1990 Scottish regional elections
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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.
National results
Parties | Votes[a] | Votes % | +/- | Wards | Net Gain/Loss | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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
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
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 | Control | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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 | 0 | 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.