Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-10975360-20140530130134/@comment-32656-20140612080943

More than a slight fluctuation. And the increase, as showed in polling data, was an artificial boost. As you're well aware, new leaders always have that happen - almost never sticks. Didn't for Major - was a long time before he recovered.

May have been shaky, but they were still predicted to win. That Major won, especially by such a margin, was a big surprise, remember. A couple more percentage points to Labour, and they'd have won. The Tory numbers, fyi, were so concentrated, as to render the total number of votes they received irrelevant.

The concept of Thatcher being hated like that is vastly exaggerated.

A challenge for a sitting PM is more common than you'd think - just tends to be nutjobs that do it. Beating such people, even if they are, as with Thatcher's opponent, actual MPs, generally increases support.

...Huh? Keating defeated Hawke in a close leadership vote, becoming party leader and thus PM, increasing Labour's votes in the 1993 general election. Nothing "similar" about it.

France actually did, and still does, have semi-fixed elections. The President just happens to be able to call them before that time period, though it is considered highly improper. Which he had already done during said term in office, and gotten a majority from his party/allies. Doing so again would have been incredibly foolish.

March, not June.

You decide on an election, and then call it. You can dissolve it right away, and hold an immediate election. Call election in February, hold in March. Simple. Don't know why on earth you think it would not be possible, but the concept that it would not be simply isn't true.

There has been many, many, cases in which elections in the UK were less than four years.

"Opportunistic" has never really cost a leader an election. Tends to increase vote totals, actually.