When Britain goes to the polls on Thursday the Conservatives will be hoping that the traditional centrist values of national security and immigration control will benefit them, but Theresa May would do well to remember that this has not always proven to be the case.
Around the world, terrorism often triggers national unity and benefits conservative parties. Studies in Israel over the years have shown, for example, immediate but limited surges in support for the Likud party after Palestinian violence.
“Conservative positions on . . . issues including national defence, military funding and immigration are more popular during periods of heightened terror threat,” Robb Willer, an expert at Stanford university in California, has said.
However, the most spectacular electoral impact from terrorism is often said to have been the defeat of Spain’s centre-right government in March 2004. Three days before the general election, bomb attacks on trains in Madrid killed more than 190 people and injured more than 2,000. Voters were expected to re-elect the conservative Popular Party, but they put the Socialists of José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero into power.
Historians have ascribed the defeat to an effort by José María Aznar, then leader of the Popular Party, to blame Basque separatists, which was seen as an attempt to deflect attention from Islamist extremists and Spain’s unpopular participation in the invasion of Iraq. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility two days after the attack.
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In France, where Islamists have killed about 250 people since 2012, the two most likely beneficiaries — the conservative Republicans and far-right National Front — have failed to break through. François Hollande, a Socialist, ousted the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy from the presidency in 2012, two months after seven people were killed by a gunman on a motorbike in Toulouse.
The Paris attacks of 2015 boosted Marine Le Pen’s National Front, which enjoyed a surge of support in regional elections weeks after the November massacre, but it failed to win a single council. The November attack was thought to have given the party a three-point lift in votes.
When a police officer was murdered by an Islamist in Paris in April, days before the presidential first round, President Trump tweeted that the attack would “probably help” Ms Le Pen because she was “strongest on borders, and . . . strongest on what’s been going on in France”. Voters did cite a tough line on immigration and policing as motives for backing Ms Le Pen, but she won fewer votes in the first round than expected and was easily beaten in the run-off by Emmanuel Macron, an inexperienced politician with no law-and-order credentials who emerged from the Socialist government.
CRISES BEFORE ELECTIONS
October 5, 1974
The Guildford pub bombings occurred when the Provisional IRA detonated two bombs at two pubs in Guildford, Surrey, killing four soldiers and one civilian, and wounding 65 other people. The general election between Harold Wilson for Labour and Ted Heath for the Conservatives, who was the incumbent, went ahead on October 10 and Labour emerged victorious with a majority of three. Both leaders sent telegrams of condolence.
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April 2, 2001
The decision was taken to delay the general election by a month because of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Tony Blair had hoped to go to the polls in May but the spread of the disease made campaigning impossible and the election was delayed. Ten million cows and sheep were killed to halt the disease and the election took place on June 7. Mr Blair won another landslide victory.
March 11, 2004
The Madrid train bombings took place three days before a general election. Co-ordinated explosions on the rail network killed 192 and injured nearly 2,000 people.
Before the attack, the incumbent Popular Party, whose candidate for prime minister was Mariano Rajoy, led the polls by five points but lost to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist candidate. Many believe that the Popular Party would have won the election if it had not been for the al-Qaeda attack, for which the government tried to blame Basque separatists.
April 20, 2017
One policeman was killed and two were wounded in a shooting in central Paris days before the first round of the French presidential election this year. The attack took place on Thursday, April 20, and the first round of the election went ahead on Sunday, with Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen going through to the second round.