Marginal Seats in United Kingdom

Marginal seats Meaning in Politics

Description of Marginal seats published by Mona Chalabi: The battleground of a political election are the so-called marginal seats. These are the places where only a few percentage points stand between the front-runners and their competition, so the seat could easily “fall” or change hands. Voters in these seats are known as “floating” or “swing” voters. In 2010, there were 194 seats where the swing (i.e., the fraction of votes needed for the outcome to have been different) was 5 percentage points or less. Based on current polling, it looks like this election will also be a close fight in many parts of the United Kingdom (to be more precise, in 102 constituencies, there are 5 percentage points or less between the two leading parties).