At the 2010 general election, Morley and Outwood was won by Ed Balls of the Labour Party, who had been MP for Normanton since 2005, and served as Labour's Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2011 to 2015. Balls narrowly lost the seat at the 2015 general election to the Conservative Party candidate Andrea Jenkyns which was described by Larry Elliott of The Guardian as a "Portillo moment".[3] The 2015 general election result gave the Conservatives that year their sixth-most marginal majority of their 331 seats won, by percentage of majority.[4] Third parties have not polled strongly in the seat to date — the combined votes of the two largest UK parties' candidates exceeded 72.9% of the total in 2010 and 2015, 97.4% in 2017, and 91.7% in 2019.