Bradford West By election

[ColinJ]

Mar 31, 2012 8:25:23 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

George Galloway tweeting this morning:

"Welcome to the 6000 new followers. I will try to live up to your expectations. Shattered but happy after the Blackburn triumph."

Clearly didn't get O-level geography.

[iainbhx]

Mar 31, 2012 8:25:23 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

George Galloway tweeting this morning:

"Welcome to the 6000 new followers. I will try to live up to your expectations. Shattered but happy after the Blackburn triumph."

All these Northern towns full of gullible dupes look the same to him ;D

[Crimson King]

Theres actually a serious point here in the first part of the tweet.

GG has won (amongst other factors) by articulating the concerns people had which normal politicians have not addressed. He has suggested or at least implied that this is because of lack of will or concern, whilst we know that it is a little more complicated than that.

if in a year or so the problems in the middle east have still not been solved, the status of Kashmir has till not been sorted out to the satisfaction of all, the timetable for troop withdrawal from Afghanistan has not been accelerated, the Odeon has not been 'saved' Westfield has not been built (agruably more likely if investors are nervous about Bradford following his election) and so on then some pretty high expectations may not be lived up to. What then?

[Pete Whitehead]

Mar 31, 2012 8:09:24 GMT Crimson King said:

Mar 31, 2012 7:51:02 GMT marksenior said:

How would we ?

We probably did get that officially or unoficially during the verification stage, and it will probably be on our agents computer somwhere. It may be one of those things it's technically illegal to disclose but I may be able to give at least an indication when I have it myself.

BTW Galloway is reported as saying he won in every ward in Bradford West - including Thornton and Clayton, which if true (and it probably is or somone would have said otherwise by now) means I am wrong and Pete Whitehead is right in the discussion up thread

There was a tweet from Salma Yaqoob last night

Salma Yaqoob ‏ @salmayaqoob Close
Note to media: Clayton ward in #BradfordWest is predominantly white, middle class & affluent. #Respect took approx 900 votes #Labour 40

Presumably this refers to postal votes only as the numbers are far too small. I'd also question her description of the demographic character of that ward - I think the Asian population is significant and growing there (but welcome local knowledge) and I don't think it is predominantly middle class.
I intend to run through a few possible scenarios of how individual wards may have voted. Re: Thornton, it would certainly be hard to believe that the Conservatves carried the ward given their total share, but their vote would have been neglible in the Asian wards (where they got less than 3% in Manningham in the local elections last year for example). So clearly the Conservative vote will have been heavily concentrated in that ward and the same would be true of the votes for UKIP and the National Democrats, possibly to a lesser extent the LDs too. So it is possible that Galloway carried the ward with a quite low vote share (say 25% or less) over a very fragmented opposition

[Pete Whitehead]

I've created a model for possible results by ward which allow for Galloway carrying them all. Ive gone for a large differential turnout of around 60% in the 'Asian' wards and around 33% in the 'white' wards
It is semi-scientific, based on past voting behaviour and demographics, but primarily speculative


City

Respect	4092	67.8%
Lab	1368	22.7%
Con	205	3.4%
LD	199	3.3%
UKIP	61	1.0%
Grn	70	1.2%
DN	20	0.3%
OMRLP	20	0.3%

Manningham

Respect	4366	67.6%
Lab	1581	24.5%
Con	175	2.7%
LD	184	2.8%
UKIP	59	0.9%
Grn	65	1.0%
DN	20	0.3%
OMRLP	10	0.2%

Toller

Respect	4502	65.8%
Lab	1778	26.0%
Con	198	2.9%
LD	195	2.9%
UKIP	68	1.0%
Grn	65	1.0%
DN	20	0.3%
OMRLP	15	0.2%

Heaton

Respect	3355	53.4%
Lab	1666	26.5%
Con	641	10.2%
LD	251	4.0%
UKIP	193	3.1%
Grn	130	2.1%
DN	30	0.5%
OMRLP	15	0.2%

Clayton and Fairweather Green

Respect	1126	31.1%
Lab	922	25.5%
Con	683	18.9%
LD	319	8.8%
UKIP	340	9.4%
Grn	80	2.2%
DN	120	3.3%
OMRLP	25	0.7%

