worker is a 53-year-old woman, and more vulnerable to heat-related health problems than the majority of the population.
The potential for a midsummer heatwave was risky in political terms as well. Sunak’s gamble in fact paid off. The penultimate week of the election campaign saw a three-day heatwave in the south of England with temperatures in the high 20s, which meant some sticky canvassing and some sweaty candidates, but overall, the mercury never rose to dangerous levels during the election period, and election day itself was downright cool in most parts of the country.
Yet had temperatures been higher, this would likely have been felt most keenly in the Tory heartlands of southern England. This would in all probability have had two major political consequences: the Conservative base of older voters would undoubtedly have been less willing to make their ways to polling stations; studies of other countries suggests that extreme weather often depresses turnout. The second consequence is that high temperatures would have turned voters’ minds to the environment. There is a considerable body of evidence suggesting that heatwaves increase concern about climate change, and climate change is not an issue on which the Conservatives are perceived as being strong by the electorate; floods that took place before the 2019 election have been found to have benefitted Labour, due to the fact that it had by that time managed to portray itself as the major party that was strongest on climate change.
It remains a puzzle as to why the Prime Minster opted for a July poll, despite the political and administrative risk. The most obvious answer is that the possibility of a heatwave was factored into his decision, but that other considerations proved more persuasive. Another possibility is that the PM’s own tepid attitude toward climate change skewed his perception of the risk of extreme heat in July 2024. We are unlikely ever to know the answer to this question, but there are reasons to believe that the election date was not an entirely responsible choice, and that in future prime ministers should take greater account of the dangers of extreme weather when calling elections.
