Consecutive 3-way marginals

[physicsguy]

Does anyone know of any FPTP election in a seat (parliament, council, foreign etc...) that has been a 3 (or more) way marginal for consecutive elections in that seat? 

Apologies if this sounds confusing

[tiberius]

Scotland must have had some.

[John Chanin]

Jan 18, 2019 14:27:12 GMT physicsguy said:

Does anyone know of any FPTP election in a seat (parliament, council, foreign etc...) that has been a 3 (or more) way marginal for consecutive elections in that seat? 

Apologies if this sounds confusing

Suggest you look at the history of Inverness at parliamentary level. 

[Lord Twaddleford]

My home seat of Aberconwy in the Welsh Assembly, there's been a 3-way split between the Conservatives, Plaid Cymru, and Labour since it was created. The Westminster seat (with the same boundaries) is more of a straight up Conservative/Labour marginal, however.


Past results:

Party:	2007 (votes):	2011:	2016:
Conservatives	6,290	6,888 (Winner)	7,646 (Winner)
Plaid Cymru	7,983 (Winner)	5,321	6,892
Labour	4,508	5,206	6,039
Liberal Democrats	1,918	2,873	781
Greens	N/A	N/A	680

[robbienicoll]

Jan 18, 2019 15:05:16 GMT tiberius said:

Scotland must have had some.

Yup, particularly at Scottish Parliament level. Edinburgh Central has been a four way marginal since 1999. Edinburgh Southern and its predecessor Edinburgh South was a consecutive four way marginal until 2016 when it became three way. Eastwood, Stirling and Edinburgh Pentlands are other examples but there'll be more. 

[Deleted]

Watford was in 2005 and 2010.

[greenchristian]

It might be worth clarifying how we define 3-way marginals. How close does the third party need to be in order to qualify?

Anyway, Norwich South likely qualifies over the three General elections in 2005, 2010, and 2015

[lennon]

Depending on if you mean 'expected to be / campaigned as such' or using the benefit of hindsight / result have a set closeness definition? Portsmouth South probably falls into the 1st category given its somewhat schizophrenic nature.

[manchesterman]

The old Inverness E, Nairn & Lochaber:


1992
LD 26
SNP 25.1
CON 24.9
LAB 22.6

1997
LAB 33.9
SNP 29
CON 17.5
LD 17.5

2001
LAB 36.8
SNP 25.6
LD 22.2
CON 13.3

[physicsguy]

Jan 18, 2019 16:24:08 GMT greenchristian said:

It might be worth clarifying how we define 3-way marginals. How close does the third party need to be in order to qualify?

Anyway, Norwich South likely qualifies over the three General elections in 2005, 2010, and 2015

I'll set a limit of no more than 10% between the 1st and 3rd (or more) candidate.

[heslingtonian]

Bristol West was a definite three way marginal i.e. a target seat for all three main parties in the three elections from 1997 to 2005.

[Deleted]

Brighton Pavillion 2005 2010

[Harry Hayfield]

Ceredigion (whilst not election after election) has been a bit of a four way marginal in 1992, 2005 and 2017

[The Bishop]

Jan 18, 2019 18:45:02 GMT Andrew_S said:

Jan 18, 2019 17:35:19 GMT Andrew_S said:

An interesting question is whether there have been any consecutive 3-way marginals where at least one of the parties in the top 3 was different to the previous/next election.

In fact I can arguably answer my own question with the example of Blyth / Blyth Valley in 1979 and 1983:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blyth_Valley_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_1980s

Eddie Milne would reportedly have stood again in 1983 had he not died in the interim, I wonder if that would have handed the seat to the SDP?

[Deleted]

Jan 19, 2019 12:14:24 GMT @barnabymarder said:

Jan 18, 2019 18:45:02 GMT Andrew_S said:

In fact I can arguably answer my own question with the example of Blyth / Blyth Valley in 1979 and 1983:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blyth_Valley_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_1980s

But that's not ever been a genuine 3-way marginal. It was a Lab-Ind Lab contest, then became Lab-SDP, and now it's Lab-Con.

