The 1997 General Election In Scotland: an Analysis of the Results

Abstract

In recent years there have been marked differences between what happens in general elections in Scotland - in terms both of the campaign and the results and what happens in the rest of the United Kingdom. There arc three main reasons for this. Firstly, the pattern of party competition in Scotland is more complex and more varied than in England. This is mainly due to the presence and electoral impact of the Scottish National Party (SNP) but, in addition, there are several constituencies, especially in the Highlands and Borders, where the Liberal Democrats are serious contenders. Thus, in the 1992 election Labour and the SNP occupied the first two places in 33 constituencies, the Conservatives and Labour in 20, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in 10, the SNP and Conservatives in 6 and Labour and the Liberal Democrats in 2. Secondly, the mass media in Scotland are distinctive. The Scottish (as opposed to UK) press is read by the great majority of voters and coverage of news and current affairs focuses on specifically Scottish concerns, issues and personalities. The same applies to television and radio in Scotland. Thirdly, there is a distinctive Scottish issue - the question of Scotland's constitutional position within the UK - which has dominated coverage of recent campaigns, although it is not clear that it dominates the concerns of the electorate to the same extent. Nonetheless, general election campaigns in Scotland are conducted almost in isolation from what is going on in the rest of the country and the results usually deviate markedly from those elsewhere. Perhaps the most striking feature of the results of recent general elections in Scotland has been the decline in support for the Conservatives, both in absolute terms and relative to their performance in England and Wales. This decline began in the 1959 election and continued through the 1960s and 1970s but it accelerated sharply in the 1980s. In the 1987 election the Conservative share of the Scottish vote reached an all-time low of 24.0%. In