How will the 2024 general election affect the UK stock market

4 min Read Published: 24 May 2024

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has called a UK general election for 4th July 2024. With just six weeks to go until polling day how will the general election impact the UK stock market? Ahead of the previous two general elections, I published research looking at the potential impact. With the benefit of hindsight, it is now an opportune moment to dust this down and update it.

Pre-election equity rally

The table below shows how the UK stock market has behaved in the six weeks ahead of every election since 1987.

Year Polling prediction Winning party FTSE 100 gain or drop 1987 Conservative majority Conservative +9.70% 1992 Hung parliament Conservative -4.90% 1997 Labour majority Labour +4.40% 2001 Labour majority Labour +1.40% 2005 Labour majority Labour -0.40% 2010 Hung parliament Conservative coalition -8.15% 2015 Either party could win a majority Conservative -0.12% 2017 Conservative majority Conservative coalition +2.94% 2019 Conservative majority Conservative +0.35% Average +0.58%

Typically, ahead of a general election the FTSE 100 rallies 0.58%.

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