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This final lesson applies the theories and concepts developed across the course — electoral systems, social factors, issue voting, valence, campaigns, the media and the polls — to specific general elections, building the kind of evidenced case-study analysis that examination essays require. The Edexcel specification expects detailed knowledge of three general elections: one drawn from the period 1945–1992, the landmark election of 1997, and one election from the period since 1997. To meet that requirement squarely, the three anchor case studies below are 1979, 1997 and 2019, each chosen because it produced a decisive and well-understood result that illustrates the course's themes especially clearly. We then set these against the most recent contests — 2017 and 2024 — so that the lesson connects the historical anchors to the present and allows direct comparison across the decades.
A confident command of this material is essential for Component 1 (Paper 1). The skill being assessed is not the recitation of statistics but the ability to explain why an election turned out as it did — the interplay of party policies, leaders, campaigns, the media and the wider context — and to evaluate the relative importance of those factors. Throughout, results are described in directional and headline terms (a landslide, a decisive majority, a sharp swing) rather than through precise vote shares that are easily misremembered; the analysis, not the decimal point, is what earns marks. Used carefully, the contrast between elections separated by decades is one of the most powerful ways to demonstrate that the factors shaping the vote are powerful but contingent, varying with the circumstances of each contest.
The general election of 1979 is the natural choice from the 1945–1992 period, because it marked a decisive turning point in post-war British politics: the victory of Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives over the incumbent Labour government of James Callaghan, and the beginning of eighteen unbroken years of Conservative government.
The 1979 election followed the so-called "Winter of Discontent" of 1978–79, a wave of public-sector strikes and industrial disruption that left a powerful impression of a Labour government unable to govern and of a country in crisis. This context was decisive: it shattered Labour's claim to competence and to a special relationship with the trade unions that could keep industrial peace. The wider backdrop was the apparent exhaustion of the post-war consensus — the broad cross-party settlement around the mixed economy, full employment and an expansive welfare state — amid high inflation, economic stagnation and a sense of national decline.
The Conservative victory can be explained through several of the course's themes working together:
The significance of 1979 was profound and lasting. It ushered in Thatcherism — a programme of privatisation, deregulation, trade-union reform and a reduced role for the state — that reshaped British politics for a generation and pushed the centre ground rightwards. It demonstrated how a collapse in a government's reputation for competence, combined with a clear alternative and an effective campaign, can produce not merely a change of government but a realignment of the country's political direction. For the study of voting behaviour, 1979 is an early and vivid illustration of valence judgement, class dealignment and the power of a disciplined campaign.
It is worth drawing out the voting-behaviour lessons of 1979 more fully, because the election sits at a pivotal moment in the long story the earlier lessons told. This was still, in important respects, an election of the aligned era: class remained a far stronger predictor of the vote than it is today, party identification was more widespread, and the two main parties between them commanded the overwhelming bulk of the vote, with the Liberals a distant third under a First Past the Post system that squeezed them hard. Yet 1979 also revealed the first significant cracks in that old order. The Conservative advance among skilled manual workers — the C2 group in the language of the pollsters — was striking, and it foreshadowed the class dealignment that would accelerate over the following decades. The appeal was partly material: the promise of lower taxes, the right to buy council houses and a stake in property and share ownership spoke directly to aspirational working-class voters who no longer saw their interests as automatically bound up with Labour and the unions. 1979 therefore repays study not only as the birth of Thatcherism but as an early data point in the gradual loosening of the class–party tie, observed at the very moment it began.
The wider context also illustrates the power of retrospective, valence-based judgement. The Labour government of the late 1970s had been buffeted by economic crisis throughout its term — including the humiliation of being forced to seek emergency international financial assistance amid soaring inflation — and the Winter of Discontent was the final, vivid confirmation of a government that appeared to have lost control. Voters, judging the incumbent on its record rather than on detailed promises about the future, delivered exactly the retrospective verdict the valence model predicts. 1979 is thus a useful corrective to any assumption that valence and competence judgements are a purely recent phenomenon: they were decisive long before the era of dealignment made them the dominant force they are today.
The election of 1997 is required by the specification in its own right, and rightly so, for it produced one of the most dramatic results in modern British history: a Labour landslide under Tony Blair that swept away eighteen years of Conservative rule and delivered Labour an enormous parliamentary majority.
