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

User-Defined Keywords

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

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