United Kingdom general election, 1992
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The United Kingdom general election of 1992 was held on April 9, 1992. It was the fourth consecutive victory for the Conservative Party.
Margaret Thatcher had resigned as Prime Minister in November 1990 and John Major won the ensuing leadership election. During his term leading up to the 1992 elections he oversaw the British involvement in the Gulf War, abolished the unpopular Community Charge in favour of a Council Tax, and signed the Maastricht treaty. As with most of the industrialized nations in the early 1990s, the UK slid into a recession during his watch. Major waited for his Chancellor Norman Lamont to deliver his budget before announcing on March 11 the actual date of the election.
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[edit] Election campaign
Labour entered the campaign confident. Under the leadership of Neil Kinnock the party had undergone a modernizing reorganisation following its losing the 1987 election. Most opinion polls showed a slight Labour lead that if maintained would deliver a hung Parliament (with no single party having an overall majority).
The parties campaigned on the familiar grounds of taxation and health care. Major became known for delivering his speeches while standing on an upturned soapbox during his public meetings. Meanwhile, Labour's shadow chancellor, John Smith put forward a "shadow budget". Commentators such as Anthony Howard claimed that the shadow budget was the weakest part of the manifesto and was designed by Smith to ensure Labour would not win; this would allow Smith to then assume the leadership. The Liberal Democrats under Paddy Ashdown approached Labour at one point for talks on a possible political alliance; nothing came of the talks.
An early setback to Labour came in the form of the "War of Jennifer's Ear" controversy, which questioned the veracity of a Labour party election broadcast concerning NHS waiting lists. Similarly to John Smith, the Shadow Health Spokesman charged with this issue (Robin Cook) also harboured leadership aspirations.
Labour seemingly recovered from the controversy, and opinion polls on 1 April (dubbed "Red Wednesday") gave them a decisive advantage. But the lead fell considerably in the following day's polls. Observers blamed the decline on the Labour Party's triumphalist "Sheffield Rally" -- an enthusiastic American-style political convention at the Sheffield Arena.
[edit] Leaders
 John Major, Conservative |
 Neil Kinnock, Labour |
 Paddy Ashdown, Lib Dems |
[edit] Labour defeat
With Labour still narrowly ahead in the opinion polls, the actual election result was a surprise to many in the media and in polling organisations. The failure of the opinion polls to come close to predicting the actual result led to an inquiry by the Market Research Society. Following the election, most opinion polling companies changed their methodology in the belief that there was a 'Shy Tory Factor' affecting polls.
The 77.67% election turnout was the highest in eighteen years. There was an overall Labour swing of 2.2%, insufficient to gain them victory but enough to widen the gap between themselves and the Liberal Democrats. For the Conservatives, despite the reasonable percentage of votes received (only 0.5 % down on 1987), the actual Conservative MP majority was reduced to only 21 seats. This number would become progressively smaller in the course of Major's term in office. It is worth noting, however, that the Conservatives in 1992 received the most popular votes ever of any UK general election (including Labour's landslide in 1997). Yet by the following election in 1997, Major would effectively be running a minority government. Nine government ministers lost their seats in 1992, as did party chairman Chris Patten.
On the morning of polling day, The Sun newspaper (which had consistently supported the Conservatives throughout the campaign, except in Scotland) published a controversial front page with the headline "If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights." They also featured an overweight woman on Page 3, headlined, "Here's How Page 3 Will Look Under Kinnock!" Many commentators believed that this caused a late swing to the Conservatives sufficient to overcome Labour's poll lead. The Sun certainly thought so and their story on the election results was headlined "It's the Sun wot won it." Tony Blair also accepted this theory of Labour's defeat and has put considerable effort into securing the Sun's support for New Labour, both as Leader of the Opposition before the 1997 general election and as Prime Minister afterwards. Other commentators give the Sun a less important role, and suggest that the opinion pollsters simply got it wrong. A third theory is that the "triumphalism" of the Sheffield rally was to blame, because it was unpopular with voters, seeming to pre-judge their votes, and it gave the air of fait accompli, also reducing turnout of Labour voters. It turned out that there were only two seats in the country where the size of the majority could be affected by the number of Sun readers, one of these seats was Basildon.
The results signalled the Conservatives decline in Northern England; Labour was beginning to win back its former heartlands; the Conservatives also began to lose support in the Midlands. They did manage to increase their representation by one in Scotland. Support in Wales began to fade as well at the hands of Plaid Cymru and Labour. However, in the South East, South West, London and Eastern England the Conservatives retained almost all of their support and the regions remained solidly Conservative.
Kinnock, having twice led his party to defeat, resigned soon after the election; he was accompanied by the deputy leader, Roy Hattersley. They were succeeded by John Smith and Margaret Beckett.