Thornton and Allerton

Respect	900	25.1%
Lab	886	24.7%
Con	844	23.6%
LD	357	10.0%
UKIP	364	10.2%
Grn	71	2.0%
DN	134	3.7%
OMRLP	26	0.7%

The votes for the Conservatives and other lower polling parties must not be in much doubt, at least they cannot have got many more votes than this in Clayton and Thornton as they have so few votes available from elsewhere. Labour's vote share is very evenly spread here and it is of course possible that they did far better in the western wards and far worse in the inner wards, but if that were the case then they should have carried Clayton and Thornton (and we seem to accept at face value Galloway's claim that he did)
It could alternatively be that Labour performed more strongly in the inner wards (especially Toller where Mr Hussain is a councillor) and correspondingly more weakly in the western wards but this would give Galloway a largeish lead in these wards and I don't personally buy that.

A bit of demographic data which helps inform these things. The data suffers from two problems - firstly it is more than a decade out of date. Secondly it is on the old ward boundaries

	White	Asian	Muslim	AB	DE
University	26.4	69.1	59.2	10.3	54.4
Toller	26.6	70.6	64.3	14.2	48.8
Heaton	58.4	38.7	35.1	21.3	37.1
Clayton	84.9	12.5	7.0	16.6	38.3
Thornton	94.3	3.7	2.0	18.3	34.5

University is basically the predecessor ward of City which also took some territory from Little Horton and Undercliffe
Manningham is a new ward which was drawn from the northern part of University, the eastern, inner part of Heaton and parts of Toller and Undercliffe
Toller is more or less the same
Heaton lost its eastern and western extremities and gained a part of Shipley West and a small part of Toller
Thornton & Allerton gained a small part of Queensbury and the western extremity of Heaton
Clayton & Fairweather Green is more or less the same as the old Clayton

According to the figures from 2001, Clayton is predominantly white but not predominantly middle class. It is likely that the proportion of Asians in that ward in the 2011 census will be considerably higher

[YL]

Mar 31, 2012 13:15:43 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

A bit of demographic data which helps inform these things. The data suffers from two problems - firstly it is more than a decade out of date. Secondly it is on the old ward boundaries

There are some figures for the new wards out there, e.g. bradford.limehouse.co.uk/portal/ward_profiles_2001/manningham?tab=files
(still of course for 2001, though there might be some estimates of more recent figures available elsewhere on the same site).

[Pete Whitehead]

Thats excellent. I wonder if similar was done for other Met boroughs

[Crimson King]

good work. Just to ad some more data I am now led to believe that respect came second in Thornton and that the LD vote in Manningham and City may have been even worse than you estimate (i suspect the same may be true of the Con vote as well). Toller might have been a little better formLab than you guess (but I wouldnt bank on it)

[Pete Whitehead]

Who came first in Thornton?

[YL]

Mar 31, 2012 13:40:45 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Thats excellent. I wonder if similar was done for other Met boroughs

There are certainly similar things out there, e.g. this for South Yorks. Googling for the borough name (or a ward name) followed by "ward profiles" often seems to find something.

[Crimson King]

Mar 31, 2012 14:25:04 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Who came first in Thornton?

Don't know but I'd guess con. They were working harder there than anywhere and I imagine respect disproportionally eroded the Labour vote

[historian1986]

The reason why Respect did well in Heaton, Clayton and Thornton is due to the influx of the more upwardly mobile Asian population moving into these areas from Toller and elsewhere. Usually these would tend to support Labour, but switched to Respect thus explaining the high vote. In turn they seem to be replaced by Eastern Europeans moving into the vacated premises in the inner city. Consequently Thornton-Allerton could trend away from the Conservatives within the next few years as what had happened in Clayton and Heaton.

[Andrew_S]

The more you think about it the less surprising Galloway's win seems because it's possible to envisage all kinds of people voting for him in order to give the main parties a bloody nose. For example people who normally vote both Green and BNP could and must have supported him.

[Tony Otim]

I struggle to imagine many BNP voters going for Respect

[Davıd Boothroyd]

On the Britain Votes live forum I was speculating about the status of Galloway when he tries to take his seat. As a byelection victor he needs to be presented by two sponsors; this is normally the candidates' 'minder' and the MP for a next-door seat.

