1992 Election

Economic Data

http://www.ukelect.co.uk/April1992Winner/GenElect.htm

The “Soapbox”

In Luton on 28 March John Major produced the now famous soapbox – an innovation which according to Prime Ministerial adviser Sarah Hogg came to him on the spur of the moment. Amidst much barracking, and to the consternation of the detectives minding him, Mr Major verbally battled with the crowds on a hand-held megaphone.

Although the initiative did little to get the Prime Minister’s policies across to a wider audience it did reinforce the voters’ image of the Prime Minister as “honest John”. It also had the added bonus of personally invigorating John Major and increasing the interest-level of the media in what they were beginning to write off as a lacklustre campaign.

Electoral Reform

As the 1992 General Election campaign opened there was much talk of hung parliaments as no single party seemed able to establish a clear enough lead in the opinion polls to secure an outright victory.

The Conservatives remained implacably opposed to proportional representation and throughout the campaign Mr Major made this clear, giving the impression – possibly – of a man who believed his party could win alone.

On the contrary, the Labour Party had spent much of the latter part of the 1980s agonising over electoral reform.

However, in the campaign the issue did more harm than good to the Labour Party. As talk of hung parliaments intensified in the latter part of the campaign, Neil Kinnock let it be known at a press conference on Friday April 2 – Charter 88’s Democracy Day – that Labour would like to see other political parties (namely the Lib Dems) join the working party being headed by Raymond Plant.

This seemed to affirm the Prime Minister’s accusation of the previous day that the Lib Dems were the Labour Party’s “Trojan Horse”. The weekend papers were full of speculation about possible deals in a hung parliament and the manoeuvring of Mr Kinnock began to make him look untrustworthy and weak against a Prime Minister opposed to such “deals”.

Potential Lib Dem voters frightened of letting in a Labour government switched back to the Conservatives.

“Red Wednesday”

On the day of the Sheffield Rally, Wednesday 1 April, a number of polls appeared which for the first time seemed to show Labour taking a decisive lead. ICM showed Labour with a 4% lead, Harris with a 6% advantage and MORI with a 7% lead. However, by the following day an NOP poll showed the Labour lead at only 2%, while Gallup put the Tories 0.5%.

According to Butler and Kavanagh the polls on Red Wednesday fuelled the triumphalism shown at the Sheffield Rally, waking the floating voters for the first time to the real possibility of a Labour win and sowing the seeds of Labour’s defeat.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/election97/background/pastelec/92keyiss.htm