It’s bank holiday Monday and that means BBC Parliament is running a past general election programme – this time from 1983

It’s bank holiday Monday and that means BBC Parliament is running a past general election programme – this time from 1983

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Watch Maggie win a 144 majority on a 1.5% reduced vote share

GE1983 was held on 9 June 1983 and led to the Tories under Margaret Thatcher securing the most decisive election victory since the LAB landslide of 1945.

The main electoral dynamic was that the opposition vote split almost evenly between the SDP/Liberal Alliance and Labour. For Michael Foot’s LAB it was the party’s worst performance since 1918. Its vote fell by over 3 million from 1979 resulting in a LAB>CON swing of almost 4%.

This gave Maggie a majority of 144, even though her party’s total vote fell by 1.5%.

    Could the splitting of the left vote in 1983 be a foretaste of what could happen at GE2015 but this time with the right vote dividing between the Tories and Ukip?

The CON commitment to the first past the post system might not seem so smart after all.

The 11 hour BBC election results programme presented by Peter Snow, David Dimbleby and Robin Day starts at 10am this morning. Have a good day.

Mike Smithson

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