Hung parliament in the context of "2018 Italian general election"

An interregnum (plural interregna or interregnums) is a period of discontinuity or "gap" in a government, organization, or social order. Archetypally, it was the period of time between the reign of one monarch and the next (coming from Latin inter-, "between" and rēgnum, "reign" [from rex, rēgis, "king"]), and the concepts of interregnum and regency therefore overlap. Historically, longer and heavier interregna have been typically accompanied by widespread unrest, civil and succession wars between warlords, and power vacuums filled by foreign invasions or the emergence of a new power.

The term also refers to the periods between the election of a new parliament and the establishment of a new government from that parliament in parliamentary democracies, usually ones that employ some form of proportional representation that allows small parties to elect significant numbers, requiring time for negotiations to form a government. In the UK, Canada and other electoral systems with single-member districts, this period is usually very brief, except in the rare occurrence of a hung parliament as occurred both in the UK in 2017 and in Australia in 2010. In parliamentary interregnums, the previous government usually stands as a caretaker government until the new government is established. Additionally, the term has been applied to the United States presidential transition, the period of time between the election of a new U.S. president and their inauguration, during which the outgoing president remains in power, but as a lame duck.

In political science, a multi-party system is a political system where more than two meaningfully distinct political parties regularly run for office and win offices (eg, membership in parliament) in elections. Multi-party systems tend to be more common in countries or jurisdictions (together, 'polities') which use proportional representation forms of election, compared to those that have implemented winner-take-all elections; this tendency is known as Duverger's law.

In multi-party countries or polities, usually no single party achieves at an election a parliamentary majority on its own (elections result in what are sometimes called hung parliaments). Instead, to craft a majority, multiple political parties must negotiate to form a coalition (also known as a 'minority government') which can command a majority of the votes in the relevant legislative organ of state (eg, parliamentary chamber). This majority is required in order to make laws, form an executive government, or conduct basically any of the necessary work of the parliament or the government (eg, to choose a president, elect parliamentary leadership, adopt a legislative agenda, or change rules of parliamentary procedure).

The 2010 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 6 May 2010, to elect 650 Members of Parliament (or MPs) to the House of Commons. This was the first election to be held after the minimum age of candidacy was reduced from 21 to 18.

It resulted in the Labour government losing its 66-seat majority to the Conservative opposition; however, with the Conservatives only having 306 elected MPs, this election resulted in the first hung parliament since February 1974. This election marked the start of a Conservative government that would last for 14 years until its ousting in 2024.

A federal election was held on 21 August 2010 to elect members of the 43rd Parliament of Australia. The incumbent centre-left Australian Labor Party led by Prime Minister Julia Gillard won a second term against the opposition centre-right Liberal Party of Australia led by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and Coalition partner the National Party of Australia, led by Warren Truss, after Labor formed a minority government with the support of three independent MPs and one Australian Greens MP.

Labor and the Coalition each won 72 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, four short of the requirement for majority government, resulting in the first hung parliament since the 1940 election. Six crossbenchers held the balance of power. Greens MP Adam Bandt and independent MPs Andrew Wilkie, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor declared their support for Labor on confidence and supply. Independent MP Bob Katter and National Party of Western Australia MP Tony Crook declared their support for the Coalition on confidence and supply. The resulting 76–74 margin entitled Labor to form a minority government. The Prime Minister, government ministers and parliamentary secretaries were sworn in on 14 September 2010 by the Governor-General Quentin Bryce. In November 2011, Coalition MP and Deputy Speaker Peter Slipper replaced Labor MP Harry Jenkins as Speaker of the House of Representatives, increasing Labor's parliamentary majority from 75–74 (not including Jenkins as he was unable to vote on legislation due to his role as Speaker) to 76–73 (not including Slipper as he was unable to vote on legislation due to his role as Speaker).

