The 2015 British General Election: a Convergence in Scottish Voting Behaviour?

• Main Author: Nathalie Duclos
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre de Recherche et d'Etudes en Civilisation Britannique 2015-12-01
• Series: Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique
• Subjects: voting behaviour; General Elections; Scottish Parliament elections
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/639

The 2015 General Election outcome in Scotland was historic, for several reasons: the SNP won a General Election in Scotland for the first time, it won almost all Scottish seats, and Labour did not win for the first time in half a century. The aim of this paper is to put this undeniably historic outcome into context and into perspective, through an analysis of General Election results in Scotland since 1997 and a comparison between those results and Scottish Parliament election results. It will be argued that besides the obvious ones, the 2015 election outcome was exceptional for another, less obvious reason, namely that it was the result of a convergence in voting behaviour in Scotland for General Elections and for Holyrood elections.