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Post by yellowperil on Apr 28, 2020 14:11:05 GMT
The next constituency I am proposing to take on is Eastbourne, and the furthest from home I have attempted, so I am still just a little tentative about this one, not least because it has been a high-profile seat, and one which has history of changing hands several times over recent years. It is, though, a place I know really well for somewhere I have never lived (my brother lives there, so I frequently stay there over weekends). It is also somewhere I have frequently been involved in deliveries , canvassing , etc, starting from the famous by-election of 1990 ( hang on, can that really be 30 years ago? It seems like only yesterday I was only yesterday I was being harangued by a furious Eastbourne resident of obvious Conservative sympathies ..." If that Mr Bellotti thinks he can come here, etc") That was the first of a number of surprising upsets , in both directions, so it could be interesting to step back a little and try and untangle it.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 28, 2020 16:39:22 GMT
Eastbourne constituency has existed since 1885, and used to include not just the town of Eastbourne but a substantial rural hinterland, which has gradually been shed as the population within the borough has increased. Now only the suburban village of Willingdon, part of Wealden district, is added to Eastbourne borough to make up the numbers for the constituency- East Dean had been shed in 2010, and Polegate in 1997, while other villages such as Pevensey and Westham had gone in 1983. This has become essentially an urban constituency, and from the Conservative point of view it lacks the comforting ring of blue-voting villages beyond the periphery of the town that characterises some other Sussex coastal constituencies like Hastings. Another characteristic of Eastbourne in contrast to some other of the Sussex resort towns is that Labour has long been very weak here. The last time Labour got as high as second place here in a general election was 1959, and even then they were some 16,000 votes behind the Tory. There are no Labour wards in the town- this is no Hastings, Brighton or even Worthing. And in modern times this somewhat old-fashioned place has sometimes had "a little Liberal, or else a little Conservative". The only challenge to Tory hegemony was always likely to come from the Liberals, who were always had some presence here, and more latterly the Liberal Democrats. Of course the develpment of Eastbourne as a resort for gentlefolk in the middle years of the nineteenth century was very much a project of the Dukes of Devonshire, and so maybe the Cavendishes always imbued the place with a certain Whiggish air..
This modern era was ushered in by an act of terrible brutality for which responsibility lay elsewhere. In July 1990 the then MP for Eastbourne, Ian Gow, a close associate of Margaret Thatcher, was assasinated by car bomb by the Provisional IRA. In the ensuing by-election the seat was captured by David Bellotti of the LibDems on a 20% swing from the Tories compared with Gow's 1987 result.This was all the more remarkable when one considers that the circumstances of the by-election must surely have produced a sympathy vote for the Conservatives among Gow's former constituents. ( As someone there at the time I can confirm it certainly did in some quarters). But it was a point when the Thatcher government was extremely unpopular at the time, and that was the view that prevailed in Eastbourne. Two year later Bellotti lost the seat back to Nigel Waterson, who proceded to hold it by quite small margins from 1992 to 2010. The 2005 election Stephen LLoyd standing for the first time for the Lib Dems reduced Waterson's majority down to 1124, and then in 2010 he defeated Waterson by 3435. In 2015 a new Tory candidate,Caroline Ansell, squeaked past Lloyd by733, only for Lloyd to come back in 2017 by 1,609. In 2019 it was Ansell's turn again and she won by 4331, the largest majority for either party since 1992. It had been somewhat complicated by the fact that Lloyd had spent much of his second term having resigned the Lib Dem whip, a story I will return to later, as I propose later to consider the peculiar impact of Brexit politics on this constituency.
Before doing so, I would like to examine the distribution of the local vote. Throughout this century, at least, the Lib Dems have been quite strongly in command in Eastbourne Borough. At the ward level , the distribution of votes is remarkably uncomplicated. The borough is divided into 9 3-member wards, all up on a 4 year cycle. Almost without exception, each these 9 wards vote in the 3 candidates of their preferred party, with scarcely any split voting. So far more than is terue in most places we know where the Lib Dem vote is and we know where the Tory vote is. If politics generally are going very strongly one way or another, a couple of wards could get close enough to swing, and when they do they tend to swing for all 3 councillors in that ward.The voting seems very politically focussed, with relatively little sign of a personal vote for individual councillors. The strongest Tory ward is generally Meads, the south-western corner of the Borough high up above the town centre and heading up towards Beachy Head, followed by Ratton, also high up on the west side adjacent to the Downs, and Sovereign, over on the eastern seaside area around the Marina (Sovereign Harbour). Caroline Ansell was a councillor for Sovereign.
