Politics A-level

CASE STUDY

Research into the 1974 General Elections

The two 1974 General Elections are of particular interest at the moment as they have some remarkable similarities with the upcoming election – even 50 years on!  The major issues at the time were:  inflation, Common Market/EU, energy crisis, strikes, Middle East & Irish troubles/Israel & Ukraine, immigration. And both major parties had unpopular leaders! In the Archive we have NOP reports from:

In the Archive have 3 key NOP reports from 1974:

• NOP Political Bulletin 1974 February – NOP Reports – The AMSR Online Archive (oclc.org)
• NOP Political Bulletin 1974 March/April – NOP Reports – The AMSR Online Archive (oclc.org)
• NOP Political Bulletin 1974 November – NOP Reports – The AMSR Online Archive (oclc.org)

Wikipedia is the best source for the general background.

There were two elections in 1974: the first on Feb 28 which resulted in an (unexpected) dead heat and hung parliament and the second on Oct 10 which gave a Labour victory.

The material we have goes into what the polls got wrong in the February election.  It seems that it was mainly due to late switching from Liberal to Labour – confirmed in March/April report. Presumably some Liberals decided that voting Liberal would be a wasted vote?

From these NOP reports three things seem of particular interest, especially from the point of view of a comparison with the 2024 Election:

1. Wilson wasn’t actually very popular beforehand – but became very popular afterwards – could there be a parallel with Starmer now?
2. Inflation was a key issue at the time – as it is now
3. Jeremy Thorpe – and the success of the Liberal party at the time – if he’d gone into coalition with Heath in Feb, who knows what would have happened. Maybe we would have proportional representation by now?

One other interesting thought is that an area of similarity is that both 2024 and 1974 elections will be fought by unpopular leaders of both parties!

If you want to investigate that as a theory, then this report is interesting:  from 1973 we have answers to the question – who would make the best PM? NOP Political Bulletin: a Special Report on Public Opinion, April 1973 – August 1973, for the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys – NOP Reports – The AMSR Online Archive (oclc.org)

Another angle that may be worth researching is: do people ‘see’ opinion polls and are they influenced by them? Which seems to have been an issue at the time.

You’ll see from the NOP reports above that the % claiming to have seen the polls was rising steadily: from 56% in 1970, 58% in early 1974, 60% in Oct 1974 to 67% in 1979. And, if you  read Worcester’s Conclusion in Pollsters, the Press, and Political Polling in Britain – Opinion Poll Reports – The AMSR Online Archive (oclc.org) there’s a nice quote from Harold Wilson at the end.

There’s also (in the previous section of the same paper) an interesting note that the BBC got the forecast from an exit poll very wrong in the Oct 1974 election.  They predicted 150 majority vs 3 actually achieved!  Much to the annoyance of Humphrey Taylor. Though it can be seen in  British voting trends 1979-1992: exit poll summaries – Opinion Poll Reports – The AMSR Online Archive (oclc.org) that the data was subsequently analysed properly and the exit poll is subsequently described as being accurate.

Arguments about Polls are not new!

The main purpose of researching the 1974 elections was to see what could be learned to reflect upon the upcoming election 50 years later.

Similarities and differences between the 1974 election and now

Similarities:

• major issues are inflation, Common Market/EU, energy crisis, strikes, Middle East & Irish troubles/Israel & Ukraine, immigration.
• Both major parties have relatively unpopular leaders.  
• Labour was well ahead (18%) in the polls 18 months ahead of the election NOP Political Bulletin 1972 September – NOP Reports – The AMSR Online Archive (oclc.org) – the gap narrowed a lot towards the election time.  0nly 3.4%  in Nov 73: NOP Political Bulletin 1973 November/December – NOP Reports – The AMSR Online Archive (oclc.org). Was the timing of the election driven by the fact that the gap had narrowed?

Differences:

• Unemployment was a major issue then, the Unions were a big problem (who rules Britain?), there was a very strong third (Liberal) party with a popular leader who had been gaining rapidly in the Polls (is this something that could repeat in 2024?)

There are more similarities than differences, and a good question to think about is: whatever would have happened if Jeremy Thorpe had accepted Heath’s invitation to form a coalition after the February election?!!  It’s astonishing just how well the Liberal Party were doing at the time, and how very popular Thorpe was. This page in particular shows he was considered the most impressive party leader in Feb 74 : NOP Political Bulletin 1974 February – NOP Reports – The AMSR Online Archive (oclc.org)).  Food for thought!