ABSTRACT
General elections in the United Kingdom are, undeniably, major events in the life of the nation. They involve almost the whole adult population in one way or another and precipitate a period of greatly increased political activity, interest, discussion and media coverage. They determine who governs – in practice which party’s leader and leading figures form the government and control public policy for the next few years – and thus affect the lives of everyone. As David Butler has observed, ‘History used to be marked off by the dates of Kings.… Now it is marked by the dates of (general) elections’ (1998: 454). The precise dates of general elections are decided by the Prime Minister, the only constraint being that a Parliament must have ended exactly five years after the date of its first meeting. In fact, since 1950 the average time between general elections has been about three and a half years, ranging from just over seven months between February and October 1974 to just over five years between 1992 and 1997. Since 1979 the gap has always been four years or more.