The last two local elections (2015 and 2019) those were exactly the results- those 3 wards provided the 9 Tory councillors. The other 6 wards were pretty solidly Lib Dem , providing 18 councillors. The strongest Lib Dem ward is probably Devonshire -the heart of seaside Eastbourne, the tennis, the theatre, all that. The other wards are the Old Town, Upperton, St Anthonys. Hampden Park and Langney- all of the central and northern part of the town. Then of course there is the one bit of the constituency outside the borough, which is now just Willingdon. It may be significant that Caroline Ansell had wanted to re-name the constiuency as Eastbourne and Willingdon, but got no real takers for that, but Willingdon is obviously important to her survival. Not much of a clue to that from the local election results though- Wealden district is now pretty overwhelmingly Conservative, except for Willingdon which has generally returned independents.
In general, the Eastbourne electorate were generally quite liberal in outlook , voted substantially for Lib Dem candidates for local elections, but were less sure about voting that way when it came to general elections, and that tendency was greatly strengthened when the defining issue became membership of the European Union, because there was a clear majority for Leave here. 57.5% is not a particularly high Leave vote in 2016, but it is well above the national average and is similar to Bexhill and Hastings, and massively high compared with the figures for Brighton and Hove, say (Pavilion 25.9, Kemptown 43.6, Hove 32.9). Stephen Lloyd, who personally was a Remainer, but for whom it was not perhaps the defining issue, had a dilemma when it came to elections being defined on this issue. When he gained the seat back from Caroline Ansell in 2017, he did so on an undertaking to abide by the referendum result. He was, one might say, listening to what his electors told him. (The irony of that statement is that Lloyd is profoundly deaf). This is why he declined the LibDem whip, but also why he was able to reclaim the whip just before the 2019 election and to fight for Eastbourne under the Lib Dem manifesto commitment. Given how the country voted in 2019, the ensuing result was inevitable.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 28, 2020 18:11:50 GMT
Good start, but doesn't really explain which bits of the town are better for the Tories & which for the Lib Dems. No, I'm getting there (sigh!) Sorry, that's the trouble with writing these directly on line in stages (hence the tbc note). I know most people write their's offline and then transfer the whole thing online on completion, but I quite like doing it this way.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 28, 2020 21:36:13 GMT
Good start, but doesn't really explain which bits of the town are better for the Tories & which for the Lib Dems. No, I'm getting there (sigh!) Sorry, that's the trouble with writing these directly on line in stages (hence the tbc note). I know most people write their's offline and then transfer the whole thing online on completion, but I quite like doing it this way. Think I have now finished my first draft of the profile, and will add the stats in a separate post in due course.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 29, 2020 12:56:51 GMT
As I have said , I know Eastbourne fairly well but as visitor -I have never lived there, but the bits I know really well are mostly in Meads ward, which is where my brother lives, and at the other end of town around Seaside (yes that really is the road name) and extending in to Sovereign ward, which is the bit where I have in the past been deployed as a deliverer/ canvasser. As these are probably the most Tory bits of the whole Borough I probably have an underestimated view of Lib Dem strength in Eastbourne.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 30, 2020 8:53:48 GMT
General Election 2019
26,951 48.9% Con (C.Ansell) 22,620 41.0% LD (S.Lloyd) 3,480 7.0% Lab (J.Lambert) 1,530 2.8% BxP (S.Gander) 185 0.3% Ind (K.Pollock)
General Election 2017
26, 924 46.9% LD (S.Lloyd) 25,315 44.1% Con (C.Ansell) 4,671 8.1% Lab (J.Lambert) 510 0.9% GP (A.Hough)
General Election 2015
20,934 39.6% Con (C.Ansell) 20,201 38.2% LD (S.Lloyd) 6,139 11.6%UKIP (N.Jones) 4,671 7.8% Lab (J.Lambert) 1,351 2.6% GP (A. Durling) 139 0.3% Ind (P.Howard)
General Election 2010
24,658 47.3% LD (S.Lloyd) 21,223 40.7% Con (N. Waterson) 2,497 4.8% Lab (D. Brinson) 1, 327 2.5% Ind ( S.Shing) 1,305 2.5% UKIP (R.Needham) 939 1.8% BUP (C. Poulter) 101 0.2% Ind (M.Baldry) 74 0.1% Ind (K.Gell)
European Referendum 2016
Leave 57.5 % Remain 42.5%
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 30, 2020 19:01:15 GMT
Those extra statistics ...
