diff --git a/wagtail/wagtailsearch/backends/base.py b/wagtail/wagtailsearch/backends/base.py
index c971a4013..dd6274b82 100644
--- a/wagtail/wagtailsearch/backends/base.py
+++ b/wagtail/wagtailsearch/backends/base.py
@@ -13,7 +13,6 @@ except ImportError:
 from django.db.models.sql.where import SubqueryConstraint, WhereNode
 
 from wagtail.wagtailsearch.index import class_is_indexed
-from wagtail.wagtailsearch.utils import normalise_query_string
 
 
 class FilterError(Exception):
@@ -227,10 +226,6 @@ class BaseSearch(object):
         if not class_is_indexed(model):
             return []
 
-        # Normalise query string
-        if query_string is not None:
-            query_string = normalise_query_string(query_string)
-
         # Check that theres still a query string after the clean up
         if query_string == "":
             return []
diff --git a/wagtail/wagtailsearch/tests/test_elasticsearch_backend.py b/wagtail/wagtailsearch/tests/test_elasticsearch_backend.py
index f98d0bb94..8e195cec8 100644
--- a/wagtail/wagtailsearch/tests/test_elasticsearch_backend.py
+++ b/wagtail/wagtailsearch/tests/test_elasticsearch_backend.py
@@ -135,7 +135,6 @@ class TestElasticSearchBackend(BackendTests, TestCase):
         # Even though they both start with the letter "H". This should not be considered a match
         self.assertEqual(len(results), 0)
 
-    @unittest.expectedFailure
     def test_search_with_hyphen(self):
         """
         This tests that punctuation characters are treated the same