[edit] Calls for electoral reform
Given that the 1992 election resulted in a Conservative overall majority of 21, it has been theorized that their victory could have been decided by only 1,241 votes distributed between the 11 seats with the smallest Conservative majorities.
This is used as an argument in favour of electoral reform for UK general elections. Currently, as in the United States, British political parties focus their campaign efforts on a small number of "marginal" seats -- leaving voters in "safe" areas feeling ignored. This is reflected in the comparative turnout of marginal seats versus safe seats. For example, at the 1992 General Election the marginal seat of Brecon and Radnorshire saw a turnout of 85.9% of all eligible voters casting their vote (the sitting MP was defending a majority of 56 votes and lost by only 130). In comparison the "safe" seat of Swansea West had a turnout of only 73.3%.
[edit] Other parties
The Labour Party were not the only one disappointed in 1992. In Scotland the Scottish National Party (SNP) hoped to make a major electoral breakthrough, and had run a hard independence campaign with Free by '93 as their slogan. Support for an independent Scotland polled at 50% in one newspaper poll shortly before the election.
Although they encouragingly managed to increase their total vote by 50% over 1987, SNP hopes were dashed when the party only held onto the three seats they had won at the 1987 General Election and lost the fourth seat (Govan) picked up in 1988 with their deputy leader Jim Sillars as candidate. Sillars would quit active politics after the election with a parting shot at the Scottish electorate as being 'ninety minute patriots'.
The election also saw a small change in Northern Ireland as the Conservatives organised and stood candidates in the province for the first time since the Ulster Unionist Party had broken with them in 1972 over the Sunningdale Agreement. Also, the fringe Natural Law Party stood across the UK.
Margaret Thatcher, Norman Tebbit, Denis Healey, Nigel Lawson, Geoffrey Howe, Michael Foot, David Owen and Merlyn Rees were among the prominent retirees.
[edit] Televised Declarations (taken from archive recording of Election 1992)
| Constituency | Winning party | |
|---|---|---|
| Sunderland South | Labour hold | |
| Torbay | Conservative hold | |
| Guildford | Conservative hold | |
| Basildon | Conservative hold | |
[edit] Results
| UK General Election 1992 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Seats | Gains | Losses | Net Gain/Loss | Seats % | Votes % | Votes | +/- | |
| Conservative | 336 | 3 | 44 | - 41 | 41.9 | 14,093,007 | - 0.3 | ||
| Labour | 271 | 43 | 1 | + 42 | 34.4 | 11,560,484 | + 3.6 | ||
| Liberal Democrats | 20 | 4 | 6 | - 2 | 17.8 | 5,999,384 | - 4.8 | ||
| Scottish National Party | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.9 | 629,564 | + 0.6 | ||
| Ulster Unionist | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.8 | 271,049 | 0.0 | ||
| Social Democratic & Labour | 4 | 1 | 0 | + 1 | 0.5 | 184,445 | 0.0 | ||
| Green | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.5 | 170,037 | + 0.2 | ||
| Plaid Cymru | 4 | 1 | 0 | + 1 | 0.5 | 156,796 | + 0.1 | ||
| Democratic Unionist | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.3 | 103,096 | 0.0 | ||
| Sinn Féin | 0 | 0 | 1 | - 1 | 0.2 | 78,291 | - 0.1 | ||
| Alliance (NI) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 68,665 | 0.0 | ||
| Liberal | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 64,744 | N/A | ||
| Natural Law | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 62,888 | N/A | ||
| Social Democrat | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 35,248 | N/A | ||
| Independent Labour | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 22,844 | N/A | ||
| Ulster Popular Unionist | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 19,305 | 0.0 | ||
| Independent Conservative | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 11,356 | N/A | ||
| Monster Raving Loony | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 7,929 | + 0.1 | ||
| Independent | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 7,631 | N/A | ||
| British National | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 7,631 | N/A | ||
| Scottish Militant Labour | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 6,287 | N/A | ||
| National Front | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 4,816 | N/A | ||
| True Labour | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 4,665 | N/A | ||
| Anti-Federalist | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 4,383 | N/A | ||
| Workers Party | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 4,359 | 0.0 | ||
| Official Conservative Hove Party | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 2,658 | N/A | ||
| Loony Green | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 2,538 | N/A | ||
| Independent Unionist | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 2,256 | N/A | ||
| New Agenda | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 2,133 | N/A | ||
| Independent Progressive Socialist | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 1,094 | N/A | ||
| Islamic Party | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 1,085 | N/A | ||
| Revolutionary Communist | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 745 | N/A | ||
| Independent Nationalist | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 659 | N/A | ||
| CPGB (PCC) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 603 | N/A | ||
The turnout was 33,514,074 from an electorate of 43,275,316, voting in a total of 651 seats. All parties with more than 500 votes shown. Plaid Cymru result includes votes for Green/Plaid Cymru Alliance.
[edit] See also
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