2011 Census-Ethnicity White 94.3% (SE 90.7,UK 87.2) Asian 2.7% (SE 5.2, UK 6.9) Mixed 1.7% (SE 1.9, UK 2.0) Black 0.7% (SE 1.6, UK 3.0) Other 0.5% (SE 0.6, UK 0.9)
2019 in employment 73.8% (SE 79.5, GB 75.9) employees 59.5% (SE 66.7, GB 64.6) self-employed 14.2% (SE12.5, GB 10.9)
managerial, directors,senior officials: 11.6% (SE 13.3, GB 11.4) professions : 18.7% (SE 22.8,GB 21.8) caring, leisure, etc : 11.4%( SE 8.7, GB 9.1) elementary occupations: 12.6% (SE 8.5, GB 10.3)
Qualifications NVQ4+ 32.1% (SE 43.4, GB 40.3)
Earnings ftw£ 536.4 (SE 636.0, GB 587.0)
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Post by Robert Waller on Jul 13, 2021 10:12:58 GMT
2011 Census
Age 65+ 23.2% 34/650 Owner-occupied 63.7% /650 Private rented 22.2% 93/650 Social rented 12.4% 469/650 White 94.3% 336/650 Black 0.7% 310/650 Asian 2.7% 319/650 Managerial & professional 30.4% Routine & Semi-routine 25.4% Degree level 24.4% 364/650 No qualifications 23.4% 314/650 Students 8.6% 192/650
2021 Census
Owner occupied 62.1% 369/573 Private rented 25.6% 100/573 Social rented 12.3% 408/573 White 91.2% Black 1.2% Asian 3.4% Managerial & professional 31.4% 303/573 Routine & Semi-routine 24.6% 255/573 Degree level 29.6% 349/573 No qualifications 18.4% 252/573
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Post by londonseal80 on Jul 19, 2021 16:37:39 GMT
I am still yet to found out the reason the Liberals are historically so strong locally here in both Eastbourne and Maidstone even before the 1970s. Both are South-East seats not Celtic fringe or classic artsy Liberal territory like Richmond upon Thames, neither has been born out of a 60s or 70s by-election gain like Orpington or Sutton and Cheam? The Liberals were strong in Eastbourne even before the 1990 by-election, Maidstone is rather puzzling too always been solid blue but the council has had a strong Liberal presence long before the Lib/SDP alliance.
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Post by carlton43 on Jul 20, 2021 0:01:09 GMT
I am still yet to found out the reason the Liberals are historically so strong locally here in both Eastbourne and Maidstone even before the 1970s. Both are South-East seats not Celtic fringe or classic artsy Liberal territory like Richmond upon Thames, neither has been born out of a 60s or 70s by-election gain like Orpington or Sutton and Cheam? The Liberals were strong in Eastbourne even before the 1990 by-election, Maidstone is rather puzzling too always been solid blue but the council has had a strong Liberal presence long before the Lib/SDP alliance. Maidstone was a strong brewing town and the divide was very deep between Methodists, Quakers, and all those against the demon drink, and farm workers (hop fields), brewery workers, railway workers (shifting raw materials and beer) and drinkers. That manifested itself between notable families, many employers, and Conservatives and Labour versus Liberals. It even affected the two fizzy pop manufacturers in that the Haywards were Conservative and the Lyles were Liberal.