Interesting but slightly unrelated point: the Tories won the popular vote in Blyth Valley in the 2017 local elections. 

[johnloony]

FWIW, my definition of a 3-way marginal is that there is less than 10% between 1st and 3rd place; my definition of a 4-way marginal is that the 1st candidate has less than twice as many votes as the 4th candidate.

[john07]

Jan 19, 2019 12:16:28 GMT @barnabymarder said:

Jan 19, 2019 11:13:54 GMT The Bishop said:

Eddie Milne would reportedly have stood again in 1983 had he not died in the interim, I wonder if that would have handed the seat to the SDP?

I thought that he joined the SDP when or shortly after it was formed, so he would have sought to stand in those colours, but as you say died not long afterwards.

That sounds strange given that many of Milne's footsoldiers in the February 1974 came from the likes of the SWP and the IMG along with many left aligned Labour members. His opponent, John Ryman, came over as a very dodgy and downright corrupt right-winger. He was a foxhunter too! I read Milne's book No Shining Armour and he seemed fairly genuine if naive.

Or am I mixing up Eddie Milne with Eddie Mills from Our Friends in the North?

[The Bishop]

No you are correct, Milne was very much on the left of the party - amongst other things he vocally supported the left-wing "official" Labour candidate in the 1973 Lincoln byelection (whereas many of the party top brass stayed away) It is not impossible that he joined the SDP in his final years, though - a few distinctly left wing people actually did, and it is possible events had soured his former socialist fervour somewhat.

Btw, its hard to believe but Ryman also claimed to be a left winger (and actually voted for Tony Benn in the 1981 deputy election) but by the time I went to Newcastle he was almost friendless and a universally derided figure. His last years were spent in total anonymity and even his date and manner of death remains obscure.

[spqr]

Jan 23, 2019 11:50:18 GMT The Bishop said:

No you are correct, Milne was very much on the left of the party - amongst other things he vocally supported the left-wing "official" Labour candidate in the 1973 Lincoln byelection (whereas many of the party top brass stayed away) It is not impossible that he joined the SDP in his final years, though - a few distinctly left wing people actually did, and it is possible events had soured his former socialist fervour somewhat.

Btw, its hard to believe but Ryman also claimed to be a left winger (and actually voted for Tony Benn in the 1981 deputy election) but by the time I went to Newcastle he was almost friendless and a universally derided figure. His last years were spent in total anonymity and even his date and manner of death remains obscure.

Hm. Milne was one of five MPs who wrote to the Times in 1971 supporting an anti-Common Market position from a 'Gaitskellite'  - i.e. centre-right - perspective (the other four were, from memory, Brian Walden, Laurie Pavitt, Eric Deakins and Roland Moyle). This could have just been a nifty bit of PR, of course, but I think his attachment to social-democracy was genuine enough - at the annual conference earlier that year he lauded Scandinavia as the home of 'the main social democratic forces in the world', for example, which while not beyond the soft left was never really something they would come out with. And, of course, there were lots of faithful right-wingers who campaigned for John Dilks against Taverne - Tony Crosland was one.

A good few erstwhile left-wingers did join the SDP, but almost all were former rather than sitting MPs: Paul Rose, Michael Barnes, et al. Some of the very minor older recruits - such as Austen Albu and Lord Taylor of Gryfe - had started their careers in the ILP (if we want to go that far back). Ryman was a left-winger, though, at least at first, although his nationalism was perhaps the most obvious part of it (calling Helmut Schmidt an interfering Kraut, for example). Dianne Hayter, who wrote a good book on Labour Party factionalism during this period, certainly considered him to be 'soft-left'.

[Pete Whitehead]

Ryman was certainly very much in favour of wealth redistribution IIRC (mainly in the form of redistributing other people's wealth to himself)