All 651 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout
77.7% (2.4%)
First party
Second party
Third party
Leader
John Major
Neil Kinnock
Paddy Ashdown
Party
Conservative
Labour
Liberal Democrats
Leader since
27 November 1990
2 October 1983
16 July 1988
Leader's seat
Huntingdon
Islwyn
Yeovil
Last election
376 seats, 42.2%
229 seats, 30.8%
22 seats, 22.6%[a]
Seats won
336
271
20
Seat change
40
42
2
Popular vote
14,093,007
11,560,484
5,999,606
Percentage
41.9%
34.4%
17.8%
Swing
0.3%
3.6%
4.8%
Colours denote the winning party, as shown in the main table of results
Composition of the House of Commons after the election
Prime Minister before election
John Major
Conservative
Prime Minister after election
John Major
Conservative
1983 election
MPs
1987 election
MPs
1992 election
MPs
1997 election
MPs
2001 election
MPs
Seats won in the election (outer ring) against number of votes (inner ring)
The 1992 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 9 April 1992, to elect 651 members to the House of Commons. The election resulted in the fourth consecutive victory for the Conservative Party since 1979, with a majority of 21 and would be the last time that the Conservatives would win an overall majority at a general election until 2015. It was also the last general election to be held on a day which did not coincide with any local elections until 2017. This election result took many by surprise, as opinion polling leading up to the election day had shown a narrow but consistent lead for the Labour Party under leader Neil Kinnock. [citation needed]
John Major had won the Conservative Party leadership election in November 1990 following the resignation of Margaret Thatcher. During his first term leading up to the 1992 election he oversaw the British involvement in the Gulf War, introduced legislation to replace the unpopular Community Charge with Council Tax, and signed the Maastricht Treaty. Britain was sliding into its second recession in a decade at the time of Major's appointment.
Opinion polls in the run-up to the election had suggested that it would end in a hung parliament or a narrow Labour majority. The fact that it produced a Conservative majority meant that it was one of the most dramatic and memorable elections in the UK since the end of the Second World War.[1]
The Conservative Party received what remains the largest number of votes at a United Kingdom general election in British history, breaking the previous record set by the Labour Party in 1951.[2] Former Conservative leader and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, former Labour Party leader Michael Foot, former SDP leader David Owen, three former Chancellors of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson, former Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, Francis Maude, Norman Tebbit, Rosie Barnes, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams and Speaker of the House of Commons Bernard Weatherill left the House of Commons after this election, though Maude and Adams returned at the next election. Future Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith was elected to parliament in this election.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
^"1992: Tories win again against odds". BBC News. 5 April 2005. Archived from the original on 22 April 2009. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
^"Election Statistics: UK 1918–2017". House of Commons Library. 23 April 2017. p. 12. Archived from the original on 14 August 2017. Retrieved 14 August 2017.
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Global Information
2.4%)