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Post by evergreenadam on Nov 14, 2021 11:53:53 GMT
Eastbourne constituency has existed since 1885, and used to include not just the town of Eastbourne but a substantial rural hinterland, which has gradually been shed as the population within the borough has increased. Now only the suburban village of Willingdon, part of Wealden district, is added to Eastbourne borough to make up the numbers for the constituency- East Dean had been shed in 2010, and Polegate in 1997, while other villages such as Pevensey and Westham had gone in 1983. This has become essentially an urban constituency, and from the Conservative point of view it lacks the comforting ring of blue-voting villages beyond the periphery of the town that characterises some other Sussex coastal constituencies like Hastings. Another characteristic of Eastbourne in contrast to some other of the Sussex resort towns is that Labour has long been very weak here. The last time Labour got as high as second place here in a general election was 1959, and even then they were some 16,000 votes behind the Tory. There are no Labour wards in the town- this is no Hastings, Brighton or even Worthing. And in modern times this somewhat old-fashioned place has sometimes had "a little Liberal, or else a little Conservative". The only challenge to Tory hegemony was always likely to come from the Liberals, who were always had some presence here, and more latterly the Liberal Democrats. Of course the develpment of Eastbourne as a resort for gentlefolk in the middle years of the nineteenth century was very much a project of the Dukes of Devonshire, and so maybe the Cavendishes always imbued the place with a certain Whiggish air.. This modern era was ushered in by an act of terrible brutality for which responsibility lay elsewhere. In July 1990 the then MP for Eastbourne, Ian Gow, a close associate of Margaret Thatcher, was assasinated by car bomb by the Provisional IRA. In the ensuing by-election the seat was captured by David Bellotti of the LibDems on a 20% swing from the Tories compared with Gow's 1987 result.This was all the more remarkable when one considers that the circumstances of the by-election must surely have produced a sympathy vote for the Conservatives among Gow's former constituents. ( As someone there at the time I can confirm it certainly did in some quarters). But it was a point when the Thatcher government was extremely unpopular at the time, and that was the view that prevailed in Eastbourne. Two year later Bellotti lost the seat back to Nigel Waterson, who proceded to hold it by quite small margins from 1992 to 2010. The 2005 election Stephen LLoyd standing for the first time for the Lib Dems reduced Waterson's majority down to 1124, and then in 2010 he defeated Waterson by 3435. In 2015 a new Tory candidate,Caroline Ansell, squeaked past Lloyd by733, only for Lloyd to come back in 2015 by 1,609. In 2019 it was Ansell's turn again and she won by 4331, the largest majority for either party since 1992. It had been somewhat complicated by the fact that Lloyd had spent much of his second term having resigned the Lib Dem whip, a story I will return to later, as I propose later to consider the peculiar impact of Brexit politics on this constituency. Before doing so, I would like to examine the distribution of the local vote. Throughout this century, at least, the Lib Dems have been quite strongly in command in Eastbourne Borough. At the ward level , the distribution of votes is remarkably uncomplicated. The borough is divided into 9 3-member wards, all up on a 4 year cycle. Almost without exception, each these 9 wards vote in the 3 candidates of their preferred party, with scarcely any split voting. So far more than is terue in most places we know where the Lib Dem vote is and we know where the Tory vote is. If politics generally are going very strongly one way or another, a couple of wards could get close enough to swing, and when they do they tend to swing for all 3 councillors in that ward.The voting seems very politically focussed, with relatively little sign of a personal vote for individual councillors. The strongest Tory ward is generally Meads, the south-western corner of the Borough high up above the town centre and heading up towards Beachy Head, followed by Ratton, also high up on the west side adjacent to the Downs, and Sovereign, over on the eastern seaside area around the Marina (Sovereign Harbour). Caroline Ansell was a councillor for Sovereign. The last two local elections (2015 and 2019) those were exactly the results- those 3 wards provided the 9 Tory councillors. The other 6 wards were pretty solidly Lib Dem , providing 18 councillors. The strongest Lib Dem ward is probably Devonshire -the heart of seaside Eastbourne, the tennis, the theatre, all that. The other wards are the Old Town, Upperton, St Anthonys. Hampden Park and Langney- all of the central and northern part of the town. Then of course there is the one bit of the constituency outside the borough, which is now just Willingdon. It may be significant that Caroline Ansell had wanted to re-name the constiuency as Eastbourne and Willingdon, but got no real takers for that, but Willingdon is obviously important to her survival. Not much of a clue to that from the local election results though- Wealden district is now pretty overwhelmingly Conservative, except for Willingdon which has generally returned independents. In general, the Eastbourne electorate were generally quite liberal in outlook , voted substantially for Lib Dem candidates for local elections, but were less sure about voting that way when it came to general elections, and that tendency was greatly strengthened when the defining issue became membership of the European Union, because there was a clear majority for Leave here. 57.5% is not a particularly high Leave vote in 2016, but it is well above the national average and is similar to Bexhill and Hastings, and massively high compared with the figures for Brighton and Hove, say (Pavilion 25.9, Kemptown 43.6, Hove 32.9). Stephen Lloyd, who personally was a Remainer, but for whom it was not perhaps the defining issue, had a dilemma when it came to elections being defined on this issue. When he gained the seat back from Caroline Ansell in 2017, he did so on an undertaking to abide by the referendum result. He was, one might say, listening to what his electors told him. (The irony of that statement is that Lloyd is profoundly deaf). This is why he declined the LibDem whip, but also why he was able to reclaim the whip just before the 2019 election and to fight for Eastbourne under the Lib Dem manifesto commitment. Given how the country voted in 2019, the ensuing result was inevitable. I think you mean Lloyd came back in 2017.
