David Steel vs Margaret Thatcher

David Steel and Margaret Thatcher faced each other at the 1979 and 1983 and 1987 general elections: seats, votes and the result, side by side.

David Steel

Party: SDP–Liberal Alliance
Elections: 3
Most seats: 0
Best: 23 seats

Margaret Thatcher

Party: Conservative
Elections: 3
Most seats: 3
Best: 397 seats

1987

326 for a majority

Con376
Lab229
Alliance22
UUP9
SNP3
Smaller parties11

Leader	Party	Seats	Share	Votes
David Steel	SDP–Liberal Alliance	22	22.6%	7,341,650
Margaret Thatcher PM	Conservative	376	42.3%	13,760,959

1983

326 for a majority

Con397
Lab209
Alliance23
UUP11
DUP3
Smaller parties7

Leader	Party	Seats	Share	Votes
David Steel	SDP–Liberal Alliance	23	25.4%	7,780,589
Margaret Thatcher PM	Conservative	397	42.4%	13,012,592

1979

318 for a majority

Con339
Lab269
Lib11
UUP5
Oth3
Smaller parties8

Leader	Party	Seats	Share	Votes
David Steel	Liberal	11	13.8%	4,313,821
Margaret Thatcher PM	Conservative	339	43.9%	13,697,516

Compare with

Official results House of Commons Library and UK Parliament election results data. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0. How we use this data