1990 Scottish regional elections

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3 May 1990 (1990-05-03)

1992 →

	First party	Second party

Leader	Neil Kinnock	Margaret Thatcher
Party	Labour	Conservative
Leader since	2 October 1983	11 February 1975
Seats won	223	52
Seat change	-	13
Percentage	44.0	19.2
Swing	0.1	2.3

	Third party	Fourth party

Leader	Gordon Wilson	Malcolm Bruce
Party	SNP	Liberal Democrats
Leader since	15 September 1979	3 March 1988
Seats won	42	40
Seat change	6	-
Percentage	21.8	8.0
Swing	3.6	7.1

Colours denote the winning party with outright control

Results by ward

Regional elections were held in Scotland on Thursday 3 May 1990, as part of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, and were the first test of public opinion on the Community Charge, which had been introduced in Scotland in 1989.

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National results

Summary of the 1990 Scottish regional council election results^[1]^[2]
	Votes^[a]	Votes %	Wards
Labour	729,922	44.0	223
SNP	372,770	21.8	42
Conservative	333,823	19.2	52
SLD	147,122	8.0	40
Independent	76,516	5	73
Scottish Green	35,048	2	1
Other Parties	15,140	2	4

^ This column does not include the three island areas

Party performance

The Labour Party dominated the election, gaining the most seats and votes, even though their total vote was slightly down compared with 1986. This was the last election fought under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, and her Conservative Party suffered a decline of 13 seats, mainly due to the introduction of the unpopular Poll Tax in 1989. The Conservative Government had recently given tax concessions to ratepayers in England and Wales, excluding Scotland, with criticism extended in particular to then-Secretary of State for Scotland Malcolm Rifkind, who was portrayed to not care about the interests of Scotland.

The newly formed Social and Liberal Democrats (a merger of the SDP and Liberals) fared badly, dropping 6.4% of the vote that the Alliance had taken at the previous election. Despite this, they stayed stationary on 40 seats. The Scottish National Party, once again the second-largest party in terms of vote share, benefitted from modest gains to take almost 22% of the vote. The Scottish Greens gained their first ever councillor in the Highland region. Turnout was marginally up 0.3% to 45.9%.^[2]

Results by council area

Council	LAB	CON	SLD	SNP	GRN	OTH	Wards	Turnout	Details
Borders	0	3	6	2	0	11	22	42.6%	Details	Independent hold
Central	22	5	6	0	0	1	34	49.1%	Details	Labour hold
Dumfries and Galloway	10	0	4	2	0	19	35	44.4%	Details	Independent hold
Fife	30	2	2	10	0	1	46	46.5%	Details	Labour hold
Grampian	19	10	14	11	0	3	57	41%	Details	No overall control hold
Highland	10	1	2	3	1	35	52	42.9%	Details	Independent hold
Lothian	34	12	1	2	0	0	49	50.2%	Details	Labour hold
Orkney	0	-	-	-	-	24	24	??%	Details	Independent hold
Shetland	4	-	-	-	-	21	25	??%	Details	Independent hold
Strathclyde	89	5	1	5	0	2	103	45%	Details	Labour hold
Tayside	18	14	10	2	0	0	46	47.8%	Details	No overall control hold
Western Isles	0	-	-	-	-	30	30	??%	Details	Independent hold

References

^ McConnell, Alan (2004), Scottish Local Government, Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 978-0-7486-2005-0
^ ^a ^b "The Scottish Regional Elections 1990" (PDF). The Elections Centre. Retrieved 3 March 2020.

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