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Post by yellowperil on Nov 14, 2021 16:40:22 GMT
Eastbourne constituency has existed since 1885, and used to include not just the town of Eastbourne but a substantial rural hinterland, which has gradually been shed as the population within the borough has increased. Now only the suburban village of Willingdon, part of Wealden district, is added to Eastbourne borough to make up the numbers for the constituency- East Dean had been shed in 2010, and Polegate in 1997, while other villages such as Pevensey and Westham had gone in 1983. This has become essentially an urban constituency, and from the Conservative point of view it lacks the comforting ring of blue-voting villages beyond the periphery of the town that characterises some other Sussex coastal constituencies like Hastings. Another characteristic of Eastbourne in contrast to some other of the Sussex resort towns is that Labour has long been very weak here. The last time Labour got as high as second place here in a general election was 1959, and even then they were some 16,000 votes behind the Tory. There are no Labour wards in the town- this is no Hastings, Brighton or even Worthing. And in modern times this somewhat old-fashioned place has sometimes had "a little Liberal, or else a little Conservative". The only challenge to Tory hegemony was always likely to come from the Liberals, who were always had some presence here, and more latterly the Liberal Democrats. Of course the develpment of Eastbourne as a resort for gentlefolk in the middle years of the nineteenth century was very much a project of the Dukes of Devonshire, and so maybe the Cavendishes always imbued the place with a certain Whiggish air.. This modern era was ushered in by an act of terrible brutality for which responsibility lay elsewhere. In July 1990 the then MP for Eastbourne, Ian Gow, a close associate of Margaret Thatcher, was assasinated by car bomb by the Provisional IRA. In the ensuing by-election the seat was captured by David Bellotti of the LibDems on a 20% swing from the Tories compared with Gow's 1987 result.This was all the more remarkable when one considers that the circumstances of the by-election must surely have produced a sympathy vote for the Conservatives among Gow's former constituents. ( As someone there at the time I can confirm it certainly did in some quarters). But it was a point when the Thatcher government was extremely unpopular at the time, and that was the view that prevailed in Eastbourne. Two year later Bellotti lost the seat back to Nigel Waterson, who proceded to hold it by quite small margins from 1992 to 2010. The 2005 election Stephen LLoyd standing for the first time for the Lib Dems reduced Waterson's majority down to 1124, and then in 2010 he defeated Waterson by 3435. In 2015 a new Tory candidate,Caroline Ansell, squeaked past Lloyd by733, only for Lloyd to come back in 2015 by 1,609. In 2019 it was Ansell's turn again and she won by 4331, the largest majority for either party since 1992. It had been somewhat complicated by the fact that Lloyd had spent much of his second term having resigned the Lib Dem whip, a story I will return to later, as I propose later to consider the peculiar impact of Brexit politics on this constituency. Before doing so, I would like to examine the distribution of the local vote. Throughout this century, at least, the Lib Dems have been quite strongly in command in Eastbourne Borough. At the ward level , the distribution of votes is remarkably uncomplicated. The borough is divided into 9 3-member wards, all up on a 4 year cycle. Almost without exception, each these 9 wards vote in the 3 candidates of their preferred party, with scarcely any split voting. So far more than is terue in most places we know where the Lib Dem vote is and we know where the Tory vote is. If politics generally are going very strongly one way or another, a couple of wards could get close enough to swing, and when they do they tend to swing for all 3 councillors in that ward.The voting seems very politically focussed, with relatively little sign of a personal vote for individual councillors. The strongest Tory ward is generally Meads, the south-western corner of the Borough high up above the town centre and heading up towards