Quote:
Originally Posted by colin25
Didn't labour increase their vote..when they got a second term?
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No, they lost votes and seats in 2001.
Thatcher increased her number of seats in 1983 but on a slightly lower vote. The Tory vote in 1987 was only fractionally lower. In fact, from 1979 to 1992 the Tory vote only shrank by 2 percentage points. Labour's vote fell 8 percentage points between 1997 and 2005.
It is generally true that a multiple-term Government will have its highest share of the vote at the beginning of its first term and lose it in each subsequent election until they are eventually out of office.
There's a good historic vote share graph here:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...1950_graph.png