Unemployment, the Poll Tax, and the British General Election of 1992

Abstract

The somewhat unexpected Conservative victory in the 1992 British general election was achieved because the party won seats, especially marginal seats in some southern regions, that it could have been expected to lose, given the impacts of its recent policies there. The initial analyses reported here show that the Conservatives were ‘punished’ by the electorate in constituencies with high unemployment and that the main opposition party, Labour, performed particularly well in areas with high community-charge levels. The ‘punishment’ was insufficiently hard to lead to Conservative losses on the scale needed for a Labour victory. The regional strength developed during the 1980s was not eroded substantially enough to yield a Tory defeat.