Beachy Head, followed by Ratton, also high up on the west side adjacent to the Downs, and Sovereign, over on the eastern seaside area around the Marina (Sovereign Harbour). Caroline Ansell was a councillor for Sovereign. The last two local elections (2015 and 2019) those were exactly the results- those 3 wards provided the 9 Tory councillors. The other 6 wards were pretty solidly Lib Dem , providing 18 councillors. The strongest Lib Dem ward is probably Devonshire -the heart of seaside Eastbourne, the tennis, the theatre, all that. The other wards are the Old Town, Upperton, St Anthonys. Hampden Park and Langney- all of the central and northern part of the town. Then of course there is the one bit of the constituency outside the borough, which is now just Willingdon. It may be significant that Caroline Ansell had wanted to re-name the constiuency as Eastbourne and Willingdon, but got no real takers for that, but Willingdon is obviously important to her survival. Not much of a clue to that from the local election results though- Wealden district is now pretty overwhelmingly Conservative, except for Willingdon which has generally returned independents. In general, the Eastbourne electorate were generally quite liberal in outlook , voted substantially for Lib Dem candidates for local elections, but were less sure about voting that way when it came to general elections, and that tendency was greatly strengthened when the defining issue became membership of the European Union, because there was a clear majority for Leave here. 57.5% is not a particularly high Leave vote in 2016, but it is well above the national average and is similar to Bexhill and Hastings, and massively high compared with the figures for Brighton and Hove, say (Pavilion 25.9, Kemptown 43.6, Hove 32.9). Stephen Lloyd, who personally was a Remainer, but for whom it was not perhaps the defining issue, had a dilemma when it came to elections being defined on this issue. When he gained the seat back from Caroline Ansell in 2017, he did so on an undertaking to abide by the referendum result. He was, one might say, listening to what his electors told him. (The irony of that statement is that Lloyd is profoundly deaf). This is why he declined the LibDem whip, but also why he was able to reclaim the whip just before the 2019 election and to fight for Eastbourne under the Lib Dem manifesto commitment. Given how the country voted in 2019, the ensuing result was inevitable. I think you mean Lloyd came back in 2017. Yup- it was right in one place, wrong in another, and I have I trust now made the right correction, thank you. It seems odd to be proofreading something I wrote so long ago I scarcely remember writing it in the first place.
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Post by evergreenadam on Aug 28, 2022 10:44:21 GMT
I wonder what the political mood is like in Eastbourne? I visited the town centre yesterday and thought the large number of elderly people, some living in larger homes having not downsized and the low wages in the local economy would make energy prices increases toxic for the Tories here.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Dec 12, 2022 19:36:11 GMT
Minor boundary changes remove the Willingdon area (part of Wealden district) to Lewes and bring the boundaries of the parliamentary seat into line with those of the borough. Willingdon may be a little more Conservative than Eastbourne as a whole (its difficult to be sure because of the strenth of Independents locally) but the partisan impact will be minor in any event. 2019 Notional Result Con | 24407 | 48.6% | LD | 20805 | 41.4% | Lab | 3496 | 7.0% | BxP | 1370 | 2.7% | Oth | 169 | 0.3% | | | | Majority | 3602 | 7.2% |
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Post by elinorhelyn on Jun 21, 2023 15:28:58 GMT
What is it with Labour's historic weakness and the LDs strength in Eastbourne compared with the other Sussex resort towns?
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Post by batman on Jun 21, 2023 19:29:27 GMT
some of it is historical accident. However there's long-standing LD/Liberal strength at local level. This is still the case in some nearby boroughs, but in others such as Hastings & Brighton it no longer is.
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