General elections were held in Cambodia between 23 and 28 May 1993. The result was a hung parliament with the FUNCINPEC Party being the largest party with 58 seats. Voter turnout was 89.56%. The elections were conducted by the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), which also maintained peacekeeping troops in Cambodia throughout the election and the period after it.

As of 2024, the 1993 general elections were the last to be won by a party other than the Cambodian People's Party, which began to dominate Cambodian politics from 1998.

The events surrounding the formation of the United Kingdom's government in 2010 took place between 7 May and 12 May 2010, following the 2010 general election, which failed to produce an overall majority for either of the country's two main political parties. The election, held on 6 May, resulted in the first hung parliament in the UK in 36 years, sparking a series of negotiations which would form the first coalition government since the Second World War.

The governing Labour administration led by Gordon Brown was defeated in the election and lost its overall majority after 13 years in office, but continued in office in an acting capacity until a government could be formed. The opposition Conservative Party led by David Cameron, won the largest number of seats in the new Parliament, but fell short of the number required to secure an overall majority. Consequently, senior figures from both parties embarked on a series of meetings with representatives from the Liberal Democrats led by Nick Clegg, aimed at forming a coalition government.

The 2015 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 7 May 2015 to elect 650 members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. The Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, won an unexpected majority victory of ten seats; they had been leading a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. It was the last general election to be held before the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU) in June 2016.

Opinion polls and political commentators had widely predicted that the election would result in a second consecutive hung parliament whose composition would be similar to the one elected at the previous general election in 2010. Potential coalitions and agreements between parties were intensively discussed; as a result, smaller parties received much more attention during the campaign than in previous UK elections. However, opinion polls underestimated the Conservatives, as they won 330 of the 650 seats and 36.9 per cent of the vote, giving them a small overall majority.

The Republicans (French: Les Républicains [le ʁepyblikɛ̃], LR) is a liberal-conservative political party in France, largely inspired by the tradition of Gaullism. The party was formed in 2015 as the refoundation of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), which had been established in 2002 under the leadership of the then-president of France, Jacques Chirac. LR is a member of the Centrist Democrat International and the European People's Party, and sits in the European People's Party Group in the European Parliament.

The UMP used to be one of the two major political parties in the Fifth Republic, along with the centre-left Socialist Party, before being eclipsed by the National Rally and Renaissance. The LR candidate in the 2017 presidential election, former Prime Minister François Fillon, placed third in the first round, with 20.0% of the vote. Following the 2017 legislative election, LR became the second-largest party in the National Assembly, behind President Emmanuel Macron's La République En Marche! party (later renamed Renaissance). After a disappointing result in the 2019 European Parliament election, party leader Laurent Wauquiez resigned. He was replaced by Christian Jacob, who remained in office until after the 2022 legislative election, which saw LR lose half of its seats, although it became the kingmaker in a hung parliament. One month before, in the 2022 presidential election, LR nominee Valérie Pécresse placed fifth with 4.7% of the vote. Despite those setbacks, LR was still the largest party in the Senate and headed a plurality of regions of France. Éric Ciotti became president of LR after the 2022 leadership election. In the run-up of the 2024 French legislative election Ciotti came out in favour of an electoral alliance with National Rally. This would have reversed the historic cordon sanitaire that the party had regarding the group. Ciotti was soon removed from his position, which led to a leadership crisis. In May 2025, Bruno Retailleau was elected president of the party.

France entered a period of political instability and crisis, unprecedented in the Fifth Republic, after the 2024 French legislative election called by President Emmanuel Macron in June 2024. The election resulted in a hung parliament split into three opposed blocs, each unable to command a majority: the left-wing New Popular Front alliance (180 out of 577 seats), Macron's centrist Ensemble alliance (159 seats) and the far-right National Rally (142 seats).

This three-way split and a French political culture averse to coalition government and compromise resulted in Macron appointing four minority governments, headed by Michel Barnier, François Bayrou, and Sébastien Lecornu respectively. Barnier and Bayrou's governments both collapsed over budgetary disputes, and Lecornu resigned after less than a day, before being reappointed.