For Wales, Do Not See England? An Analysis of the 2017 General Election

Laura McAllister*, Roger Awan-Scully

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    1 Citation (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This article analyses the 2017 UK General Election from the perspective of the campaign and results in Wales, a nation which had the most interesting election campaign of all the different nations. The election saw a stark contrast between the way the two principal UK-wide parties fought their campaigns and how the campaign impacted on results. Drawing on data from a post-election survey conducted in June 2017, we consider factors that shape voter choice, which affected the outcome of the election in Wales. We argue that the election internalised and reflected a new pattern of party politics that is likely to stimulate differential election outcomes across the UK; this requires a different approach to understanding election campaigns, one that differentiates between the nations and how every political party operates in each territory. This will help distinguish different political and electoral fault lines, as well as constructing a more granular analysis of the campaign's impact on electoral outcomes. We conclude first that, to better and more comprehensively explain UK-wide elections, there is a need to provide distinctive national and regional analyses, and secondly, it is mistaken to assume that the same electoral patterns will always exist in Wales as in England.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)138-157
    Number of pages20
    JournalParliamentary Affairs
    Volume74
    Issue number1
    Early online date14 Sept 2019
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jan 2021

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Sociology and Political Science
    • Law

    User-Defined Keywords

    • 2017 General Election
    • Conservatives
    • Devolution
    • Labour
    • Voting
    • Wales

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