1983 United Kingdom general election in Scotland

1983 United Kingdom general election

← 1979

9 June 1983

1987 →

Turnout

72.7%,

4.14%

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Michael Foot	Margaret Thatcher	David Steel (Lib.) David Owen (SDP)
Party	Labour	Conservative	Alliance
Leader since	10 November 1980	11 February 1975	7 July 1976 (Steel) 21 June 1983 (Owen)
Last election	44 seats, 41.5%	22 seats, 31.4%	3 seats, 9.0%
Seats won	41	21	8
Seat change	3	1	5
Popular vote	990,654	801,487	692,634
Percentage	35.1%	28.4%	24.5%
Swing	6.5%	3.0%	15.5%

	Fourth party

Leader	Gordon Wilson
Party	SNP
Leader since	15 September 1979
Last election	2 seats, 17.3%
Seats won	2
Seat change
Popular vote	331,975
Percentage	11.8%
Swing	5.5%

Results of the 1983 election in Scotland

A general election was held in the United Kingdom on Thursday 9 June 1983 and all 72 seats in Scotland were contested.^[1]

The Labour Party won 41 seats, with the Conservative Party winning 21, the SDP–Liberal Alliance winning eight and the Scottish National Party winning two.^[2]^[3]

Results

Party		Seats	Seats change	Votes	%	% change
	Labour	41	3	990,654	35.1	6.5
	Conservative	21	1	801,487	28.4	3.0
	Alliance	8	5	692,634	24.5	15.5
	SNP	2		331,975	11.8	5.5
	Other	0		7,830	0.3	0.2
Turnout:				2,824,580	72.7

^ "Commons results report" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 November 2020.
^ Macwhirter, Iain (2014). Road to Referendum: The Essential Guide to the Scottish Referendum. Cargo Publishing. ISBN 978-1-908885-95-1.
^ Letters (16 December 2021). "Scottish votes haven't influenced an English election result in 40 years". The National. Retrieved 2 January 2021. In 1983, Margaret Thatcher won 387 seats out of 650, a majority of 144. Labour secured 41 of the 72 seats in Scotland, the Tories 21, the SDP-Liberal Alliance 8 and the SNP 2. Obviously Scotland's 72 seats would not have influenced the outcome either way.

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v t e 1983 United Kingdom general election
Results MPs elected Scotland Opinion polling
Incumbent Prime Minister: Margaret Thatcher (Conservative) Appointed Prime Minister: Margaret Thatcher (Conservative)
Parties elected to the House of Commons	Conservative (Margaret Thatcher) Labour (Michael Foot) SDP–Liberal Alliance David Steel - Liberal Roy Jenkins - SDP Ulster Unionist Party (James Molyneaux ) Democratic Unionist Party (Ian Paisley) Scottish National Party (Gordon Wilson) Plaid Cymru (Dafydd Wigley) Social Democratic and Labour Party (John Hume) Sinn Féin (Ruairí Ó Brádaigh) Ulster Popular Unionist Party (James Kilfedder)
Results by area	England Northern Ireland Scotland Wales
See also	Falklands factor Diana Gould–Margaret Thatcher exchange The longest suicide note in history

This page was last edited on 19 November 2022, at 00:08