UK political party membership 2022

In 2022 the Labour Party was estimated to have approximately 432,000 members, by far the most of any political party in the United Kingdom. The following three largest parties in terms of members were the Conservatives at 172,000, the Scottish National Party at 104,000, and the Liberal Democrats at 74,000. Smaller parties such as the Green Party had 54,000 members, and the Welsh Independence party; Plaid Cymru had 10,000 members.

More members but fewer voters

While the Labour Party had more party members than the Conservative Party, it has also not been in power since 2010 and has struggled to oust successive Tory governments. In the 2019 general election, Labour suffered its worst result since the 1930s, winning just 203 seats , 59 fewer than in 2017, and as a share of the vote, a drop of 7.8 percent. As of early 2023, however, the Labour Party is polling much higher than the Conservative party in a potential general election. The collapse in support for the Conservative party corresponds with to their poor political performance in 2022, which saw the resignation of two Prime Ministers, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss, the latter of which resigned after less than 50 days in the role.

Labour's solid social media prescence

Despite poor recent election results, the Labour Party has an undeniably large following on social media. As of September 2022, they had over 1 million likes on Facebook and over 957,000 followers on Twitter, making them the most popular UK political party on both platforms. Despite this, the current Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has a long way to go to catch up with the social media profiles of Boris Johnson and the leader of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon, on both Facebook and Twitter.