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The Tories have missed securing a majority in the House of Commons by just 16,000 votes, an expert analysis of the election results has claimed. According to The Times, 30 peripheral Labour-held constituencies were responsible for the slim dearth of votes, and extra funds provided by the party’s generous donor, Lord Ashcroft, did not produce the desired effect. “Cameron came so near and yet so far,” write the directors of the elections centre at Plymouth University . “Just 16,000 extra votes for the Tories, distributed in the 19 constituencies in which the party came closest to winning, would have spared us a weekend of negotiation and speculation.” The Tories outstripped archrivals Labour by a full two percent, (Tory: 24 percent, Labour: 22 percent). The possibility of the Conservatives securing an absolute majority is extremely high in case of a second round of elections, the paper reported. There has been a considerable shift in voting patterns in this year’s hotly contested General Election with the Rallings and Thrasher analysis showing that the Tories ended up with 36 percent of the vote in the UK , followed by Labour on 29 percent and the Liberal Democrats on 23 percent. The voter turnout too has gone up to 65 percent from the 61 percent in 2005. Labour has managed to secure majorities by the skin of their teeth in some constituencies like the 42 vote lead won by former actress Glenda Jackson in the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency in north London . A swing of 1.8 percent from Labour would have given the Conservative party an overall parliamentary majority, while a swing of 2.5 percent would have put Cameron 20 seats ahead of all other parties in the Commons. Another reason why Cameron failed to win outright victory was because the Lib Dem swing to the Tories was just 1 percent.

Conservatives missed majority by just 16,000 votes