As Galloway is the only MP from his party, there is no-one he can immediately turn to to be a sponsor. This was not an issue in 2005 as he was elected at a general election, but it may be now.

This problem has been encountered twice before. In 1945, Robert McIntyre was elected as the first SNP MP in a byelection and presented himself to take the affirmation without any sponsors. The Speaker refused to let him do so; whereupon Labour MP George Buchanan moved to dispense with the 'Order and custom' on that particular occasion. This prompted a short debate, in which Churchill opposed the motion, and it was voted down by 74 to 273. The following day McIntyre appeared again, with two Labour MPs as sponsors: Rev James Barr (Coatbridge) and Alexander Sloan (South Ayrshire) and took his seat.

There was a precedent from 1875 when Edward Kenealy was elected as an Independent MP in Stoke-on-Trent. He was the barrister for the Tichborne claimant (Arthur Orton, claiming to be Sir Roger Tichborne, Bt.) and stood in support of Orton's claims. As a rabble-rousing orator whose cause was utterly unmerited, he is obviously not a good precedent for George Galloway. When Kenealy turned up to take his seat without any sponsors, Benjamin Disraeli moved to dispense with the usual Order and custom and the motion passed without opposition.

No mainstream party is likely to help provide a sponsor for Galloway. He is allied with Irish republicanism which makes the Northern Ireland parties in the House unlikely to help. He is an opponent of Scottish nationalism. He could probably ask Caroline Lucas to be a sponsor, but who else? Possibly Plaid Cymru, which is now under a particularly left-wing leadership, will help, but it is not certain.

So will the usual order have to be dispensed with, on this occasion?

[Deleted]

he showed his colours today by quoting Blackburn as winning. The guy will be barely seen in Bradford and all over the TV for himself.

oh well guess can wait until 2015 to vote him out.

[Richard Allen]

Mar 31, 2012 17:37:54 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

On the Britain Votes live forum I was speculating about the status of Galloway when he tries to take his seat. As a byelection victor he needs to be presented by two sponsors; this is normally the candidates' 'minder' and the MP for a next-door seat.

As Galloway is the only MP from his party, there is no-one he can immediately turn to to be a sponsor. This was not an issue in 2005 as he was elected at a general election, but it may be now.

This problem has been encountered twice before. In 1945, Robert McIntyre was elected as the first SNP MP in a byelection and presented himself to take the affirmation without any sponsors. The Speaker refused to let him do so; whereupon Labour MP George Buchanan moved to dispense with the 'Order and custom' on that particular occasion. This prompted a short debate, in which Churchill opposed the motion, and it was voted down by 74 to 273. The following day McIntyre appeared again, with two Labour MPs as sponsors: Rev James Barr (Coatbridge) and Alexander Sloan (South Ayrshire) and took his seat.

There was a precedent from 1875 when Edward Kenealy was elected as an Independent MP in Stoke-on-Trent. He was the barrister for the Tichborne claimant (Arthur Orton, claiming to be Sir Roger Tichborne, Bt.) and stood in support of Orton's claims. As a rabble-rousing orator whose cause was utterly unmerited, he is obviously not a good precedent for George Galloway. When Kenealy turned up to take his seat without any sponsors, Benjamin Disraeli moved to dispense with the usual Order and custom and the motion passed without opposition.

No mainstream party is likely to help provide a sponsor for Galloway. He is allied with Irish republicanism which makes the Northern Ireland parties in the House unlikely to help. He is an opponent of Scottish nationalism. He could probably ask Caroline Lucas to be a sponsor, but who else? Possibly Plaid Cymru, which is now under a particularly left-wing leadership, will help, but it is not certain.

So will the usual order have to be dispensed with, on this occasion?

Surely he has at least one or two friends left in the PLP?

[The Bishop]

Possibly Corbyn along with Lucas??

[Harry Hayfield]

I was going to look through Hansard from 1966 when Gwynfor Evans became the first MP for Plaid Cymru but found this wonderful exchange when he raised a point of order on the subject of hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1966/jul/21/oath-of-allegiance-welsh-language

[Andrew_S]

Mar 31, 2012 17:11:39 GMT Tony Otim said:

I struggle to imagine many BNP voters going for Respect

Some BNP supporters may have seen two potentially successful candidates in Bradford West and decided to vote for the white candidate rather than the Asian one.