By 1997 the Conservative government led by John Major was deeply unpopular and exhausted. Its reputation for economic competence had been gravely damaged by "Black Wednesday" in 1992, when Britain was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in a humiliating crisis; the episode shattered the Conservatives' traditional advantage on the economy and never fully healed. The government was further weakened by bitter internal divisions over Europe and by a steady drip of sleaze allegations that corroded its standing. Against this backdrop, Tony Blair had transformed his party into "New Labour", repositioning it firmly towards the centre ground — accepting much of the market economy, reassuring middle-class and business voters, and shedding the policies that had made Labour unelectable in the 1980s. The contrast could hardly have been sharper: a divided, scandal-hit and economically discredited governing party faced a disciplined, modernised and confident opposition that had spent years making itself electable, and the national mood for change had become overwhelming.
| Factor | How it shaped the result |
|---|---|
| Conservative valence collapse | Black Wednesday destroyed the government's economic credibility, while disunity and sleaze made it look unfit to govern |
| New Labour's repositioning | By moving to the centre and reassuring middle-class voters, Labour neutralised the fears that had cost it earlier elections |
| Leadership | Blair was widely seen as dynamic, modern and trustworthy, a sharp contrast to a tired-looking Major |
| Campaign and media | Labour ran a famously disciplined, professional campaign and, strikingly, won the support of much of the traditionally Conservative press, including The Sun |
| A mood for change | After eighteen years, there was a powerful national appetite for a fresh start, captured by Labour's optimistic "things can only get better" tone |
The 1997 result was transformative. It gave Labour a commanding majority and a mandate for a programme that included devolution to Scotland and Wales, constitutional reform, investment in public services and a self-consciously modernising agenda. It confirmed the strategic lesson that a major party generally wins from the centre, by assembling a broad coalition rather than appealing only to its base — a lesson that would echo in 2024. For the study of voting behaviour, 1997 is the textbook demonstration of how a governing party's loss of competence and unity, combined with a credible, centrist, well-led opposition and a favourable media environment, can produce a landslide.
The voting-behaviour story of 1997 is, above all, a story of New Labour reaching across the old class divide. The genius of Blair's strategy was to retain Labour's traditional working-class base while making deep inroads into the middle-class and aspirational voters who had backed Thatcher and Major — the very "Middle England" that had kept Labour out of power for eighteen years. By accepting much of the economic settlement of the 1980s, ruling out income-tax rises for most earners and presenting a reassuringly moderate, business-friendly face, Labour neutralised the fears that had made it unelectable and assembled an exceptionally broad coalition. 1997 is therefore a powerful illustration of class dealignment working to Labour's advantage: with class no longer dictating the vote, a party that positioned itself skilfully on the centre ground could win support right across the social spectrum. It also showcased the importance of valence over position: Labour deliberately minimised sharp ideological differences and fought instead on competence, trust and the promise of a fresh, modern start, betting that voters wanted reassurance and renewal rather than radicalism.
The media dimension of 1997 is equally instructive and links directly to the campaigns-and-media lesson. Labour's courting of the traditionally Conservative press, and The Sun's switch of allegiance, is a classic case of the debate over whether newspapers lead or follow public opinion. The most persuasive reading is that the press was, in large part, reading the national mood — recognising that Labour was heading for victory and positioning itself accordingly — rather than single-handedly creating that mood, which is exactly the nuanced interpretation the media lesson commends. Either way, the alignment of a disciplined Labour campaign with a sympathetic or at least non-hostile press created an unusually favourable communications environment, reinforcing the sense of inevitability that surrounded the result.
For the required post-1997 case study, 2019 is an ideal choice, because it produced a decisive Conservative victory under Boris Johnson that was driven, more clearly than any other recent election, by a single dominant issue and that redrew the electoral map.
The 2019 election arose directly from the Brexit impasse. Boris Johnson had become Prime Minister but could not pass his Brexit deal through a deadlocked Parliament, and he called an election on the deliberately simple slogan "Get Brexit Done". Labour, under Jeremy Corbyn, occupied an ambiguous position, offering a further referendum, which satisfied neither committed Leavers nor committed Remainers. The Brexit Party's decision to stand aside in many Conservative-held seats helped to consolidate the Leave vote behind the Conservatives.
The headline result is well established: the Conservatives won a substantial overall majority — their largest since the 1980s — while Labour fell to its lowest number of seats in decades. The Conservative vote share was in the low forties and Labour's around a third, but it is the distribution of those votes, and the resulting landslide of seats, that matters most for analysis.
2019 delivered the parliamentary majority that enabled the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, and it appeared, for a time, to have forged a durable new Conservative coalition built on Leave-voting, working-class and older voters. Its deeper significance for the study of voting behaviour is as the clearest modern case of a dominant position issue overriding the older class cleavage, and of the interaction of issue voting, valence and class dealignment in reshaping the electoral map.
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